I somehow managed to avoid this for the last several years, despite having a definite soft spot for musicals of all stripes, but I did get around to watching it last night. (Thanks, DarkImbecile!) Like others here, I enjoyed it for the most part, but I had problems with it that I think could be fixed (if not easily, then with a little work). And they all boil down to one idea that kept returning to me: this film doesn't know why it is a musical, or how to be one.
Now, before I get accused of hewing too closely to Altman or Feuer's ideas about what a film musical can and should do, or how they operate best, I want to be clear that I'm not a dogged traditionalist: my favorite musical of all time is
Haut, Bas, Fragile, and I don't think anyone could lump that and
Singin' in the Rain in the same category. But the former is playing with the idea of musicals *as musicals*, whereas
La La Land feels like it's playing with the idea of musicals *as iconography.* We have, as Gosling's character says, a film that "worships everything" about musicals but "value[s] nothing." The surface is spectacular, but the mechanics less so.
And nowhere is this more evident than in the central relationship between Stone and Gosling. I agree with mfunk that there are some genuinely bizarre character beats, particularly in the third act; and I think they feel so out-of-place because of the first act's failure to invest us in these characters. (The middle section works because it's all just razzle-dazzle. Which is fine! Great, even! But the foundation cracks as the film moves to its end.)
I'll use Stone's final big audition number as a way in to some of my problems: it tells us a lot about her character - how she looks at the world, why she does what she does, what she wants out of life...and this information is relayed to the audience when it's way too late for it to make sense. A lot of this should have been revealed early on: tell us the story about the aunt in a much quieter version of the number, and then return to it in a new light at the end. Recapitulate the ideas you've set up rather than throwing a bunch of things at us because they look or feel cool. What was the point of "Someone in the Crowd", and why couldn't a set up for this climactic moment have been in its place instead? (And don't even get me started on the vocal production of that number, which is impossible to distinguish from contemporary Broadway's slick, soulless mush. A film musical *can* have an intimate, lived-in vocal sound, so why do these women sound like they're on stage when they're in an apartment?)
I don't think this is the only way to write a musical, by any means. You don't necessarily have to give your characters an "I want" number for them to feel real or imbue them with depth. But in a musical setting, especially one this traditional, if you're not going to do that you should probably figure out how to work it in some other way.
La La Land doesn't. It lurches between character beats without actually letting us get to know the characters as people.
This problem extends to every other character in the film, only to a greater degree. There's a moment towards the end when Gosling's character looks at a Christmas card he has received from a happy couple, who I recognized from a previous montage in which they showed off their engagement ring, but beyond that...who were they? One of Stone's former roommates? Gosling's bandmate? You could argue that I wasn't paying enough attention, except for the fact that I was actively taking notes the whole duration because I knew I'd be writing about the film here.
movielocke wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2017 3:10 am
I particularly liked that Chazelle clearly understands the role dancing plays in many great musicals, and that he frames and stages and edits the dances to allow us to really see the dances develop. I also appreciated that there's only just enough musical numbers, rather than wall to wall singing of an opera like les mis or last five years, and that sometimes a number is just dancing, no song required, so to speak.
One of Altman's key ideas (for those who haven't read his book, let me be the umpteenth to suggest it!) is that musical numbers are a sublimation of emotions that it would be impossible to express otherwise. (Whether for societal reasons or internal ones.) And it's in these dance numbers that the musical aspects really soar - where Chazelle develops the relationship between the two main characters in a way that only musicals can really do. ("A Lovely Night" reminded me simultaneously of "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and "Isn't This A Lovely Day?") But what, conversely, does "City of Stars" do for the characters? A recurring number should, ideally, be used to show changes in a situation, but here it's not, outside of being a solo and then a duet. What does the opening number really do, outside of look fancy?
Brian C wrote: ↑Thu Feb 16, 2017 5:11 pm
I wonder, am I alone in not seeing John Legend's character as a sellout? By all indications, he's making music he believes in, and while it's implied that he has a history as a jazz musician, there's no reason to think that his dreams are or ever were as single-mindedly devoted to jazz traditionalism as Sebastian's. And I think his chiding of Sebastian - that he can't be a visionary while also being such a dogged purist, or words to that extent - rings true.
I've seen the criticism that Legend's character is a manifestation of black stereotype so often now that I can't help but see it as conventional wisdom. But I think it's unfair, because frankly, I think Legend's character is more nuanced than he's given credit for, and besides, why would we automatically presume that the only proper example to follow is Sebastian's in the first place?
And yes, I agree with Brian here - Legend is in many ways the most interesting character in the film, and it's to the screenplay's discredit that it barely sketches him as a Mephistopheles figure. I don't think the film is "racist" or "too white" or whatever criticisms in that general area have been levied at it (if anything, it's very multicultural on the surface), but I could see how every character outside of the central two being so thin would make someone feel that the one person representing blackness or black culture is given short shrift. And I do think it's actively critical of Gosling's narrow-mindedness, but in a way that feels very messy and unresolved.
You may read this and think I hated
La La Land, but I really didn't. I gave it four stars on Letterboxd, even. When it works, it works very well. Some of those dance numbers (especially the montage leading to Stone and Gosling's first kiss) are genuinely beautiful. But I wanted it to work more, and I don't know that it will stick with me in the way the best of the genre does. Is that a problem of expectations? Probably. But logging on here and reading that others had similar issues makes me think I wasn't too far off in those expectations.