In Hollywood, No Dream is Too Big for an Aspiring Actress and a Musician

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in "La La Land"
Photo Credit: Imdb.com 

The movie musical is one of the most classic of film genres.  There’s something enchanting about seeing actors and actresses sing and dance on screen in the middle of majestic set pieces as the music unfolds.  With films like “Singin’ in the Rain,” “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady,” and countless others, audiences were swept away in the emotion and energy of these stories.

We may not get many of these old-school types of musicals these days, but we have been given an opportunity to go back to the glory of those movies with director Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land,” a vibrant and lush film about following your dreams and handling the sacrifices that come with doing so.  In a film with two great lead performances, a heartfelt story, gorgeous camerawork, and soaring songs, this is one of the best films of 2016, a movie that must be seen in a theater.

Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) is an aspiring actress working to get noticed in Hollywood, while Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) is a struggling jazz pianist who dreams of opening his own club.  After their paths intersect and they begin a relationship, Mia and Sebastian will help and encourage each other to make their dreams into a reality.

Emma Stone, in her most luminous role to date, effortlessly displays the determination and frustration of someone’s who’s trying to find success in entertainment.  It’s an emotional performance that draws you in with its heartbreak and hopefulness, and you are instantly hooked when you begin to see her character’s journey to make it on the big screen.  Aside from Stone’s superb portrayal of a true, hardworking dreamer, the film also gives her the opportunity to show off her wonderful singing voice, especially in her character’s passionate audition scene near the film’s end.  With work in this movie, Stone should consider doing another musical here and there.

In regard to Ryan Gosling, what can be said about his performance that hasn’t already been said about Stone’s?  We’ve never seen him in a musical before, and seeing his suave, smooth-talking, and talented pianist, he shows the wide-eyed optimism and resilience of someone who has the deepest appreciation for jazz and desire to preserve the spirit of that music form.  Similar to Stone, he also proves to have quite a good singing voice.  All of this makes his performance fit in seamlessly with this love-letter to the musicals of the mid-20th century.

The screenplay by Chazelle does well in showing what the process is like to audition and strive to achieve your dreams in Hollywood.  It shows the ache of rejection, yet the possibility of finding success, providing the audience with a sincere look at the difficulties one might face when trying to get noticed in the entertainment business.  But in between the hardships that the characters face, Chazelle places many beautiful and lighthearted moments, such as the film’s opening scene (more on that later), Mia and Sebastian’s dance amongst the stars in a planetarium, a dusk-lit walk shared by the two, and Mia’s audition near the film’s end.  All of these scenes immerse us in the experience of being in Hollywood and the magic that happens there.

When it comes to the film’s songs, which were composed by Justin Hurwitz, I urge you not to listen to them until you see the movie, as that will make the experience that much more special as you hear the numbers from the first time.  I’m sure you’ve heard snippets of them in the trailers, but do what you can to avoid listening to them in their entirety before seeing the movie.  All of the songs, such as “Another Day of Sun,” “Someone in the Crowd,” and “Audition (The Fools Who Dream),” are treats for the ears that help make this film one of the most euphoric moviegoing experiences of 2016.

Chazelle is a filmmaker who sheds a lot of focus on music in his movies, having written and directed “Whiplash” and “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench,” the latter of which was his directorial debut, and writing the thriller, “Grand Piano.”  With “La La Land,” he takes a confident, big-scale leap that pays off, showing that he has an intense love for blending the art forms of music and filmmaking.

This is only Chazelle’s third film as a director, but it’s remarkable to see to how much of a handle he has on the musical numbers, especially in the song-and-dance sequence in the opening scene.  With the talent of many performers and Linus Sandgren’s cinematography, Chazelle is able to film this scene all in a six-minute take.  In doing so, he makes the sequence much more exciting and gives us the feeling of watching the continuous motion of a Broadway musical, and the use of long takes is something we see in many of the song-and-dance sequences.

“La La Land” is an affectionate tribute to the old-school musicals that used to be gifted to movie screens, making this film a cinematic dream come true.

Final grade: A