LA LA LAND: 4K Blu-ray (Summit/Platt/Imposter/Black Label, 2016) Lionsgate Home Video
How does one begin a new month in review? Arguably,
not by bashing Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016); a movie so
distortedly raised to the rafters as an homage/reflection/second coming of the
golden age in movie musicals, both as an evocation and as a query into what the
protagonists of any Cinemascope escapist fantasy would sincerely wish for, if
only life itself were as excruciatingly perfect as…well…a movie musical. La
La Land tells the turgid little tale of a pair of misfits desperate to make
good on their dreams in the City of Angels. Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) wants to
be a one-man renaissance in classical jazz. Mia (Emma Stone) is running on low
octane as she subjects herself to another humiliating round of auditions for
dramatic parts utterly unworthy of her talents in the actor’s craft. The two
meet…no, not conventionally ‘cute’…but on a typically gridlocked L.A.
freeway. He honks his horn and she shoots him the finger. Love at first sight,
my fanny! Stone and Gosling do have a pseudo love/hate chemistry at work in La
La Land that is satisfactory when the movie foregoes the fact it is a
musical and settles on straight angst-ridden post-coital sexual frustration;
diverging careers, mindsets and lifestyles all tearing at the fringes of their
tenuous relationship. But when they begin to uh...sing (in Gosling’s case, croak
like a toad) ...there is virtually no emotion to be shared with the audience. Just
a bit of 'aren't we clever?' and a lot of 'I can't believe we're
actually getting away with this', that leaves the film woefully
undernourished.
In keeping with our post-postmodern slavish devotion
to un-happily ever-afters, La La Land concludes, not with a coming
together of these awkwardly melded would-be lovers, but a thorough
discombobulation of their amore, conflicting career aspirations and yes, even
their starry-eyed dreams; defeated, deflated and distilled into an accepted
crossfire between fame and money.
Bittersweet - even tragic - musicals have worked spectacularly well in
the past; from a murder at the end of West Side Story (1961) to
incarceration/separation and pending divorce for the finale of Funny Girl
(1968), right up to the life-claiming tuberculosis that caps off Moulin
Rouge (2001). So, let me begin by suggesting a musical need not be ‘hah-hah-happy’
or all ‘hearts and flowers’ to be great…even to be memorable. Alas, La
La Land is neither; merely present and accounted for, and, as such, falls
decidedly un-salvageable, except as disposable film fodder and in spite of all
the incredulous and sycophantic fawning it has already received by a good many
– if not all – of the critics, who have sincerely lost their minds as well as
their hearts, labeling La La Land as everything from ‘soaring and
gorgeous’ to possessing ‘the potential to make lovers of us all’. …and sinners of the rest.
What this movie desperately needed was a knockout
combo like Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor a la Moulin Rouge, and the
frenzied flamboyance of a Baz Luhrman to truly make the audience take flight, as
limberly as co-stars, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling (suspended on invisible wires
herein) appear to suddenly rise out of their seats and into the projected
heavens at the Griffith Observatory; a movie-land rip-off of Marge and Gower
Champion’s gravity-defying pas deux to ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’ from
MGM’s 1952 remake of 1935’s Roberta – rechristened Lovely to Look At.
What La La Land receives instead is the blue-collar pairing of your
typically sullen Joe Average meets effervescent doe-eyed Suzy Cream Cheese.
Honestly, when Ryan Gosling’s rising jazz musician finally acquires enough of a
nut to call out Emma Stone’s pert and marginally shrewish failed playwright for
sending him a steamer trunk full of mixed signals, the wounded look written all
over Stone’s visage is akin to bitch-slapping Bambi. As per our stars - Ryan
Gosling has about the least convincing vocal capability of any young buck in
Hollywood. Listening to his hoarse renditions of A Lovely Night or City
of Stars I was sincerely reminded of exactly how much I adore the copycat
musical styling of Michael Bublé…whose efforts thus far I absolutely loathe. 'Nobody
but me', it seems.
I cannot impart upon young aspiring singers, much less
those untrained, yet ego-driven and working in the industry today, and, who
continue to think of themselves as artistes of their generation, that the
prospect of tickling a talent has to begin with the raw talent itself and
projected outwardly from this point of embarkation. I would simply impress upon the instruction for
anyone tackling a lyric today that it is absolutely not ‘all’ about hitting the
notes correctly (though, decidedly, this is a start) - even with a voice as
thin and un-prepossessing as Gosling’s, but decidedly more about infusing the
lyric with genuine meaning, real emotion and yes, a real singer’s intonated
bravado. Gene Kelly's voice was thin. But he had both the resiliency of a
go-getter/perfectionist’s heart and the content of his ego-driven character as
substitute. And it should be pointed out (though it seems relatively
self-explanatory), Kelly also had talent; could dance rings around most anyone
of his own generation and virtually everyone who has feebly attempted to
emulate his masculinized musical machismo ever since. I will also direct
everyone’s attention to Marlon Brando’s Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls
(1955); a performance willed to moody musical magnificence by Brando’s
formidable acting chops; also, Rex Harrison’s sublime Professor Henry Higgins
in 1964’s My Fair Lady and Robert Preston’s gutsy charm in The Music
Man (1962). None of the aforementioned was a great singer. But virtually
all excelled in the musical genre because they brought their astounding
personalities and mind-boggling prowess as irrefutable thespians to the
forefront of their respective performances. Ryan Gosling has neither merit to
fall back on. Thus, his brand of pouting masculinity is utterly flat in La
La Land.
Emma Stone does not rate as much contempt for an as
equally flawed performance, chiefly because within La La Land’s dramatic
arc and occasional curve we can see flashes of a truly inspired performance
about to lurch forth from the proscenium, only to be hogtied and dragged
kicking and screaming back into this mangled musical mélange. At one point, Stone chuckles her way through
the picture’s love ballad, City of Stars. Not amusing…not at all.
But she also acquits herself rather spectacularly of a throw away scene in
which she is auditioning for the part of a lover on her cell phone and about to
be told by her paramour he is engaged to another. In these fleeting moments
before a ridiculous assistant callously intrudes upon the audition, Stone runs
the gamut of emotions, from bubbly gushing infatuation to inspired self-imploding shock, and finally, drawing in the tears as she exposes the
unflinching emotional ramifications of having one’s intestines kicked out from
the inside. We can sense the magnitude of the moment without any additional
back and forth; Stone, in complete command of her performance and the screen.
It is a superlative moment that proves unequivocally what a very fine actress
she is, or rather, has steadily become in other pictures on the road to... If
only La La Land did not require Stone to periodically slip into Leslie
Caron-ville, she might have risen above the mediocrity in Chazelle’s lumbering
script that plays hard, then fast and loose with the narrative timeline; again,
too clever for its own good, and drawing unnecessary attention to the fact our
hearts are supposed to be manipulated
Let us be clear about one thing. Despite its gimmicky
usage of 2oth Century-Fox’s Cinemascope logo to open the picture, La La Land
is nothing like a vintage Fox or MGM musical from any vintage in either
studio’s illustrious history of past achievements by which one might wish to
compare it. Why is it, contemporary directors of musicals think if their camera
maneuvers are clever enough the audience will forget quick cutaways to people
gyrating - and not even in unison - can take the place of (choke!) genuine
choreography? I have seen better dance steps performed weekly on an episode of Dancing
with the Stars than in the whole of what’s on display in two hours here.
Perhaps, if La La Land had a Mark Ballas or Maksim Chmerkovskiy hired on
to helm the dance sequences, they would not have been such a mishmash of
eclectic styles simply thrust together with zero finesse. The 'ballet'
sequence that ends La La Land’s perfunctory romance, as example, with an
angst-ridden reflection on the ‘simple’ lives Sebastian and Mia might have
shared together if either were not so supremely narcissistic in their endeavors
to ‘be somebody’ to the rest of the world, adds up to a jumbled recap of
the movies entire plot with clear-cut rips offs of Audrey Hepburn's/Richard
Avedon-inspired balloon ‘photo shoot’ sequence from Stanley Donen’s
incredibly adroit and still perennially satisfying Funny Face (1957) as
well as the speakeasy sequence from The Broadway Ballet in 1952’s Singin'
in the Rain. But the homage, if one is actually intended (I have read
conflicting opinions about this) is so wafer thin; a sliver of a moment gleaned
from each aforementioned movie – again, with virtually none of its context or
inspired choreography, or even a spark of essential genius to draw something
new from the old - that what we get instead are flashes or hints to better work
done elsewhere, minus the joyous celebratory ‘feel good’ virtually all
movie musicals that truly succeed have in spades.
Somewhere in the back of La La Land is a pert
spank to all movie musicals of days gone by; John Legend’s smarmy punk-jazz
musician, Keith suggesting to Sebastian the reason traditional jazz clubs are
on the wane is because no one wants to listen to traditional jazz anymore. I
hear the same argument being applied to physical media these days. No one wants
Blu-ray because everyone is streaming their digital content - right? Wrong! And
no one will sit through a musical today either – right? All evidence to the
contrary as La La Land drew in the box office and was even (choke!)
Oscar-nominated as Best Picture. To be blunt: trends are brief. Fads are a dime
a dozen. But talent – real/reel talent – endures, as a renewable fascination
for each new generation, eager to rediscover a Miles Davis or Gene Kelly. You
cannot kill art. You cannot suppress it either. I mean, Hitler tried. You can
attempt to discount it – via spoof and farce – in favor of propping up some
contemporary straw dog as a thinly-veiled ‘greater than’ substitute and/or
replacement. But it is damn near impossible to flim-flam an audience with a lot
of smoke and mirrors once they have seen greatness on the screen. And
greatness, at least in La La Land’s pantheon would have to include the
likes of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Howard Keel, Jane Powell,
Debbie Reynolds, Mario Lanza, Ann Miller and their ilk.
My chief complaint with La La Land is its
frenetic camera work, however brilliantly conceived in sustained long shots, but
sacrificing both motivation and meaning in the musical sequences. Employing a
long take for Another Day of Sun, La La Land’s big – and
presumably splashy – opener, did not serve that number well at all. It was
clearly cleverly timed, and interesting as an exercise in technique (in much
the same way Martin Scorsese used it for the hand-held tracking shot following
Ray Liota and Lorraine Braccio into the bowels of a nightclub in 1990’s Goodfellas)
– but that is all! Worse, Another Day of Sun has not one moment of
genuine dance in it to complement its bouncy rhythm; just a lot of people,
behaving as though they have just entered a carnival after midnight, jumping up
and down on the hoods of their cars and generally running amok in and out of
other parked vehicles, lip syncing to the pre-recording as the camera on a boom
follows them in and out of this gridlocked quagmire. Messy stuff, overall. More
messy stuff in 'Someone in the Crowd' - camera pan and tilts, back and
forth, up to a palm tree (like, it's southern California - we get it) down into
a pool as a bunch of over-inebriated party-goers simply decide to throw caution
to the wind and dunk their fully-clothed bodies into the chlorinated briny. I
get it. This Gastby-esque implosion is an illustration of the superficial
hedonism Stone's mousy barista absolutely abhors, later to be counterbalanced
by her own, as choppy and unsatisfying, jaunt through the Griffith Observatory;
and another reference to the Marge and Gower Champion-inspired pas deux from Lovely
To Look At. Except again, there is NO dancing on display, just a lot of
pseudo strolling and hand-holding, a few quick light steps, presumably meant to
infer a courtship/mating, as our stars suspended on invisible wires, rising up
into the projected night sky only to be brought down a few fleeting seconds
later with their heads still in the clouds.
Virtually all of the numbers in La La Land are
as clumsy, clunky and uninspiring - but especially if one has indulged in the
girth of MGM/Fox musicals from the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's. Even in absence
of that heritage, none of the songs in this movie ever rises anywhere close to
the level of celebratory elation on display in movies like An American In
Paris (1950). As per, tragi-romance; better stuff on tap from Barbra
Streisand and Omar Sharif in William Wyler's Funny Girl. Then again, we
have Bab's to thank here; another, contemporary (at least, not dead) musical/comedy
star of the first magnitude and the only one still selling musicals long after
the genre was considered passé. Yentl (1983), anyone?!? I have already
pointed out the choreography in La La Land is practically nil. Two
clicks of the heel on a tap shoe in A Lovely Night, and a couple of near
passes and posturing with some hands and feet intermittently strutting do not a
pas deux a la Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse make. And let us be honest here;
this moment was definitely leaning towards an evocation of Fred Astaire and Cyd
Charisse's erotically charged Dancing in the Dark from The Band Wagon
(1953).
So, what are La La Land’s pluses? I count one. I love Justin Hurwitz’s score; a
fun and sassy blend of tunes expressly written for the picture and a few
throwbacks to the fluff best left on the cutting room floor from the 1980’s.
And then, there’s the jazz – brassy, bold, richly satisfying and bar none the
best music in the picture. Alas, as if to add insult to injury, there is an
inside joke about the art of jazz and why it is dying on the vine – or, at
least, at Hollywood and Vine; Sebastian, explaining to Mia people go to clubs
where they talk over great improvisations put forth by artists who should, in
fact, be afforded all the reverence of a symphonic concert hall as he extols
the virtues of their passion while talking right over their music himself;
Chazelle, compounding this affront by actually insisting to write dialogue that
advances the story and meant to drown out the hot licks being performed as
perfunctory backdrop at best, and, infinitely more moronic than ironic if you
ask me. Hurwitz's songs are more
inclined toward the Andrew Lloyd Webber ilk of pop opera inspired
grandiloquence than those Tin Pan Alley ditties that “send you out with a
kind’a glow as you say, ‘that’s entertainment!’”
But I digress. And virtually all of Hurwitz’s efforts
are thrice hamstrung; first, by some truly terrible vocalizations, second, by
Chazelle’s inability to conceive how they could best be integrated into the
dramatic arc of the story he would rather tell, and finally, by the heavy-handed
way virtually everything that occurs while the songs are being sung is brought
down into the doldrums of a bargain basement pick n’ save discount bin, meant
to discourage the fact we are watching a bad musical unfold. The subtext, that
all the past achievements in the Hollywood musical genre are dead and buried
and should remain so in favor of something new - something better, presumably
coming down the pike of another movie we have yet to see, is not really subtext
at all, but Chazelle Mactacing the message to the foreheads of our collective
consciousness as though it were a diaphragm no self-respecting virgin ought to
have forgotten on her first night out in this big bad world of men.
Okay, for argument’s sake, let us run with the notion
the past is the past. Done. Finished. Period. Over. Fine. Then why not embark
on a musical without all the painstaking and painfully transparent references
to old Hollywood? Stone’s Mia has a gargantuan poster of the luminous Ingrid
Bergman plastered across her bedroom wall for Pete’s sake! There are so many
references from Gosling’s Sebastian to recall the glories of Young Man with
A Horn (1950), Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955) and Paris Blues
(1961) there is really no place to go but down for Gosling’s blue-jeans and wrinkly
undershirt knockoff. The ballet captures only the cardboard illegitimacy of
those big and bloated sequences immortalized with superior planning, staging
and dancing in films like A Star is Born (1954) and Oklahoma!
(1955). Yet, in virtually every frame, La La Land is all about
remembering better movies and far better musicals made elsewhere; from the
primary-colored ensembles worn by Stone and her entourage of gal pals (harking
to Shirley MacLaine, Chita Rivera and Paula Kelly's attire in 1969’s Sweet Charity)
to the overhead Busby Berkeley-esque shot of Stone and her girls (Callie
Hernandez, Sonoya Mizuno, Jessica Rothenberg) strutting Jersey Shore-style down
a typical L.A. street, spinning like uncoordinated tops to show some leg. Ah
me, sluts…I mean youth…definitely youth! We also get a Great Gatsby-ish party
sequence; too, too long and utterly pointless. Honestly, there is nothing like
a good ole-fashioned, toe-tapping musical to set one's heart a whirl. Just in
case any doubt is left behind (along with all hope): La La Land is
nothing like a good or old-fashioned musical: just noisy and, in its last act
finale, sad to the point of being deliberately maudlin. There are better
musicals out there, folks. A lot better, indeed!
Owing to a personal invitation to a house party screening,
to inaugurate a friend’s newly built home theater, I have now had the
misfortune to see La La Land twice, when ‘once’ was decidedly enough –
this time, in 4K UHD. And while nothing more could be asked of Lionsgate’s
effort – this disc is perfect – the overall enhanced quality of the image has
not advanced my reputation of the movie itself. Contained within its faux
Cinemascope 2.55:1 aspect ratio, La La Land was originally shot in Super
35mm and finished as a 2K Digital Intermediate, now upconverted to 4K. The
image is luminous with eye-popping colors and absolutely gorgeous contrast.
Fine details are exquisitely rendered. Black
levels are deep and enveloping, while skin tones also look spectacularly true
to life. The Dolby Atmos track is predictably solid. Perhaps, even more so, it
draws attention to the thinness in Gosling’s voice. This is a big and brassy
soundtrack, with softer than anticipated dialogue scenes
interpolated to get us from points ‘A’ to ‘A-’. All the extras that were a part of the
original Blu-ray release have been ported over here; most – PR junkets
produced at the time the movie was being made to promote its theatrical
release. The one exception is Chazelle and Hurwitz’s audio commentary, expressly
recorded for the original Blu-ray release. We get a behind-the scenes look at
the staging of the opening number, Another Day of Sun, a featurette on
the lavish ‘house’ party staged for the movie, another on Gosling’s training to
mimic a realistic piano solo, another of Chazelle’s passion for the project, discussing
the locations, the music and John Legend’s acting debut, and finally, a
schmooze with cast and crew on production design. There are also brief snippets
devoted to the chemistry between our two stars, the dream sequence ballet, and
demos, plus, - predictably, trailers and a gallery of poster art. Bottom line: La
La Land in UHD did not enhance the reputation of the movie for me. For
those who love it, this 4K disc is definitely the way to go. Judge and buy
accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
1
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
3.5
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