Directed by: Damien Chazelle
Starring: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling
Rated PG-13, 128 minutes
You don’t have to spend much time in Los Angeles to comprehend the city’s vast sprawl. That’s why so many movies are set there—not just because Hollywood loves daydreaming about itself (although it does), but because there are so many distinct aspects of the city to explore. The seediness of “Chinatown” and the dark delusion of “Sunset Boulevard” are just as accurate depictions of the city as are the romance of “The Artist” and the quirkiness of “The Big Lebowski.” With “La La Land,” Hollywood has cooked up another unique song-of-itself, one that feels both timelessly elemental and reflective of the current cinematic moment.
The plot is little more than your standard romantic comedy: Girl meets boy, they fall in love, they fall out of love, they make up. Here, the girl, Mia (Emma Stone, “Birdman”), is an aspiring actress working barista shifts when she’s not hustling from one humiliating audition to another. The boy, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling, “Drive”), is a jazz pianist who fears the genre is dying and hopes to one day open up a jazz club to preserve it. They are drawn to one another by a shared sense of misanthropy, which blooms into an us-against-the-world camaraderie. But as time goes on and they pursue their individual artistic projects—he joins a touring band, she puts on a one-woman show—their relationship becomes strained, and they have to figure out if their affair can coexist with their work.
The movie immediately impresses with its musical numbers, largely filmed in single takes with extensive choreography and intricate set pieces. The film opens, for instance, with a single-take number performed on a freeway, drivers dancing atop their cars while the camera weaves from lane to lane. The ambition of the sequences, however, is tempered by the occasional sloppiness of the execution. For a highly stylized musical with a variety of interlocking parts, it’s neither as precise as you’d expect nor rough enough around the edges for its imperfections to feel intentional. That said, these sequences are evocative and memorable, and they include some of the most imaginative scenes put to film in recent memory, like the already iconic floating dance in a planetarium.
It is to writer-director Damien Chazelle’s (“Whiplash”) great credit that these musical numbers, as remarkable as they are, often pale in comparison to the central story of Mia and Sebastian’s relationship, maybe the most compellingly written onscreen romance since “Annie Hall.” Every facet of their relationship, from the flirtatious insults they trade at the start to the more pointed criticisms and plain-spoken pleas they make toward the end, draws us closer to them, both as a couple and as individual characters.
None of which would be possible, of course, without good leads. Sebastian is obnoxious and narrow-minded, but Gosling makes him a well-intentioned, likable fool. His obvious passion for music and the simple reminders of his humanity—like the way he startles easily—make us root for his success.
But the film truly belongs to Emma Stone, who imbues Mia with humor, sadness, ambition, exhaustion, and, above all, honesty. Mia doesn’t suffer great ordeals or celebrate great triumphs; she doesn’t break down or burst into tears. In a few scenes, she repeats herself, but not to build up to a climactic outburst; she’s repeating herself to better understand her own thoughts. The movie becomes, more than anything else, Mia’s journey to understand her place in the world (or maybe just in Los Angeles). It is immensely rewarding in that regard, and Stone is exceedingly likable for the humility with which she takes us along.
This is a movie that excites not by use of plot points, but by the interactions between its two main characters; a movie that relies less on props and more on color schemes and musical themes; a movie with a trendily ironic and self-deprecating sense of humor, but that nevertheless has a sincere heart. And despite taking inspiration from a city that is so easily mocked for its many stereotypes, “La La Land” is surprisingly complex and effortlessly charming. And in portraying the lives of those who dream of greatness with such richness and flair, it undeniably achieves greatness itself.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 1/13/17.