Tropic Sprockets / La La Land

Tropic Sprockets / La La Land

By Ian Brockway

Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land,” winner of seven Golden Globes, is a colorful and fast paced tribute to Hollywood and what it means to be an artist in a city obsessed with movies.

The first scene showing two people Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) locked within an ocean of cars and smartphones makes a perfect statement on alienation and the struggle to be original. In a nod to “West Side Story,” all elements burst with color and people are thrust from their cars, dancing in the sprawl. Automotive paranoia becomes a celebration.

The hapless barista and film-extra Mia manages to see the spacy and withdrawn Sebastian wherever she goes. They meet at a wedding and manage small talk. Sebastian is very laconic but Mia becomes smitten by his dashing and mysterious manner.

This is a musical and the stepping is first rate with rhythm, verve and great flashes of color. Art movements are noted here too, with scenes that cover everything from Fauvism, Abstract Expressionism and of course the work of Warhol and Lichtenstein. Also evident is the concept of music enmeshed in conflict and pain as shown in “Whiplash,” the director’s previous film. Here Sebastian, a jazz genius, is forced to play pop tunes in third rate clubs. Only Los Angeles and its obsession with jazzmen and cinematic femme fatales can set him free.

Gosling and Stone make a kind of Kelly and Reynolds duo, and they both hold their own in this feature musical beautifully. In one segment, wearing two-tone shoes, Gosling swings on a green lamp-post in the grand tradition of “Singin’ in the Rain.” The musical numbers are snappy and vivid, sure to recall the old classics.

This film is nothing short of an explosive pop-up valentine to Los Angeles that is very nearly a 3D movie, no glasses necessary. Every location is covered here from Watts Tower to Griffith Observatory, as featured in “Rebel Without a Cause”.

The film also pays tribute to quantum physics, highlighting the dance and sway of possibilitity. One dapper man’s satisfied smile is another’s frown and life moves forward and back, never stopping. With irrepressible motion, “La La Land” seduces, light and effervescent, punctuated by pathos, yet without any daunting impressions or heavy tread.

This is clever, nostalgia-rich candy for the eye.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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