As the title suggests here are some short thoughts about the movies which aren’t quite substantial enough for each to merit an individual blog posting.
La La Land and its predecessors
I’ve noted before that I fell into the trap of watching the movies I recommended as TV choice of the week on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle. I therefore re-watched a chunk of La La Land on BBC 2 a few months back, but ducked out after the hour mark. It occurred to me that when discussing it with Patrick Doyle I’d invoked New York, New York for its equally miserable ending, but somehow never even thought of mentioning Moulin Rouge! which undoubtedly has the most miserable ending of all three. I’ve been trying to puzzle out why that might be and I think it is because the ending of La La Land irked me. As Patrick Doyle said if you have people flying about a Planetarium then you have located the film as a fairytale and you can’t really go for a miserable ending then. New York, New York had been posited by Scorsese as a Vincente Minnelli musical done with social realism, and I opined that those two approaches were actually mutually exclusive, but there is no denying that with social realism a miserable ending does not jar so. I had actually forgotten how good La La Land was, such was the pall the miserable ending cast over the movie in my memory. When it’s good, it’s very, very good. The performances by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are of the first order, the comedy sparkling, the jazz wonderful, and above all it is a rare modern beast – a musical that does not apologise for being a musical but simply skips from one big production number to the next. There is a vein of nostalgia and romance which mixes sweet touches like Gosling walking past his car to spend more time with Stone with hugely impressive swooping long takes of choreography; especially in the bench at sunset sequence. But then it all goes to hell when it takes a dive into New York, New York territory of careerism and social climbing derailing romance. I think, much like Drive, it is the bait and switch that irks me, the end does not develop naturally from the beginning. But in Moulin Rouge! the madly over the top nature of the film, with its riotous comedy and exuberant romance, betrays the hand of an opera director (which is a sideline of Baz Luhrmann’s); so the death of Satine in the finale feels of a piece with what has come before – utterly heightened. And so I fondly remember Moulin Rouge! while somewhat resenting La La Land.
One Two Three: Stone & Gosling
I’ve been, lamentably, thinking about the contours of this cinematic decade after Paul Fennessy sprung on me the first Films of the Decade list we’ll be bludgeoned with this year. It occurred to me that one of the features of the first half of the decade, if you grant a few months’ grace, was the romantic chemistry of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart and of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. La La Land is the high watermark of the latter pairing, and one supposes the result of their two previous films together: the wonder of the 5 minute long-take bench at sunset sequence, in comic timing and choreography, only possible in part because they have established a working rapport. Gangster Squad is not a film that will be remembered fondly if at all, while Crazy Stupid Love seems to have undeservedly fallen from favour, but if they set up La La Land’s chemistry they deserve our thanks.
Talking Movies 