AFTER watching this movie, you can’t help but do a jig or two yourself. Music and dance fill the hall from the opening scene, with the song, Another Day Of Sun, set in the middle of a traffic jam along a highway. The scene is seamless, as if done in a one-take shot with a wide-screen effect giving it great depth.
Choreographer Mandy Moore, of TV series So You Think You Can Dance fame, has given the cast solid groundwork for the dances, right down to the tap style. The opening scene must have taken plenty of logistic work and rehearsals but she pulled it off.
La La Land is more than the sweet hijinks of modern musicals like High School Musical, Hairspray or Step Up!, but a little less than the MGM classics featuring legendary Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ incredible hot-footing style. It’s surely a tribute though to those 1950s cinema gems such as Singin’ In The Rain, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and A Star Is Born.
There are scenes reminiscent of these movies in La La Land, like when the lead male Sebastian (played by Ryan Gosling) dances on a pier with a street lamp at the back, or with leading lady Mia (Emma Stone) on a hill amid a starry city (hence, the song City Of Lights a.k.a. Los Angeles). Gosling and Stone have acted together before, memorably too, in the 2011 Crazy, Stupid, Love. In La La Land, they have a wonderful scene at an observatory, where they are “swept up into the stars” and dance up there. Amazing to see, really, so kudos to Swedish cinematographer Linus Sandgren, the man behind American Hustle and Joy.
Production notes state that Sandgren shot on 35mm film to capture the richness of the colour of the light that digital video cannot give you unless added during post production. It’s so obvious that the musicals of the 1950s have captured the imagination of director Damien Chazelle (of Whiplash fame).
Basically, La La Land follows the story of Sebastian and Mia, two wannabe famous young ones in LA. Theirs is a rocky relationship, interspersed by song and dance, while wracked by ambition; it’s not a happy ending like in the musical movies of old.This is a millennial love story, but one will find it difficult to follow the story towards the end because the emotions of the characters play second fiddle to the jazzy music, with artiste John Legend playing, well, a jazz musician. Hats off to composer Justin Hurwitz, who also composed the score for Whiplash. Gosling’s piano moments are deliciously memorable for the melody.
That said, dance is a beautiful way of telling a love story and forms the second tier in driving La La Land. The movie is enjoyable, if a little melancholic with all that nostalgia.
My advice: Just go with the flow.
La La Land
Directed by Damien Chazelle
Starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Tom Everett Scott, J.K. Simmons
Duration 128 minutes
Rating PG13