Why La La Land is a masterpiece

Our review of Damien Chazelle's film, to be seen again at the end of the weekend on Arte.

At the beginning of 2017, First fell for Mia and Sebastian, the star couple of La La Landformed once again by Emma Stone And Ryan Goslingwho had already demonstrated a certain alchemy in Crazy Stupid Love (2011) and Gangster Squad (2013).

To wait until this event broadcast, which will also be followed bya documentary retracing the actor's careerwe reshare our review “falling for something”.

Broadway, its neon lights, its fireworks, its matinees and his standing ovations, it's over there in New York, on the other side of the country. However, there is a Broadway in Los Angeles, and even several, but all of them lack the wooded charm and dark mystery of other, more famous streets of the Californian megalopolis. No, the elders were not wrong in calling their films instead Sunset Boulevard Or Mulholland Drive.

The fact is that Los Angeles has no need for an avenue dedicated to show biz and music, a dedicated entertainment center or a fantasy district. The city itself is an open-air fantasy, a place that doesn't really exist, a dimension in between the earth and the stars. A zone. It's not called the city of angels for nothing. It suits him very well.

In 1954, Vincente Minnelli invented “Brigadoon”, a blessed village emerging from the mists, a sort of blissful otherworld where the danced loves of Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse were encapsulated. THE “La La Land” of Damien Chazelle (the world of sweet dreamers, if you will) was born from this intuition: Brigadoon exists, people live there, the letters of Hollywood overlook it, inscribed on the hill. Halfway between dreams and reality, made up of one as much as it is paradoxically part of the other, Los Angeles is our very own Brigadoon. We live there, we love there, we sing and dance there. But we live there, we love there, we sing there and we dance there for real.

Damien Chazelle: “La La Land perhaps meets certain needs today”

A bright Mulholland Drive

So it will be a musical about ordinary people today. Let's call them Mia and Sebastian, a playwright/actress who is casting around while she struggles to complete her first play, and a jazz pianist a little too purist to play the soup required in cocktail bars. Always, everywhere, two conceptions of the seventh art have been opposed and looked at like earthenware dogs, for some “mirror of the world” (recording of his torments), for others ” Dreamland “ (great Escape). With the confidence of his 31 years, Damien Chazelle chooses not to subscribe to this distinction. Or rather, he decides to consider that she has no control over this crazy, unreal city, and no more over his film. La La Land would thus be the luminous version of Mulholland Drivewithout dwarves or nightmares, but with the same parable about the tortuous emotional labyrinths that lead (or not) to success.

Old Hollywood

Mia and Sebastian meet, repel each other, attract each other and must compromise between their dreams of success, their needs for accomplishment and the love they have for each other. Can we do everything at the same time? What bitter compromises will be necessary? Can I still love you if I have to give up on myself? Can I still love you if I see you giving up on yourself? La La Land is a film of tests and castings, generals and large openings, of auditions and rehearsals, of Firsts and Lasts, of firsts and lasts. A film where sequences of evaluation and moments of choice multiply, those moments when life changes, between triumph and retirement, between victory and defeat. Be careful what you desire. Be wary of it, but still do everything in your power to get it, it's a question of dignity.

La La Land: and Emma Stone joins the stars

The dream and the reality

The air of nothing, the air of simpering, of hovering on an air cushion or of whistling nonchalantly, La La Land reconnects with this extraordinary idea which was the basis of old Hollywood: on a roll of the dice, destinies are at stake, questions of life, death and love. The musical is never anything other than the genre that has decided to say it with a smile, with three tap dance steps. Lightness and gravity together, joy and sadness, music and silence, laughter and tears, that's the whole program. Dream and reality, yes, intertwined and inseparable.

To obtain the right to stay in Brigadoon, you must agree to leave everything behind. Honestly, who can do it? A happy ending, as we know, is nothing other than the moment when fantasy wins, a convention, a consolation, a bag of popcorn. At first sight, La La Land presents itself as a tribute to the golden age of Hollywood, a pastiche with artificial colors. But it is much more than that: an astonishing reflection on the very nature of the spectacle, on what is at stake between those who make it and those who attend it: us, in the room, amazed by the success of the film, the power of its device and the place assigned to us there. Throughout his enchanted “grand finale”, Damien Chazelle has just reminded us that inLa La Land, contrary to appearances, reality has not given in. Not even once. We lived there, loved, sang and danced. For real.

Trailer :

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