Why La La Land is the best film of the year
FILM REVIEW: Ryan Gosling’s new film La La Land is the best movie this year according to our film critic Leigh Paatsch, who rarely gives five stars.
Leigh Paatsch
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LA LA LAND (M)
Director: Damian Chazelle (Whiplash)
Starring: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, J.K. Simmons.
Rating: 5 / 5
It’s all about the songs in their hearts ... and the spring in your step
“WE’VE stumbled on a view, that’s tailor-made for two,” croons Ryan Gosling during one of the many beguiling song-and-dance sequences located all over La La Land.
Though you will be hanging on every heartfelt lyric lovingly, winsomely warbled by Gosling and his leading lady Emma Stone, the guy has got it all wrong in this one particular song.
The glorious vistas we continually stumble upon as we are waltzed across La La Land are tailor-made for everybody.
This unabashed mash note to the mind-melting majesty of the best movie musicals of yesteryear — particular those from MGM’s golden run in the 1950s — is nothing less than the best movie of this year.
(Sorry about yanking that title back from you, Hell Or High Water. You were great, but this is something else again.)
The film gets its hooks immediately into you with an audaciously dazzling opening number set on a packed Los Angeles freeway overpass.
Traffic has ground to a complete standstill. But everywhere you look, there is colour (the hue of every vehicle has been carefully coded) and movement (doors, boots, bonnets and windows just keep on opening as one passenger takes up the song where the previous crooner left off).
It is a stunning scene that justifies the price of admission in its own right, vaporising any whiffy misgivings some viewers may harbour about musicals in general.
People are gonna burst into song and dance throughout La La Land, but there will be no need to get over it. You will be far too busy getting into it.
However, as bang on target as that first guided missile of irresistible escapism proves to be, La La Land is far from showing all of the cards in its winning hand.
Let’s leave all further detail of individual sequences to one side, so that the irresistible impact of their sudden comings and goings remains intact.
Instead, let’s focus on the irrefutable X-factor that keeps propelling La La Land to higher, better places: the flawless lead casting of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
Though they have appeared on screen together twice before, they effortlessly summon something here that is more than just mere screen chemistry. In this rare and refined case, theirs is a clear and complete connection. Not just between each other, but to the audience as well.
While the story will be totally familiar to anyone who vaguely knows the tropes of classic musicals, it is freshened immeasurably by the energy and emotion both leads bring to their roles.
Stone is Mia, a struggling actor cramming in auditions between shifts at a coffee shop on a movie lot. Gosling is Seb, an equally battling jazz pianist on the verge of selling out to stay in the game a little longer.
Both performances are of Academy Awards calibre (Stone’s perhaps slightly more so). Not just for the easygoing wit and direct feeling they find in their characters. But also for the combined grace and heartfelt soul they maintain across a diverse collection of technically complex song-and-dance numbers.
Best of all, La La Land captivates and conquers because it never lets its complete confidence manifest itself as swagger.
There is something far warmer and intimately sincere in play here than the clinically clingy movies of today ever let themselves get near.
La La Land screens Friday through Sunday at selected metropolitan cinemas. Check local listings for further details. There will be widespread advance previews Fri. Dec. 16 to Sun Dec. 18, ahead of full release on Boxing Day Dec. 26
Originally published as Why La La Land is the best film of the year
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