Film of the Week: La La Land

Written by Antony Hudson and Sandra Hudson

This wasn’t just a film experience; this was an experience. La La Land follows Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress finding it difficult to find a solid acting role, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) a passionate jazz musician who wants to keep the art form alive. I was captivated from the beginning; the film is a true classic musical that proved it can still be done and that we need to see more in the future and what only added to the power it held was the originality. I have nothing against adaptations and sequels, but we need more original stories, and this is exactly what we needed to hopefully kick start a new wave.

Seeing the characters evolve over the course of the film, from being optimistic and not wanting to turn their back, to being broken and believing their dreams are too far away; as well as Mia and Sebastian’s relationship from the very beginning develop and grow was perfectly told. The film’s pace was perfect throughout. There were a couple of moments when I believed it was nearing the end, that I had sat through the entire 2 hour run, but then it kept going and I was happy about that, because if the film had ended when I thought it would, I would have been disappointed.

It's packed so much story into 2 hours, with stunning camera shots, incredible music numbers that took full advantage of everything it could. No song felt out of place and sudden, each and every song blended in perfectly, which allowed me to remain relaxed and calm as the story continued, showing me the lives of these two characters.

I never once thought they had rushed this or they had rushed that, the writer and director, Damien Chazelle’s camera work showed us exactly what we needed to see. He didn’t need to pack so much into one scene making it busy, or so little you were bored and looking for stuff, instead he put precisely what was needed to move the story forward just enough. It’s all about quality not quantity, which is shown in the story itself and as a whole. Mia’s play had a small audience, however, it was who showed up that counted instead of the number of people; that one person in her audience helped her see her dream hadn’t died.

The transitions between scenes were flawless, if I praise this film any more I will be repeating myself. The music, both in the background and the foreground helped put depth to each scene. If, as this film implies that jazz is a dying art, La La Land goes a long way to help revitalise this genre

La La land has received a staggering 14 Oscar nominations, tying it with “Titanic” and “All About Eve”. La La Land deserves every single one. There will be some gigantic films in the Oscars this year, so it will be an intriguing watch on the 26^th February, and the odds of La La Land bringing home all 14 wins is, understandably, small, however if somehow it does manage to take each award home, it does truly deserve each and every single one of them. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling’s performances were absolutely incredible, flawless, and moving in so many ways.

Even though we’re still in the first month of 2017, and there are some huge movies coming out over the course of this year, I can already see that this has made my top film list of 2017, and I could go even further and say that this is probably sitting comfortably in the top 3. It would be weird to say that this is my number one film of the year, because it’s actually the first film of this year I’ve seen.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)