La La Land is Exciting As Well As Jazz

Release Date：Dec/25/2016

Genre：Comedy/Drama/Musical/Romance

Director：Damien Chazelle

Cast：Ryan Gosling、Emma Stone、J.K. Simmons、John Legend

Viola's Rating：8.6

“Jazz is exciting!” Two years ago, jazz musical drama “Whiplash” got five Oscar nominations, and brought three of them back, and in 2016, the 31-year-old director, Damien Chazelle, released his third feature film, “La La Land”, which got nominated by Golden Globe Awards for seven categories including Best Motion Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

This musical romantic comedy talks about a jazz pianist, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), falls for an aspiring actress, Mia (Emma Stone), in Los Angeles. Pursuing dreams isn’t easy, but compromising with reality is hard to bear, especially when your beloved one is involved.

Starting with a six-minute dancing scene which took six months to arrange, 30 dancers to perform, 100 extras to help, more than 60 cars to display and two days to film, “La La Land” creates an optimistic vibe from the beginning of the film. This bit is depicted as a “Birdman meets Grease” part which tries to imitate a long take. The camera movements not only show the director’s prowess directing, but also introduce the leading actor and actress in an interesting way.

Besides Gosling, Stone and the Oscar winning J.K. Simmons, in “La La Land”, there’s also an A-list cameo. John Legend plays his own songs in the flick, and he’s one of the most pivotal elements between Sebastian and Mia’s relationship. In addition to Legend, Gosling and Stone sing the other songs in the soundtrack including the Golden Globe nominee “City of Stars”.

Among all the songs, “City of Stars” is no doubt the most heart-breaking and touching one, but Christmas carols Sebastian plays in the motion picture is not for upbeat purpose. For musicians or dreamers in general, frustration is familiar, but many are still willing to be called fools to give it one last try.

As a musical, there are some fantasy shots which Sebastian and Mia fly into the sky and thus represents that they are “flying high”. At the same time, these singing and dancing scenes are tributes to some great musicals in the movie industry history such as “Singin’ in the Rain”. For classic Hollywood musical lovers, “La La Land” is amazing to watch due to its references to other musicals.

Although some musicians might find “La La Land” not having enough musicality, it at least is the third jazz picture director Damien Chazelle has made, and they all help people to know more about jazz. The bittersweet romance story in it gives the feature film more highs and lows while immersing in the beautiful voices throughout the showing. “La La Land” is definitely the best musical in 2016 if not the best film of all genre, and it’s just as exciting as jazz is!