La La Land: A Magical Musical

I saw La La Land on Tuesday and four days later, I find that I am still unable to stop singing "City of Stars". Much like that song, this movie will burrow its way into your brain and stay there for a long time. And like many great movies, the reasons to love it are varied, mysterious, and somewhat indescribable. But let's try to describe them anyway.

The movie stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling as Mia and Sebastian, two people who have come to Los Angeles to achieve their dreams. Mia is an actress, but since she can't actually land a job, she's a barista in a coffee shop on the Warner Brothers lot. Sebastian is a jazz pianist who desperately wants to open his own club but instead is forced to play tepid "elevator music" in restaurants for tips. The two meet, do not fall in love, then meet again, and the romance blossoms in spectacular Hollywood fashion. While the movie is set in the present day, it is a throwback to 50s musicals from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and is packed with references and musical numbers that bring to mind Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and more.

Despite the nostalgia it evokes, this is still a 2016 movie, which means that it does not traffic solely in providing light entertainment. It is an aesthetic marvel, from each of Emma Stone's sumptuous outfits, to the twinkly sets, to the fantastical sequences that depict the lovers falling in love; but it is also extremely bittersweet and calculated to elicit a tear as much as a smile. In spite of the singing and dancing, it takes a frank look at the difference between falling in love and then building a life together. We get to see the progression of Mia and Sebastian's relationship and the realization of their ambitions, and the movie's epilogue is a sweeping musical odyssey that showcases everything that is sad and beautiful about their tale.

The music by Justin Hurwitz and lyrics by Pasek and Paul are alternately romantic, fun, haunting, and goosebump-inducing. Gosling and Stone are not the world's greatest singers and dancers, and while they gamely attempt the songs and choreography, they lack the panache and confidence I expect from an Astaire and Rogers musical. But they make up for that with sheer charm and star power. They have the most wonderfully expressive faces, a fact that the director latches on to with multiple close-up shots that allow you to marvel at what these two people are able to do with a single glance. There's a spellbindingly tactile moment when their hands touch that makes your fingers tingle and reminds you of the power of cinema to transport you into another realm. Stone, in particular, has eyes that seem to grab my soul and turn it inside out, while Gosling's smile and saunter are the swoon-worthy stuff dreams are made of.

La La Land is a dreamy blend of fantasy and real life that makes one wish we spent more time randomly breaking into song in our cars than flipping each other off on the freeway (both things that happen at the beginning of the movie, thereby highlighting the cruel intersection of whimsy and reality). Writer-director Damien Chazelle has managed to make yet another wondrous movie, and much like Whiplash, he ties everything together with a resoundingly emphatic ending that will uplift and destroy you all in one go. La La Land is not exactly the movie I was expecting to see when I walked into the theatre, but I haven't managed to forget it since I walked out.