Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling sing and dance up a CinemaScope storm in Damien Chazelle’s LA LA LAND
LA LA LAND (Damien Chazelle, 2016)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, January 4, $15, 7:30
Series runs through January 12
Tickets: $12, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days
212-708-9400
www.lalaland.movie
www.moma.org
Call it Blah Blah Bland. La La Land, writer-director Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Whiplash, is an overwrought tribute to the old-fashioned romance musical, a genre homage that lacks the energy and chemistry of the films that it directly evokes, including the Hollywood classics Singin’ in the Rain, Funny Face, and An American in Paris, Jacques Demy’s French favorites The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, and Chazelle’s own 2009 black-and-white indie musical, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. (Look for a billboard of Chazelle’s debut that passes by quickly.) In La La Land, Emma Stone stars as Mia Dolan, a studio barista with dreams of becoming a successful actress; Ryan Gosling is Sebastian Wilder, a down-on-his-luck jazz pianist with dreams of opening his own club. The film opens with a fabulous number on a Hollywood freeway, as hundreds of men and women in a traffic jam get out of their cars and sing and dance, announcing that it’s “Another Day of Sun.” It’s also the first of several awkward, accidental meet-cute scenes between Mia and Sebastian before they get involved with each other. Chazelle, a drummer, knows the source material well, as do composer (and Chazelle’s Harvard classmate) Justin Hurwitz, lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Dear Evan Hansen, A Christmas Story, the Musical), and So You Think You Can Dance choreographer Mandy Moore. Mary Zophres’s costumes are thoroughly delightful, as is David Wasco’s production design, bathing the film in bright, eye-catching primary colors. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren (American Hustle, The Hundred-Foot Journey) shoots the film in throwback CinemaScope, with the musical numbers done in a single take.
La La Land also features Rosemarie DeWitt as Sebastian’s kind but pushy sister, J. K. Simmons as a restaurant manager who hires Sebastian to play Christmas songs on piano, Finn Wittrock as Mia’s handsome but boring boyfriend, and John Legend as a jazzman who offers Sebastian the chance to play in a real band. Chazelle overmanipulates some alternate-universe twists, a fantasy scene in the Griffith Observatory from Rebel without a Cause makes no sense, and Stone and Gosling are not exactly Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Of the two — who’ve previously costarred in Crazy, Stupid Love and Gangster Squad — Stone avails herself significantly better; it’s impossible to stop gazing at her big, puppy-dog eyes, which continually dominate the screen. La La Land has its share of lovely, clever moments, but it never quite comes together, like a jazz song filled with great improvised solos but just doesn’t know how to end. La La Land is screening January 4 at 7:30 in MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of films the institution believes will stand the test of time; the festival continues through January 12 with such other 2016 works as J. Clay Tweel’s Gleason, Amir Naderi’s Monte, and James Schamus’s Indignation, followed by a discussion with Schamus. (La La Land is also currently playing at AMC Empire 25, Regal Union Square Stadium 14, Cinépolis Chelsea, and AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13.)
Michelle Williams was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as a disgruntled wife in Blue Valentine, but the movie really belongs to Ryan Gosling, who is heartbreaking as a husband trying to repair a dissolving relationship. Derek Cianfrance’s second film took a long time to get made — his feature debut, Brother Tied, came out in 1998 — but that extended gestation period allowed it to develop into a unique, original examination of a marriage in trouble. Set in Brooklyn and Scranton, Blue Valentine bounces back and forth between Dean (Gosling) and Cindy’s (Williams) courtship and a modern-day weekend in which they try to recapture that magic that got it all started. Much of the dialogue is improvised and scenes were often shot in just one take, giving the film an organic, realistic feel. Cianfrance occasionally uses nonprofessional actors to heighten believability; for example, the movers and their boss actually do work for the Brooklyn moving company where Dean is temporarily employed. Cianfrance cleverly manipulates the past with the present to develop the characters; interestingly, after introducing viewers to the growing relationship between Dean and Cindy, he shows her making love to her high school boyfriend, Bobby (Mike Vogel), as if she is cheating on her future husband, creating an uncomfortable feeling that directly impacts the way we interpret their contemporary struggle. The sex scenes, both between Dean and Cindy and Bobby and Cindy, are extremely graphic, initially threatening to burden the film with an NC-17 rating that the Weinstein Company successfully appealed just prior to release. Featuring a score by popular indie band Grizzly Bear, Blue Valentine is one of the best films of 2010, a powerful, very adult romantic drama that will leave you clutching tightly to your loved ones.