Piyush Roy
In a fairly socio-politically divisive year in the USA, La La Land spreads hope, while reinforcing the message of dreaming big and honest. It rekindles memories of another surprise Oscars-sweeping little film with a big and warm heart…
An entire Wikipedia page is dedicated to the glories of La La Land so far – 86 wins out of 199 nominations – featuring accolades from across the globe at every film awards ceremony worth it’s mettle. This week,it led the British Academy Film & Television Arts awards with five wins including best film, direction, actress and music. Earlier in the year, it had swept the Golden Globes with a win in each of the top seven categories it was nominated – best actor, actress, film, direction, screenplay, musical score and song. Come February 26, and another spectacular sweep is now a given, for a film with a record high of 14 Oscar nominations, matched previously only by Titanic (1997) and All About Eve (1950)!
So what is it about Damien Sayre Chazelle’s (of Whiplash fame) romantic musical revolving around a talented piano player and a struggling actress, off the backdrop of Hollywood studios, that’salready being raved as a classic while still running in the theatres?
The film does have an attractive dreamy take-off sequence, with passengers coming out of stranded cars on a busy highway to do some song and dance. But it takes some good sweet time from there to have us warm up to its restrained hero (a charmingly brooding Ryan Gosling) and fairly ordinary heroine (a fragile, yet vivacious Emma Stone). Narrated as events in the lives of its love lost protagonists across five seasons – winter, spring, summer, fall and winter – the film picks up in the last two with a 20 plus minute ‘music only’ finale that more than redeems it as one of the most memorable cinematic experiences of 2016. In those climactic moments it reveals, shows and celebrates the immense emotive power and the ability of a good background score to uplift the common to the extraordinary.
In a fairly socio-politically divisive year in the USA, La La Land spreads hope, while reinforcing the message of dreaming big and honest. In this, it rekindles memories of another surprise Oscars’ sweeping little film with a big and warm heart, in a year of all round global recession – Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Though belonging to different genres, La La Land does stand to fare better, the test of retrospective iconicity, because it’s just not a feel good film; it also offers some truly vintage viewing experience.
Drama finally returns to blockbuster Hollywood and how! Viewers in India can be assured that this is not a sing-along-throughout narrative a la classic Hollywood musicals, but is more like a good Bollywood romance where the narrative peaks in its emotively laden music moments or lyrical scenes that enjoy a standalone appeal, often universal and worthy of inspiration beyond their immediate context of happening on-screen.
No wonder the 15-tracks laden film’s finest music moments – Audition and City of Stars – have garnered well-deserved best song nominations at the Oscars this year.City of stars is a simple stating of the purpose motif that drives every romantic film, that “one thing everybody wants – love from someone else – a rush, a glance, a touch, a dance…”
However, it is in Emma Stone’s near four-minute long ‘audition’ take that La La Land hints and reveals at the true appeal around its universal liking. It is expressed in that felt plea for the restoration of faith and respect in the pursuit of simple dreams that make the mundane memorable irrespective of success or failure.
Here’s signing off with lyric excerpts from a warm tribute by a dreamy film to ‘the fools who dream…’
Audition
(performed on-screen by Emma Stone, and composed by director Chazelle’s Harvard University classmate Justin Hurwitz with lyrics by the talented, and rising young music theatre team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul).
My aunt used to live in Paris.
I remember, she used to come home and tell us these stories about being abroad
and I remember she told us that she jumped into the river once, barefoot.
She smiled…
Leapt, without looking
And tumbled into the Seine
The water was freezing
She spent a month sneezing
But said she would do it again
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
She captured a feeling
Sky with no ceiling
The sunset inside a frame
She lived in her liquor
And died with a flicker
I’ll always remember the flame
She told me:
“A bit of madness is key
To give us new colours to see
Who knows where it will lead us?
And that’s why they need us”
So bring on the rebels
The ripples from pebbles
The painters, and poets, and plays
And here’s to the fools who dream
Crazy as they may seem
Here’s to the hearts that break
Here’s to the mess we make
I trace it all back to then
Her, and the snow, and the Seine
Smiling through it
She said she’d do it again!