A love story for the memories
Publish : 25 Dec 2016, 18:56
La La Land is the best movie released in Dhaka this year. This is filmmaker Damien Chazelle’s latest film after making a brilliant debut with Whiplash (2014). He also co-wrote this year’s best thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane, directed by another newcomer Dan Trachtenberg. At 31, Chazelle is among Hollywood’s brightest new talents and La La Land, aka Hollywoodland, Los Angeles, is a movie about the movies, which in a way represents our collective memories. There is nothing more tragic than to be forgotten forever by those whom we can never forget. Life without good memories is just unbearable. La La Land is ultimately the story of rejection couched in a sappy Hollywood musical with bright primary colours: blue (the damsel in distress) and red (the rebellious dude), and a million shades of yellow (the forces of nature). It is the story of two star-crossed lovers – Mia and Sebastian. The story is a cliché of clichés: they meet, they fight and they fall in love. Mia is a part-time waitress at a restaurant on the lot of a Hollywood Studio, and an aspiring actress (full-time) going from one failed audition to another. Sebastian is out of work. He is passionate and difficult. He wants to be a classical jazz musician and does not care about what anybody says. Both Mia and Sebastian need each other at that particular point in their lives to complement each other and help each other. Sebastian loves jazz and Mia hates jazz. Sebastian explains that jazz is about conflict and compromise, the sax player may try to hijack the music, but the mighty trumpet has its own ideas. How will the mighty trumpet of life test their love as they chase their arts?We all loved Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) and that makes them perfect for this film about Hollywood nostalgia. Like true stars, they play themselves, and as actor-singer-dancer, they pose a ‘triple threat’ - just like Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers in their musicals.Interestingly, Mia does not work at the MGM Studios lot, which is associated with Technicolor musicals, such as Singing in the Rain (1952); she works at the Warner Bros. Studios lot, which is associated with more realistic films, such as Casablanca (1943). This is the fundamental artistic choice made by the filmmaker. La La Land is a serious docu-drama in the guise of a lush melodrama. The words of the songs are not nonsensical like the musicals of the 40’s and 50’s. The words have deeper meaning in the story structure and should be taken literally.The camera informs the audience about distinguishing reality from make-belief. The camera makes exaggerated motions - 360-degree rotation, quick pan and fast track - to transport us into the land of dreams, but once we are there, it calms down like a migratory bird on the bank of a distant shore. However, there is no fancy editing, no quick cutting. There is a few montage sequences to evoke the classic musicals. The film is segmented by the seasons, starting from winter and then da capo. But that is no gimmick; it is a stylistic choice.The production design is merged intelligently with the storytelling. Throughout the film, blue is associated with Mia’s hopelessness and red with Sebastian’s passion. As they fall in love, the dominant colour in one scene becomes the secondary colour in another scene. As Sebastian plays his tune on the piano (“Mia and Sebastian’s Theme”) we see a blue lens flare announcing Mia’s presence. Mia changes her bag from beige to red after meeting Sebastian. Sebastian signs a contract of doom on a red table, which becomes a red-signal for his dreams. The film opens with a huge traffic jam – everybody is on their way to make it big in Hollywood. Ironically, blocking each other’s way, making it more difficult for each other. They all have dreams. The great tragedy of life is that after our dreams are fulfilled, we finally realise we have been chasing meaningless dreams. Instead of being irritated by the traffic jam, everybody starts singing the first number of La La Land, “Another Day of Sun”. The tone of the film is set. The audience is warned. What you see is not really what’s happening in the real world. They are so naïve that they do not understand most of their dreams will be crushed. There is only one Humphrey Bogart, only one Ingrid Bergman and only one Louis Armstrong. We get the answer in the final song, “The Fools Who Dream”. It is the polar opposite of the first song, sung by a disillusioned, sadder and sober dreamer. It reminds us that ‘the entertainers’ are important too. As the working men and woman return home every day pulverised by their day’s tasks, it is these dreamers that put them all back together and prepare them for work the next day. And the ‘failed dreamers’ are important too, it is these people who later become the patrons of the art and keep it alive. Chazelle’s primary collaborator, who deserves at least half the credit for the impact of the film, is composer Justin Hurwitz who has really done his homework. He has digested the works of Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. He has imbibed the work of Michel Legrand who composed the two French musicals, Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman Is a Woman (1961) and Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), the latter particularly is a major influence for La La Land. Not only does Hurwitz invent great tunes, he clothes them with hundreds of musical colours, going through an infinite permutations and combinations. One theme modulates to another, pianissimo changes to fortissimo, the tempo changes, the meter syncopates. He is a master in orchestration. The way he uses different leitmotifs to conjure up the final sequence of the film (“Epilogue”) raises La La Land from just another derivative film to a valid work of art.