AFTER ALL THE HYPE SURROUNDING La La Land, it was with some unease that I sat down to watch it the other week, certain that it was unlikely to be as good as virtually everyone said.
But Damien Chazelle’s musical about a couple of aspiring performers – one an actress, the other a musician – really is that good and from the initial moments of the very first scene, a massive musical number set in a traffic jam on a Los Angeles flyover, all my concerns evaporated.
The stunning choreography (by Mandy Moore) and cinematography (Linus Landgren) of that first scene are maintained throughout the whole piece to produce a film that, while obviously of the 21st century, is in some ways reminiscent of the great musicals of the mid-20th.
This is the third collaboration between writer/director Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz following Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench and Whiplash, and all three feature jazz musicians as their male protagonists. Apparently, Chazelle himself was a jazz drummer for a time while at high school, but it was the darker Whiplash rather than La La Land that has the greatest influence from this period in his life.
This is the first of Chazelle’s movies that I have seen and it has left me eager to catch up with the others as soon as possible. Hurwitz’s heavily jazz-influenced score is both fresh and compelling, while the lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul are witty and romantic, without ever becoming schmaltzy.
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone play the lead characters beautifully with a wonderfully light touch and they work together extremely well. Particularly memorable is the song A Lovely Night, which in mood and context reminded me of one of the greatest musical pieces ever – Isn’t This a Lovely Day – from Top Hat, the 1935 classic starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: there is no greater praise than that.
La La Land has become the third film to be nominated for 14 Oscars after All About Eve and Titanic (I know!) and while in the political mess that is the Academy Awards these days it is unlikely to win very many statuettes, it is a strong contender in all categories. It isn’t often that a film does absolutely nothing wrong, but I’d suggest that this is true of La La Land.
Two shows in a row
It isn’t often either that I attend top-class movies on consecutive days, but the day after seeing La La Land I was back in the Cambridge Picturehouse for the German comedy Toni Erdmann. At 162 minutes, this is a long film for a comedy (although I’ve attended a few in this genre that seemed far longer) and these days I believe that a film needs a very good reason to last for more than two hours (and let me clarify, not on the basis of bladder function). Toni Erdmann though has plenty of reasons for being no shorter and it is a measure of how good it is that it feels anything but a long film when one is watching it.
The eponymous character is the product of the bizarre imagination of Winfried, a widowed music teacher who is extremely fond of practical jokes. Winfried and his daughter – Ines, who works in Bucharest – have lost touch and after the death of his ancient dog, Winfried visits Ines to attempt to reconnect with her.
He finds a daughter who is unhappily obsessed with her career and they do not get on. Winfried leaves, only to return a few days later in the transparent guise of Toni as whom he tries to relate to Ines in a completely different way.
In their own way, the two leads – Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller – are as impressive as Gosling and Stone in La La Land, and Maren Ade’s film is not only extremely funny, it is also highly intelligent and thoughtful.
It would be very easy to play this story solely for laughs, but there is much more to Toni Erdmann and as the narrative progresses it becomes apparent that behind even the most outrageous episodes in the story is a consistent message about the natures of the two lead characters who seem on the surface to be so completely different.
Maren Ade’s name will be new to most British cinema-goers, but she has received acclaim for her earlier work and in Toni Erdmann she has written and directed a movie that must be a certainty for the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Movie category.
Other than that they are films of the highest quality in all aspects of performance and production, there are not too many similarities between La La Land and Toni Erdmann, but they share one important feature: they both have exceedingly good endings. Neither should be missed.
