To Live and Die in ‘La La Land’
The Scoop features personal essays on movie-centric topics.
By Kevin Prchal
In the weeks leading up to the release of Damien Chazelle’s second feature film La La Land, critical praise piled on like a Los Angeles traffic jam.
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it “the movie of the year.” Christopher Orr of The Atlantic wrote “La La Land is suffused with a love of moviemaking so profound it tingles.” And Ian Freer for Empire wrote, “It’s hard to imagine any 2017 movie will leave you on a higher high.”
I was sold. Not just by the reviews, but by its spellbinding teaser trailer. Vintage, vibrant, whimsical, moody—every element came at me like a group hug.
As the praise rolled in, word of mouth spread and before you knew it, this big, bold and beautiful musical darling had earned a whopping $448 million on a $30 million budget.
It rode that high all the way to the Oscars stage, where it was nominated in 14 categories and won in six. Given its accolades up to that point, anyone watching the telecast could have safely placed their money on it for the big prize.
But then, well...Envelopegate.
Even now, it’s hard to watch. Not because I believe La La Land was the rightful winner of Best Picture over Moonlight—both films made their mark on the year in film. And not because I’d rather shrivel up and die than watch someone’s embarrassment and crushed dreams play out on live television (I would). But because it was that very moment when La La Land’s star began to fade.
And all you need is 10 minutes with the trending topics on Twitter to know that the only thing the Internet loves more than a rising star is a fading one.
Call it groupthink, cancel culture, a vibe shift, the end of the world as we know it—whatever it is, it’s crushing to witness great, sincere works of art get eaten alive by our culture of cool. Ever since that moment, it has struggled to be fairly appraised on its own merits. Instead, it’s become a punchline; food for the trolls; the anti-Moonlight. And that’s a tough spot to be.
But if you’re a hopeless romantic like Seb and me, then iron your suit and whistle along as we take a stroll through the sights, sounds and bittersweet feels of this modern American masterpiece.
Music and Machine
As you might have guessed, La La Land met and wildly exceeded my expectations. It was one of those transcendent moviegoing experiences that leaves your heart pounding and your brain scrambled. But of the many after-effects that come with an experience like that, it was the music that was ringing in my head for the weeks and months that followed.
Naturally, right? It was a musical after all. But there’s a superpower the film’s composer Justin Hurwitz possesses that not many working composers in film have today: a keen sense of melody.
I listen to a lot of film scores and most of them aren’t exactly working hard to get stuck in your head. But through his work on this film, Whiplash, First Man and most recently Babylon, Hurwitz has proven that his pop sensibilities are just as powerful as his jazz and classical sensibilities, and that’s a rare and dignified gift.
It also doesn’t hurt that this score was recorded with a 90-piece orchestra at Sony Studios—the same stage where its spiritual ancestors Singin’ in the Rain and The Wizard of Oz were recorded.
Of course, the music in this film cannot be discussed without acknowledging its lyricists Justin Paul and Benj Pasek. Remarkably, so as to accommodate the melodies and arrangements written by Hurwitz, the lyrics for the songs in La La Land were written after the music had already been composed. That’s like trying to fill a balloon with water after it’s been blown up.
Regardless of the process, the result is astonishing. Lyrics like “Is this the start of something wonderful and new, or one more dream that I cannot make true?” tell us everything we need to know about the characters and the film’s central dilemma. And every single line in Emma Stone’s show-stopping number “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” breaks my heart clean in half. Particularly this one: “She lived in her liquor, and died with a flicker, I’ll always remember the flame.”
And finally, the music of La La Land is not complete without the perfectly imperfect vocal performances by Gosling and Stone. Are they great singers? Not in the traditional Hollywood musical sense, no. But here’s a hot take for you: Great singers are overrated.
The world has enough great singers to compete on a million So You Think Can Whatevers. As long as they can carry a tune, it’s the passion, personality and delivery of a singer that ultimately cuts through and grabs the attention of that someone in the crowd—and Gosling and Stone have it. Not to mention that there are no obvious traces of Auto-Tune or slick Top 40 edits, which is itself worthy of a Nobel Prize in today’s movie music landscape.
Here’s to the One Who Dreamed
Damien Chazelle was 29 years old when he made his directorial debut Whiplash. It earned $48 million on a $3 million budget, revived and elevated the careers of J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller, and won three out of the five Academy Awards it was nominated for.
Achieving this level of success is rare for most directors, let alone first-time ones. But get this: He only made Whiplash to prove to studios that he could make La La Land. It was essentially an award-winning internship that la-la landed him his dream job. If that’s not a sure sign of a prodigy, I don’t know what is.
Making a musical had long been the dream project of Chazelle and Hurwitz. The two went to college and played in a band together and bonded over their love of classic musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, Top Hat and Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort. And once the duo proved their powers with Whiplash, they had big ideas (and dollars) to make La La Land exactly the way they envisioned it.
“I wanted to explore how you balance life and art,” Chazelle explained in an interview on the film’s Blu-ray release. “How you balance dreams and reality.”
The challenge, he explained, was this: “How do you take the traditional Hollywood style musical—which is the most artificial genre that exists—and marry it to real life?”
Building a City of Stars
We get our first answer to this question in the film’s opening scene when the words “PRESENTED IN CINEMASCOPE” proudly splash across the screen. A widescreen lens used predominantly in mid-century filmmaking, this creative choice was key in honoring the past while still telling a tale of its time.
Another critical piece to this puzzle was the hiring of production design power couple David and Sandy Wasco. With a stacked resume that includes Pulp Fiction, The Royal Tenenbaums and Collateral, the Wascos helped bring every little shimmering detail of Chazelle’s grounded dreamscape to life.
From the perfectly placed flickering lamp posts, to the lush and surreal Griffith Observatory makeover, to the story’s illumination and desaturation of color as it weaves through fantasy and reality—they were instrumental in rising to Chazelle’s challenge.
And of course, no great musical is complete without top-shelf choreography. If you feel nothing after watching the film’s opening freeway scene (coordinated by Mandy Moore—no, not that Mandy Moore), ask yourself these questions: Do you like joy? When was the last time you coordinated 150 people to do anything, let alone dance in perfect synchronization in 110 degree heat? Did your favorite 21st-century movie go to the lengths of shutting down a highway to film its action sequence, or was it made with computers?
Consider the challenge of making a traditional Hollywood musical married to real life conquered, Chazelle.
But none of these elements work without the single most emotional and resonant element of them all: the script.
A Bit of Madness Is Key
A creative life cannot be rationalized. There are no degree pathways that lead to your name on the Madison Square Garden marquee. That new poem, play or song won’t keep the landlord from knocking. And 401k might be the number of views your TikTok received, but you’re not any closer to retirement.
And yet.
To live a creative life—to pursue a creative dream—requires a bit of madness. Real-world things like meal planning, paying bills and maintaining relationships are often an afterthought. It’s a near constant tug-of-war between the space you need to create and the space you need to live, and no movie understands this (and celebrates it) quite like La La Land.
“Sometimes there’s a value to letting people live in a dreamland,” Chazelle said. “If we didn’t let people drift off to, whether it’s daydreaming or being unreasonable, we’d have no art. We’d have nothing in this world that wasn’t purely functional.”
In an early scene between Sebastian and his sister Laura (played by Rosemarie DeWitt), she lovingly rails into him about his life choices and he replies, “You’re acting like life’s got me on the ropes. I want to be on the ropes!” While this is just a brief moment that plays for laughs, it’s deeply profound in understanding the psyche of someone like him.
Even in a traffic jam, the most soul-crushing dose of reality one could imagine, our daydreamers are spinning, backflipping, drumming, skateboarding and parkouring their way through it because they, like everyone else in the City of Angels, believe, hope, know their day is going to come. Call them delusional, but it’s an essential state of mind for anyone looking to shine in a city of stars.
But it’s not all sunshine and dancing. Throughout the film, we watch through our fingers as our two leads botch auditions, take on lousy gigs and give up altogether and move back home. I guess that’s just one of the hazards of living with your head in the clouds: You gotta learn to live with the rain.
The peaks and valleys of chasing a dream is one thing, but when you’re lost in your own personal la la land—how does love play into it?
Something Wonderful and New
In the film’s final heart-wrenching montage, we’re given two versions of how love plays into it: The one where Seb and Mia live happily ever after, and the one where they achieve their dreams.
In the version where they achieve their dreams, Mia is an accomplished actress with her face plastered on buildings and who leaves baristas awestruck by her presence. She is happily married with a daughter.
Sebastian finally saved enough to open the doors to his jazz club Seb’s, where people pack the room and he gets to admire and perform the music he loves. He lives quietly and happily in a small apartment.
One night, Mia and her husband stumble into Seb’s and take a seat. It takes a moment for her to realize where she is. Seb steps onto the stage, sees Mia, plays a song from their past, and they look at each other with an expression of gratitude and admiration. End scene.
In the version where they live happily ever after, their love story takes center stage. Seb brushes off the chance to join a touring band, Mia performs her one-woman show to a rapturous crowd, and they are swept away to Paris where she films a movie and he gets to sit in on the piano at the famed Caveau de la Huchette. Their Paris is one of impressionistic riverwalks, lovers frozen in time, and dreamy waltzes in the stars.
And when they come down from the stars, they nestle in and watch on a projected screen as their love story unfolds: Painting the walls of their new house, welcoming a baby, watching that baby grow, sunny afternoons in the garden. It’s nothing short of a dream.
Then one evening, they leave the baby with a sitter and head out on the town where they stumble into a jazz club. Only in this version, it’s not Seb’s. They take a seat and he leans in, perfectly content with what his life has become, and kisses Mia.
I cry every time I see this. Weep, even. Without getting too personal, there was a life I saw for myself before I met my wife, and a life I saw for myself after I met her. And every single day since, I’ve thanked my lucky stars to be in the version that includes her, our kids and our little life together in dreamland.
Pishy Caca!
While this film didn’t exactly get its Hollywood ending, it’s never too late to change the way we think about it. But to change the way we think about it, we have to change the way we talk about it.
So if you love this film like Christopher Nolan does, say you love it without an air of apology. Reclaim it as one of the great films of the 21st century. Plan that Moonlight/La La Land double feature instead of drawing a line. And join me in saying “Pishy Caca!” to the haters of this or any other film you love that makes you feel alive.
And to all the dreamers destined to live and die in la la land: this film is your greatest defender. Keep dreaming. Because as long as we need an escape, or a new way of understanding ourselves or the world, we know we’ll always have you to give us new colors to see—and that’s very, very exciting.
Kevin Prchal is the founder and editorial director of Cinema Sugar.