Dir. Damien Chazelle
What does it mean to be a musical in 2016? The musical has never truly gone away, but in comparison to the bevy released in the 50's and 60's, today's output is significantly less. You can usually count on one hand any relatively big-budget musicals from an entire year, and on an even smaller, finger-deprived hand the amount of actually good ones. 2016 had the excellent Sing Street, and as far as live-action goes...that's about it. On the animated front we have Moana, but that only continues the Disney tradition; Sing, which owes more to X-Factor than Singin' in the Rain; and, I don't know, Trolls, maybe? La La Land quite rightly stands out, not only as being live action, but a deliberate throw-back to the Hollywood musicals of old. It sticks the landing, to be understated (Can any other film say "14 Oscar nominations" this year?).
So if it calls back to Singin in the Rain, West Side Story, or Guys and Dolls, what does it have to make it unique? For the first 30/40 minutes of viewing the film (and I've only seen it the once so far), I was enjoying everything about it - the choreography, the impressive long-take (real or not) of the opening, Another Day of Sun, the playfulness of the homages to past musicals, and of course, the performances of Gosling and Stone, nowhere more delightful than in the poster-shot sequence of A Lovely Night. But, as refreshing as it was to see this done with such style in 2016, all I could think was: "So what?". Yes, I know, I am an arrogant little shit who couldn't make half a film as good as this - nay, a tenth. But, again, if you're going to do a modern-musical, one with bravura musical numbers and old-fashioned choreography, you need to do something new to set yourself apart. Bring something new to the table, use the techniques of the modern-day industry to not only match, but top, the classics.
It wasn't until the Planetarium sequence that I finally gave in and accepted that yes, La La Land, you deserve those nominations. [Spoiler territory here up until the middle of the film, if you've yet to see and still want to catch La La Land.] Honestly, it isn't anything remarkably out-there, and perhaps I'm being too unfair to the more understated way modern tech and filming techniques were used elsewhere in the film, but the sequence is so bold in adopting the fantasy made possible by CGI that I was swept away.
Background: Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) have met, ignored each other, met again, and slowly become enamored with each other at this point in the film. We've had the centerpiece A Lovely Night sequence and they are on their way to love. The two go for a date, one which Mia has to firmly chose over a dull, socialite night with her current boyfriend. Seb's asked her to a screening of the James Dean classic Rebel Without A Cause, a film close to his heart, and one she's never seen. She arrives late, sits next to him in the dark, disallowing the ability for small-talk greetings, and as the film weaves its magic spell, they take each others hand, and lean in, ever so slowly, for their first kiss.
Movie tropes tell us they will, and Chazelle shoots the scene beautifully so that it feels like an earned commitment to past tropes. But, as they lean in to seal the deal, the film stock catches alight, and the film abruptly ends (you don't get that with digital!), ruining the moment. The film cuts out during the sequence in Rebel where James Dean's character, Jim visits the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, on a school-trip. If you've never seen Rebel Without a Cause then, simply put, it's about the rebellious Jim and his relationship with Judy (Natalie Wood), as well as his close friend Plato (Sal Mineo). In that scene, they visit the observatory, go to the planetarium and see the star-show, before leaving to find that Jim's tires have been slashed. A fight breaks out, and Jim is challenged to a street-race, which sets in place the rest of the film.
None of that is particularly relevant, and just as I wrote about in my When Harry Met Sally post with Casablanca, I feel what Chazelle wanted here was a tie to the past of Hollywood on film, as with age the classics of romance themselves take on this romantic quality to the new-Hollywood couples like Mia and Seb. Funnily enough it also happens in Lost in Translation, with La Dolce Vita, which I forgot to mention in my last post, although admittedly that's not Hollywood. Anyway, in a spark of romantic idea (I can't remember who asks the other to go there) the two get in the car, and drive to the Griffith Observatory. The shot itself parallels the establishing shot of the observatory in Rebel Without A Cause, likely so we as the audience not only understand that it's the same location, but also so that the lineage of Hollywood is directly echoed.
Without words, sung or not, the two see the sights of the building, before reaching that most romantic of locations - the planetarium. They sit down, in the dark, just as they did in the cinema earlier, and we feel that yep, that's deserved, it's an even greater place for that first kiss. But here we take that leap (literally) into the modern day. As they go to kiss, Seb instead lifts Mia up into the air, and she floats up, into the star-field. It's clearly done via wire, so again it purposefully doesn't escape the old traditions to start. But we cut, and suddenly they are both among the stars (see the first screenshot above).
Here the music takes both us and them away, an instrumental version of their established theme, here let loose as they waltz among the stars themselves. It's a literalization of that love that makes you feel up in the stars, something that could only be done to this beautiful extent with today's CGI. People complain frequently about the soullessness of CGI, but if you ever want to refute that, look no further than this sequence. It uses CGI to bend reality, and give Mia and Seb the opportunity to dance together, and of course, kiss for the very first time in an environment that goes beyond LA, and yet is wholly a part of it.
By being so closely tied to Rebel Without A Cause, this sequence will be naturally paired with it in future. Some new Hollywood film will likely use the location again in some fresh, fantastic way, and that film will join La La Land in the mythologization of the Griffith Observatory as a building steeped in Hollywood lore. Here, that lore extends from Rebel Without A Cause, to pure romance, and with due tribute paid to the past, it reclaims the location to form something new - both as a scene, and via the techniques used to bring the scene to the screen. There is no better encapsulation of what makes La La Land great than this in my mind - it's here that it plant a flag and says: "Here, this is what a modern Hollywood musical can be", and indeed, what Hollywood films themselves can be - great, LA bound, and more than anything, alive.
