PG-13

It starts with a traffic jam, a daily reality in Los Angeles. Cars blast rap, classical, and Latin music as frustrated drivers wait. One woman scrambles out and sings and dances down the freeway. Others join her and a grand-flying musical number ensues. She wears a yellow dress and belts out, “Another day of sun,” a subtle touch that La La Land sneaks into its world, one that pays homage to bygone Hollywood musicals, while weavng a thread of reality through the story. The opening choreography is reminiscent of the Jets and Sharks in West Side Story.

Those who remember Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat or Swing Time will not be swept away by the endearing but less adept Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone pairing. Their magnetism is obvious, but they are not quick studies like the 19 year-old Debbie Reynolds who learned to dance with Gene Kelly for Singin’ in the Rain. The versatile Gosling (The Big Short, Drive) and Stone (Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), The Amazing Spider-Man), appear competent dancing, but not magical.

Maybe that’s the point. One of the film’s non-retro ideas is that there are few happy endings. Everyone has dreams and some achieve them, but the dreams don’t turn out quite as expected, and that’s reality. Sebastian (Gosling) and Mia (Stone) meet on the freeway and she flips him the bird. Not the most romantic beginning. They keep running into one another (as fate would have it?) and love blossoms. They support each other’s dreams, and struggle with that when it becomes difficult and leads them into different directions. Sebastian, a jazz pianist, wants to open his own jazz club, but is stuck playing holiday music in a lounge. The inimitable J.K. Simmons (Whiplash, Patriots Day) plays the harsh club owner. Working with his friend, Keith—played by musician John Legend, who did soundtracks for Crazy, Stupid, Love and Django Unchained—Sebastian is pulled into a commercial band. Mia, a struggling actress, wants to write her own one-woman play.

One of the most heartrending scenes of La La Land takes place at dinner when Sebastian and Mia argue about their relationship. Their argument illustrates how we can easily misunderstand one another, and often expect the other person to feel as we do. Their la la land is fracturing because they can’t come through for one another and have lost their language of love. No one can straighten out their missteps, or show them what they can’t see.

The young writer/director, Damien Chazelle, fresh from his success with Whiplash, and who also wrote the horror film, 10 Cloverfield Lane, comes out of the gate dancing for the souls of musicals past. He is reverent, but adds his own bittersweet perspective. Late in the film, at an audition that might catapult Mia to stardom, she sings:

“Here’s to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here’s to the hearts that ache. Here’s to the mess we make.”

The lines in “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” resonate more than La La Land’s Golden Globe award-winning song, “City of Stars.” Sometimes one can see with more clarity before fame hits. Composer Justin Hurwitz calls “Audition” pivotal, and Stone is exquisite. Starting out soft and breathy, her voice descends into melancholy.

La La Land dances through fantasy to dip into how real love can be difficult. Even fantasies of what could have been cannot retrieve the onetime passion, although such a love helps form our direction and whom we eventually become.

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