new dreamers
by
Douglas Messerli
Damien
Chazelle (writer and director), Justin Hurwitz (composer), Benj
Pasek and Justin Paul (lyrics) La La
Land / 2016
In
the tradition of the MGM movies of the 1940s and even earlier works starring
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, director Damien Chazelle has created a
wonderfully visual throwback to the American movie musical, incorporating as
well, the
candy-colored
musical (even operatic) fairy-tales of French director Jacques Demy,
particularly (in plot terms) Demy’s The
Umbrellas of Cherbourg and (in musical inspiration) that director’s The Girls of Roquefort. Since I am a
musical addict, I knew I’d love this film the first moment I read about it. I
did.
But La
La Land is something quite original and special because it is also a paean
to Los Angeles’ sites, landscape, and light along with lauding the seemingly
eternal attraction of this great metropolitan area for dreamers of every kind.
The two young dreamers in this case are
Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) and Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) who couldn’t be more
different from another. Mia, from a small town in Nevada, is in awe of theater
and film, and wants to become—what else?—an actress, suffering the ignominies
of auditions where casting directors and producers interrupt with cell-phone
conversations and a brief dismissal; a call-back can be even worse, puffing up
one’s hopes only to have them come crashing down again after a second
brush-off.
The two central actors, like Astaire
and Rodgers in Top Hat begin a
relationship not in attraction but dismissal, Sebastien and Mia on the freeway,
instead of a park, he honking and speeding around her car where she is
desperately attempting to learn lines for an audition, salutes him with a
finger. Indeed, the entire musical scene ("Another Day of Sun") is a
kind of group audition, as suddenly dozens of young people trapped on the
freeway, leave their automobiles to sing and dance. The long, uncut scene is a
kind of wonder, if a bit frenetic and a display of the virtuosity of its own choreographic
achievements. But if recognized as
simply a kind of amazing overture, the utter outrageousness of its achievement
makes perfect sense.
Later, like all musical heroes and
heroines, the couple meets up again at a restaurant where Sebastian has been
hired to play only Christmas songs. After playing the standards, he dares to
take a single jazz break, playing the movie’s theme song (“Mia’s and
Sebastian’s Theme”) which lures in the passing Mia, who is delighted by the
music which gets Sebastian fired, he refusing to even hear of her passing
appreciation.
They meet again at a Hollywood-like party,
where he is now playing as keyboardist for a 1980’s-style pop-up band. This
time Mia gets a bit of revenge when she asks the group to play the insufferable
“I Ran (So Far Away),” after which she makes up a bit by asking him to walk her
to her car, driving away, only to later sing their own version of the
Astaire/Rodgers duo, “Isn’t This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain” and
from Fancy Free, “Let’s Call the
Whole Thing Off,” this version devoted to the beautiful hues of the evening
sky, “A Lovely Night.”
However, she has forgotten that she
made an appointment with her current, perfectly sweet boyfriend, Greg Earnest
(Finn Wittrock), whose brother has just come to town, and cannot find a way out
of that date. Greg and his brother are truly well-groomed and wealthy business
men, talking about the best restaurants throughout the world and trashing the
dirty movie theaters such as the one in which Mia had just agreed to spend the
night with Sebastian; in anger and frustration, she rushes from the dinner in
the expensive restaurant Jar, barely making the movie appointment with
Sebastian.
By this time the audience and the
characters know they are in love, and, at Sebastian’s suggestion Mia begins to write
her own one-woman show while he takes a gig with an old friend, Keith (John
Legend), who needs a pianist/keyboardist to bring in some money. The group is a
great success, and Sebastian is finally able to make enough to actually open
his own club; but when Mia hears the music she cannot even comprehend his “sell
out” to Keith’s pop-music sound. Her own one-woman show is a flop, with only a
few individuals attending, she overhearing some of them discussing the
amateurism of the show.
When Sebastian surprises her, returning for
a single night from his ongoing band tour, she and he fight, Mia being unable
to understand his now seemingly permanent commitment to a kind of music he formerly
disdained and his insensitivity to her own theater failure. These discussions
are some of the very most poignant in the otherwise quite light-weight film,
and the acting abilities of Gosling and Stone become quite apparent.
Mia determines to return to her family
home in Nevada, having been hurt one too many times, and Sebastian presumably
returns to his touring, while trying to assimilate Mia’s criticisms, which
eventually do change him.
A phone call he receives reveals that an
agent, having actually seen and liked Mia’s performance, wants her to audition
for a movie to be shot in Paris; Sebastian, tracking Mia down, drives to Nevada
to tell her the news, but she is less than appreciative, being now convinced
that she has no real talent.
Challenging her—just as she has him, to
live up to her dreams—he returns with her to La La Land the next morning,
reassuring her, somewhat beyond reason, that she will get the part. She does
indeed nail the role, even though there is not yet any script. We never see any
of her movie. But her trip to Paris, we know, will mean the end of their
relationship, just as he had ended the intensity of their relationship with his
touring with the pop-group.
Five years later, she is a Hollywood
star, and returns home to her husband and child—not Sebastian. They are
attending a friend’s performance, but suffering the same kind of traffic jam
we’ve seen during the first scene, she suggests to her husband that he pull off
and go to a local neighborhood restaurant instead. On their way back to the car
they encounter the sound of jazz from a new local club. He, evidently an
aficionado himself, suggests they try it out. Mia immediately perceives its
name “Seb’s,” with a piano note between the b and s, as her design for the club
Sebastian once insisted needed to be called “Chick and Sticks,” representing
the real roots of jazz.
The club is crowded and the first set has
been a popular one with the attendees. When Sebastian enters, now as emcee, returning
to the piano for a short number, he spots Mia in the audience, and quietly and
slowly replays the “Mia and Sebastian Theme.” During that lovely performance,
Chazelle suddenly intrudes with a fantasy, obviously shared by both Mia and
Sebastian, representing what might have been different: what if he had not ignored
her original appreciation of his art, what if he had gone with her to Paris,
what if….? It is a nearly endless fantasy that doesn’t really need to be. Like
Geneviève and Guy in The Umbrellas of
Cherbourg, there is little doubt that their re-encounter is a deeply
painful one, but also filled with understanding and good wishes for each of
their futures.
Yet
one can only admire Chazelle for staying so true to his original vision. After
he and composer Justin Hurwitz had written the work, having found early
would-be producers, they were told they would have to abandon the first
“audition” scene, would have to remake Sebastian into a rock musician, and
definitely would have to abandon their melancholy ending. What might have
resulted if these imaginative believers had truly given up their dreams to
those Hollywood hacks would quite obviously been an empty film which surely
would not have delighted the Sundance audiences and helped the filmmakers and
actors to achieve major award status. Thank heaven the true believes actually
do keep coming every day to Los Angeles—despite how difficult those dreams are
to be realized.
Los Angeles,
December 14, 2016
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