La La Land is for anyone who loves love and dreams

THERE is no reason for you to not see La La Land the minute it opens on Boxing Day. It’s the perfect movie to close out 2016.

REVIEW

TO DESCRIBE La La Land as one of the most anticipated movies in the back half of 2016 is the epitome of understatement.

An ode to old Hollywood glamour and the musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, the Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone film has already cleaned up the Critic’s Choice Awards and will surely add many more shiny statues to its mantle before the season is done.

It visually and tonally references the likes of Singin’ in the Rain, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, anytime Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire stepped in front of a camera, and silver screen stars such as James Dean and Ingrid Bergman.

Mia (Stone) is a barista with dreams of making it as an actor but has suffered through endless humiliating auditions and gotten nowhere beyond her menial job at a cafe in the Warner Bros. backlot. One night she’s walking down the street when she hears the strains of an incredible jazz piano number coming from a nearby club.

Sebastian (Gosling), the pianist, is a jazz purist bristling at the increasing bastardisation of what he considers the highest musical form. Mia and Sebastian’s first encounter is prickly but the two soon meet again and it’s not long before the inevitable happens — they fall in love.

Admit it, you’ve always wanted to see Ryan Gosling tap dance.

While La La Land is the closest any movie has come in recent years to recreating the look and feel of classic Hollywood celluloid, it is still a pastiche, which ultimately works in its favour. Where many of those Golden Age romances would’ve ended on The Kiss, that only marks the midpoint for La La Land.

In many ways, the second half of the film, where it moves away from some of the more old-school, conventional narrative paths, is more interesting from a character and story perspective. In particular, the last 10 minutes of La La Land is what elevates this film to almost masterpiece level.

Stone and Gosling were clearly paired up for not just their star power but for the chemistry they have previously established in Crazy, Stupid, Love and Gangster Squad.

They may have equal billing and Gosling is reliably great but La La Land is really Stone’s movie. Her character is more developed than his and she’s graced with more emotional gut-punch moments, notably her audition song in which her expressive eyes mesmerise.

For people who love love.

On a technical level, La La Land hits all the right notes, especially its cinematography and the exquisite use of colour and light. The vibrancy of the costumes and the clever manipulation of lighting to spotlight emotionally significant moments are master strokes. The whole movie is undeniably beautiful to look at.

Director and writer Damien Chazelle spent years trying to get La La Land off the ground and he was only entrusted to make it after the financial and critical success of Whiplash. His love of musicals was evident early on with his directorial debut, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, a grittier feature-length jazz musical.

While the musical score by Chazelle’s Harvard classmate Justin Hurwitz is a crowning achievement, La La Land could’ve benefited from a few more strong songs — outside of the infectious opening number “Another Day of Sun” and Stone’s “Fools Who Dream” towards the end, many of the ditties lacked the kind of high octane energy the best musicals boast.

The perfect movie for people who love movies, for people who love love, for people who love dreams and for anyone who needs a bit of cheering up after a bruising year, La La Land is the cinematic equivalent of a really fun morphine trip.

Rating: 4.5/5

La La Land is in cinemas from Boxing Day.

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La La Land will resonate with anyone who’s ever had a dream of doing something bigger.