2016, The MacMahonian seminally wrote, marked the definite return of the Western. Will 2017 do the same for the Musical? Maybe, but then again maybe not.
La La Land is the 3rd feature film directed by Damien Chazelle, a young director with a jazz obsession right up The MacMahonian alley. Alas, as his highly strung previous effort Whiplash (2014) evinced, good intentions pave roads, but they don't always lead quite where intended.
La La Land dresses a Woody Allenesque love found and lost story between aspiring jazz musician Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) in a contemporary LA setting, shot, decorated and made up to look very much like Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly/Stanley Donen, 1952) era LA.
The first sequence is the strongest, a mega Michael Kidd-style choreography CGIed in a LA highway traffic jam which superfluously seeks to enunciate what it's going to be about: a contemporary musical melodrama emulating/seeking to revive/paying tribute to the Hollywood musical (specifically the second Golden Age: roughly 1949-1962, when MGM producer Arthur Freed reigned supreme) with a slightly incongruous subplot dealing with Sebastian's bitterness at Jazz (bebop mainly, ergo the incongruity) no getting the credit it deserves, which allows for a few digressions of the “Jazz for dummies” variety. Although well intended (see above), virtuoso and energetic, La La Land feels like a film à these, unsubtle, contrived and ultimately unconvincing.
La La Land, I venture, assured its footnote in film history, but less due to a putative musical revival, which remains to materialize, than to the Oscar überglitch, which was ultimately deserved, as the next blog entry will expand.