La la land short film review

Following a soulless LA party, wannabe actress Mia (Emma Stone) meets frustrated jazz pianist Seb (Ryan Gosling) in a bar. The pair get together and their future looks set, until Seb lands a lucrative gig with an old musician buddy (John Legend), an offer that tests the strength of the couple’s bond and dreams.

Pure unadulterated joy is in short supply these days, both on the big screen and off. Which makes Damien Chazelle’s irresistible La La Land all the more cherishable. More than just a throwback to MGM musicals, it is a funny Valentine to the entire history of the genre, as light on its feet as Fred Astaire, as big in its heart as Judy Garland. Just as Chazelle’s Whiplash was intense, La La Land, especially in its first half, is footloose (not Footloose) and fancy-free, buoyed by a clutch of great new songs (take a bow Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul) and carried by the chemistry of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

It’s hard to imagine any 2017 movie will leave you on a higher high.

The movie gets a lot of flavour from its twisted heritage. It is a US indie do-over of a French New Wave take on a classic American genre, part New York, New York, part The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg, part Singin’ In The Rain. A bigger-budgeted upgrade on Chazelle’s musical short Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench, the story — aspiring actress Mia (Stone) meets jazz pianist Seb (Gosling), and sparks fly until career aspirations get in the way — is simplicity itself, enlivened by some Pulp Fiction-esque narrative tricksiness. The film’s capricious genius is present in its opening sequence. On paper, the idea of an LA freeway traffic jam bursting out into song and dance sounds up there with root-canal work but here, as a solitary singer snowballs into the world’s best flash mob perfectly captured by Chazelle’s sinuous camera, it’s a riot of colour and euphoria. Subsequently Chazelle fully embraces the corny (Mia and Seb literally dance among the stars, at the Griffith Observatory or singing under streetlights), but for all the film’s love of retro, it’s not dusty. Chazelle’s staging (check out the 2:52: 1 ultra-widescreen) and wit make the vintage feel new.

Much of this bright, shiny quality is also down to its leads. Following pairings in Crazy Stupid Love and Gangster Squad, Stone and Gosling have chemistry and charisma to spare. It would be easy to diminish Mia as a bright-as-a-button type, but Stone spools through many colours, from luminous to spirited to distraught — her wistful rendition of ballad Audition (The Fools Who Dream) (written for the film) will be murdered by X Factor contestants for years to come.

If Stone is the film’s heart, Gosling is the soul, caught between art and commerce, as moody as the genre will allow (he is also not afraid to look ridiculous, playing A-ha on a keytar). The pair are not the world’s greatest dancers but they are having so much fun doing it, you will too.

It’s perhaps a tad overlong and, embroiled in the indie drama of Seb and Mia’s relationship, almost forgets to be a musical during the final third. But this doesn’t detract from the film’s mighty charms. A film about love made with love, it’s hard to imagine any 2017 movie will leave you on a higher high.

Audacious, retro, funny and heartfelt, La La Land is the latest great musical for people who don’t like musicals – and will slap a mile-wide smile across the most miserable of faces.

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Alongside Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, early 21st-century cinema has given us everything from Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark to Japanese provocateur Takashi Miike’s The Happiness of the Katakuris and Irish muso John Carney’s trilogy of Once, Begin Again, and Sing Street. Meanwhile, Hairspray and High School Musical, and Disney hits such as Frozen and Moana, have continued to introduce young viewers to the age-old magic of musicals.

Enter La La Land, writer-director Damien Chazelle’s triumphant follow-up to Whiplash, which last week swept the board at the Golden Globes. Since debuting at Venice last year, Chazelle’s second musical (after his jazzy Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench in 2009) has been hailed as doing for the genre what The Artist did for silent movies.

Indeed, from its cheeky “presented in CinemaScope” opening, through its Singin’ in the Rain shenanigans and heavily signposted nods to Casablanca, La La Land invites us to welcome the return of something lost, the revival of a golden age. Yet as delightful as it may be, it no more marks the rebirth of the musical than The Adventures of Priscilla did all those years ago. It is simply a splendid continuation of cinema’s ever-evolving love affair with song and dance.

We open with a Jacques Demy-style sequence on a gridlocked freeway, where a multicultural chorus of Angelenos pile out of stationary vehicles and twirl across their roofs and bonnets like west coast cousins of the kids from Fame. Caught in the sunny jam are aspiring actor Mia (Emma Stone) and taciturn jazz freak Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), his honking horn breaking her concentration as she rehearses lines for a forthcoming audition. She works in a coffee shop on a studio lot; he gets fired from his piano-playing gig for going musically off-piste. One enchanted evening, they dance in the artificial moonlight and sing about how “you’re not the type for me… I’d never fall for you”. Next thing, he’s taking her to see Rebel Without a Cause at the Rialto and she’s teaching him about staying true to your dreams. “City of stars, are you shining just for me?” sing the young lovers, until compromise comes calling, offering to fill their pockets, but not their hearts…

Shooting the musical numbers in what look like single takes (the opening shot recalls and rivals that of The Player), Chazelle builds upon the visual acrobatics of Whiplash, with Linus Sandgren’s camera weaving, swerving, swooping and flying around the performers in breathtaking fashion. At times, La La Land resembles the missing link between the nostalgic creakiness of Woody Allen’s throwback musical Everyone Says I Love You and the futuristic fluidity of Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi adventure Gravity (not least during a swooning fantasy sequence in the iconic Griffith Observatory). The colours are a symphony of rich reds, gorgeous greens, beautiful blues and scrumptious yellows, while the LA locations combine the street-smart choices of Jim McBride’s Breathless with the strange nocturnal mysteries of David Lynch.

Significantly, citing Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Senegalese 70s drama Touki Bouki and French director Claire Denis’s Djibouti-set Beau Travail as influences, alongside Hollywood staples such as Summer Stock and The Band Wagon, Chazelle has said that he wanted “to make a movie that would embrace the magic of musicals but root it in the rhythms and texture of real life”. To this end, he is aided by a note-perfect Stone (the scene in which she revisits that traffic jam speech is a Brando-esque performance masterclass) and a likably dour Gosling, drawing on his Disney Channel hoofing roots. Both are excellently served by choreographer Mandy Moore, who pushes them just far enough (they’re no Fred and Ginger), along with composer Justin Hurwitz, and lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

That Chazelle should cling boldly to a bittersweet melody that recalls the melancholy Happy Endings of Scorsese’s New York, New York only amplifies the joys of La La Land. Like the musical itself, the film has timeless charm and a brave sense of adventure. Bravo!

Why is La La Land such a good film?

La La Land may seem romantic and wistful, but from the opening sequence onward it balances reality and romance, the frustrating quality of every-day life and the false allure of Hollywood. When discussing the great musicals of all time, La La Land is a film that makes us dreamers remember that anything is possible.

Why was La La Land ending so sad?

It's fitting that La La Land's ending includes a wistful sequence that sees its main characters think of what could have been, and reinforces why they didn't end up together. Because yes, they could've chosen their romance, but to them, at that time, it would've been the bigger sacrifice.

What did critics say about La La Land?

It's stunningly ambitious and thrillingly alive the way the best movies are. Damien Chazelle's musical, consistently daring and occasionally sublime, does what the movies have all but forgotten how to do — sweep us up into a dream of love that's enhanced in an urgent present by the mythic power of Hollywood's past.

What is the point of La La Land?

I gravitate towards escapism in films, feeling consumed by new ideas, moods, and melody. La La Land is a love letter to passionate people that finally gives an accurate picture of how following your passion actually can be painful but at the same time extraordinarily magical and necessary.