La La Land (2016) - Film Review

Those film fans you go to for recommendations will probably tell you that La La Land is a film born of love for the classic musicals of MGM. Songs, dance routines, complex camera work. Everything released trailer and poster wise is playing on this line. Throw into the mix Damien Chazelle, the insane talent behind Whiplash (one of my favourite movies of the last decade) and you’ll probably be walking into the screen  like me – with expectations set high and the hope that the next two hours of your life will be a mesmerising experience that will long sit with you.

But forget what you’re being sold. Yes, there are moments in this two hours that are solely about trying to recreate some Fred and Ginger magic but this is more of an ode to Jacques Demy than Hollywood with it’s repeating musical refrain (seek the trailer “city of stars” as you’ll hear that melody relentlessly for two hours) and bright vivid colours. And it'll stay with you, most probably because you’ll find yourself toying with the decision as to whether you actually enjoyed it.

From the opening where a musical song and dance emerges from a typical Los Angeles traffic jam, you know that this is a movie that’s going to take some time to settle into and for me that’s where the problem starts. I never settled. I never felt comfortable in this world. Certainly there is technical brilliance on display – he aforementioned opening is a single steady-cam shot that moves around the cars, over the barriers and finally up into the air. It’s wild camera choreography before you even get to the work of the actors on screen. As it moves along there’s some equally fantastic work here, but none of it has consistency with what came before or follows. The visual language is a mess. And it’s most striking to me as that’s the complete opposite of Whiplash which easily defined its style to maximise the tension, telling the story of the brutality Andrew puts himself through in the drive for perfection and in doing so Chazelle turns the act of drumming into a majestic and exciting visual dance.

As a viewer that’s my biggest problem with La La Land. It all goes back to Whiplash, a film which like it’s central characters sought perfection and achieved it through refinement and sublime editing, in that you only saw something for as long as you needed for it to be understood. With this new story everything feels over indulged and way too slow. To quote Fletcher, “Not quite my tempo.”

But there are moments to like. The big audition scene lets Emma Stone shine with a glorious one shot, is one such highlight. It’s simple, delicate, heartbreaking. Her chemistry with Gosling too is undeniable. The ending is remarkably smart, touching and so incredibly well pieced together that you wonder why everything else hadn’t been quite as tight or affecting.

I want to be wrong about how I feel on La La Land, to the point where its taken me several hours to write down my feelings on the film. Everyone else I know of that’s seen it has heralded it’s existence. I'll see it again, just to confirm my views. However on my first screening, it was a crushing disappointment.