MOVIES
BY RICK LEVIN
EMMA STONE AND RYAN
GOSLING IN LA LA LAND
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE LOS ANGELES
Starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, La La Land gloriously revamps the golden age of Hollywood musicals
D
espite opening to a fairly lukewarm reception in
1943, Casablanca has become one of the most be-
loved, if not the most beloved, Hollywood films
of all time. The film struck an unexpected chord
in audiences, and it continues to do so, offering a
bittersweet vision of love that is almost cosmic in its impli-
cations — a vision in which romantic possibilities remain
only possibilities, and soul mates don’t always mate. This
is less tragic than resigned.
Life is sad, Casablanca tells us, but it’s not the end of
the world.
Such is the spirit that pervades writer-director Damien
Chazelle’s (Whiplash) wonderful new musical La La
Land. In its unabashed adherence to the golden age of
Hollywood, it succeeds in making the old new again,
revealing something we’ve lost along the way. Call it
dreaming, with all the sadly beautiful complications that
word implies as it butts up against everyday life.
The film stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, and its
hard to imagine a better pairing. As Sebastian, a frustrated
musician who believes the soul of jazz is being lost to
watered-down schmaltz, Gosling is fantastic, a charmingly
cynical purist. When he first encounters struggling actress
Mia (Stone, also excellent) in an L.A. traffic jam, she flips
him off, setting the stage for the sort of romantic sparring
perfected by Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Rare
nowadays is the feisty, sexy chemistry Stone and Gosling
establish on screen.
Chazelle tells the story of their complicated affair in
chapters divided among the four seasons, an ironic cue
that tips us off to the emotional direction we’re going; after
all, L.A. doesn’t have weather, it has climate, but even in
that endless summer there are winters of discontent, hope
springs eternal and pride goeth before the fall.
La La Land contains several instances of such doubling
and layering — movies versus reality, success versus
selling out, the idea of “la la land” itself — a tactic that
digs disarming depths into the movie’s bright and shiny
surfaces. If you are of the mind that musicals are not
serious entertainment, capable of moving you to laughter
and tears, this film might change your mind.
The song and dance routines are well-heeled and
fetchingly choreographed, and the music is at once
nostalgic and modern; the theme song bears a not
insignificant resemblance to Casablanca’s “As Time Goes
By,” one of several nods to past films that, should you be
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MOVIES
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susceptible to such things, has the nerve to properly break
your heart. Gosling and Stone ain’t exactly Astaire and
Rogers, but who is? Both are superb actors, and they pull
off their numbers with a confidence and exuberance that is
completely intoxicating.
In both spirit and execution, La La Land restores some
of that old Hollywood magic, and it does so without losing
itself to easy sentiment; the film is wry and sharp about
the myths it celebrates, and its sensibility finds a balance
between the fantasies that propel us, and the way those
fantasies suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
At the end of Casablanca, Bogart and Claude Rain’s
Capt. Renault are left alone on the runway. As they walk into
the night, Bogey says, “Louis, I think this is the beginning
of a beautiful friendship.” It’s either the happiest sad line
in cinema history, or the saddest happy line. Either way, it
shows a hard-earned acceptance of fate that is neither fatality
nor fatalism but, quite appropriately, a little of both.
La La Land captures — or re-captures — that exultant
feeling of sad-happy resolution, and it feels like an
affirmation of life itself, despite all it throws at us. Even in
the city of stars, where every day is another day of sun, it
sings like it’s raining. (Regal Valley River)
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RICK LEVIN, EUGENE WEEKLY
FRI JAN 6TH - THUR JAN 12TH
88 th SEASON!
The Very Little Theatre
presents
LION (PG-13)
A fi ve-year-old Indian boy is adopted by an Australian couple
after he gets lost in Calcutta. Years later, he decides to begin a
search for them. Based on the memoir A LONG WAY HOME by
Saroo Brierley.
Friday - Sunday 12:00, 2:30, 5:00, 7:30
Monday - Thursday 2:30, 5:00, 7:30
Hilarious Farce by Nell Benjamin
Directed by Chris McVay
THE EAGLE HUNTRESS (G)
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
Follow Aisholpan, a 13-year-old girl, as she trains to become
the fi rst female in twelve generations of her Kazakh family to
become an eagle hunter.
EXPANDED SHOWTIMES
ADULT $8 | STUDENT $7 | SENIOR 62+ $6 CHILD age 12 & under $6
5:05*
SULLY
5:35
7:40
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
11:00 11:20 1:20 1:40 2:15 4:10
4:35 7:00 7:30 7:45 9:25 10:10
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20th CENTURY WOMEN (1/20) • OSCAR SHORTS 2017 (2/10)
LA LA LAND • PATERSON • NERUDA
JULIETA • I, DANIEL BLAKE • THE RED TURTLE
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MOONLIGHT
11:00 2:00 4:30 7:00 9:45
NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (FINAL WEEK!)
11:10 5:10 10:30
COMING SOON
JACKIE
ELLE
THINGS TO COME
TONI ERDMANN
OSCAR SHORTS I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO
HACKSAW RIDGE
MAGNIFICENT 7
LOVING
7:10**
9:25
9:35
*NO SHOW 1/6 **NO SHOW 1/11
Jan. 13-15, 19-22, 26-28
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eugeneweekly.com • January 5, 2017
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