La La Lied

Introduction

This is my thesis on why La La Land is a bad movie on both a screenwriting and technical level, this will be broken down into different sections. I would also like to mention that this is being posted before the Oscars so I have no idea whether the film done well or had a Boyhood moment.

The Current State of the Industry

Its no secret that the film industry is currently in a bad state, the quality of films have diminished substantially over the past couple of years. The rise of the "Cinematic Universe" and reboots have been a source of this decline in quality. So within the darkness of Hollywood we do get some glimpses of hope, Star Wars Episode VII was an example of doing a reboot and a major blockbuster well and of course there have been some really good smaller films.

The majority of independent films are not good they are plagued with filmmaking problems, usually understandable problems but none the less they are still average films. The biggest problem plaguing a lot of films not just independent films is that of appealing to pretentious audiences and critics, this is a big problem. Referencing other films and the industry making the audience and critics feel important, the problem with this is the fact that it does not actually add to the substance of the film or filmmaking but makes the film and director/writer come across as shallow.

The solution to the problems are simply not to treat your movie as a way to show off your film knowledge and just make the best film you can. Keeping a film within the context of its universe is the key to having your film stand the test of time. So if filmmakers could stop referencing other movies in their own and just keep your films as its own entity.

The Art of the Comeback

As previously stated references need to stop in films, The Godfather never had a scene where Marlon Brando looks at the camera and goes "I could have been a contender" and then the audience claps because they get the reference. Its seriously a cancer than needs to stop in films, the sooner we get away from this trend the sooner we can start to enjoy films again.

Doing a throwback is different from referencing, a throwback takes a lot of skill to pull off, just look at the original Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark they are perfect throwbacks, using iconography and themes to then tell an original story and make a really good film. In recent years we have not really got a good throwback film, or at least a major blockbuster. The horror genre has been very good at the throwback film but we need a major Hollywood blockbuster throwback. La La Land could have been that throwback, and this could have been one of the best films of the decade. The problem is we got a film with references and not a throwback.

Musicals are a dying breed, the last big musical was Les Mis and to be perfectly honest it was a good film. Im not saying that musicals need to return in a big way but it could be a genre that could be great again. Making a throwback musical would require a lot of research and effort to craft a good original musical that has the feel of a 50's musical.

So why is it that the film feels nothing like a 50's musical? .It claims to be this throwback and a homage to the classic musicals, but the film it resembles the most is Xanadu. I find it weird that the people bringing up the classic musical argument has clearly never seen a musical made before 2000. It is clear that this film was made to appeal to a mass audience who would overhype it to hell, the film is nothing like a 50's musical.

Remembering Whiplash

Since i first saw Whiplash my opinion has vastly changed on it, i started out loving Whiplash and now find it a good film with problems. Whiplash is a very good first film, a breakout film and so i can understand there being problems, mostly filmmaking and screenwriting problems that come with a relatively new filmmaker. My biggest problem with Whiplash is the script, having Miles Teller be a vessel for Damien Chazelle to force his opinions onto the audience but we will discuss that further on. Overall Whiplash is a fine film to get your feet wet within the industry, but the minor problems with Whiplash were surely going to diminish over Chazelle's career.

New Year, New Disappointment

After 2016 the film industry needs to start improving and with the release of La La Land i thought that this could be a good omen for 2017 but instead it damn near killed 2017 for me. Luckily T2 Trainspotting, Lego Batman and The Great Wall are good films and already show that 2017 is better than 2016 but La La Land was a massive disappointment to me.

Chazelle - The Character

Now La La Land and Whiplash both have something in common, both the main characters are agents for director Damien Chazelle to express his opinions to the audience. Both Ryan Gosling and Miles Teller really like jazz and Damien Chazelle's screenwriting won't let the audience forget both of the characters constantly have to tell the other characters how good jazz is. It starts to become annoying because they come across as one dimensional.

In Whiplash, Miles Teller has a scene where he talks to the "normal" members of his family and has to explain why jazz is so important. This scene is only here for Chazelle to show off his interest in jazz. When Ryan Gosling started talking in La La Land i knew exactly what Damien Chazelle is about. Ryan Gosling has many scenes where the film stops for him to explain to the audience why jazz is so much better than all this modern music, especially the scene where he flat out says that the majority of 80's pop is not real music and how he is a real musician. These scenes are only here for Chazelle to come across as a deep filmmaker who has a passion for jazz and that makes him superior to us and i'm not standing for it. Chazelle also references himself at points with Whiplash being thrown out there a lot going as far as to include JK Simmons in the film playing essentially the same character, its not clever Chazelle it comes off as masturbatory and pretentious.

Chazelle also enjoys showing of his film "knowledge" in Whiplash its when Miles Teller went to see Rififi at a cinema, this is Chazelle screaming at the audience saying how he "knows" movies and then La La Land takes this to the Nth degree. The first instance is when we see a "The Killers" poster in Emma Stones apartment, Jesus Christ this just irks me so much, its clear that Chazelle wants the audience (and the academy) to know how good his film taste is. Ryan Gosling has an entire subplot where he feels compelled to explain to Emma Stone how she MUST see Rebel Without a Cause, this scene sent me into a rage in the cinema, its so clear that Chazelle is a very shallow filmmaker who relies on his "knowledge" to get by and lets be real his filmmaking technique is not that great which leads us to...

Chazelle - The Filmmaker

Chazelle is not the worst when it comes to cinematography or style he is just a film student with a budget. Nothing about his style is revolutionary and his quick cut edits of food need to stop. When watching La La Land you get the impression that Chazelle wanted to be recognised for the film making when a film makers goal should be to have really good cinematography and camera movement without drawing attention to it, this is the same problem i have with Birdman. Opening the film with 'presented in cinemascope" was also a pretentious way to open your film and a clear sign that he was pandering to the academy, it also did not help that his film in terms of visual flair looked rather bland. La La Land looks like those Nike or Adidas adverts that play before the film rather than a 50's musical.

So we have established that Damien Chazelle is a shallow filmmaker who resembles a film student more than an auteur, he is not the worst director working today, but certainly not Oscar calibre. Whip-pans by the way are nothing special.

Modern Times

This may sound petty but i feel that if the film was supposed to be a "throwback" why was it set during modern day. Having the film set in a contemporary time, especially now, only hinders the film and including many modern aspects like iPhone ringtones snap the audience away from what they are watching, the film making and screenwriting are very hypocritical with what Chazelle wants to preach to us. He has Gosling talk about how great jazz is and then have Gosling horrified at the fact that there is a modern edge to jazz but then makes a movie that feels like modernising something that should preserved as it was. This is one aspect of Chazelle that really gets under my skin, he is a hypocrite and the worst type of pretentious hipster film maker. The entire film felt like Will Smiths white dad in Focus, just awful dialogue that is supposed to come across as edgy but just seems silly.

The Film Itself

The film feels like a modern day interpretation of a musical by that i mean its very muddled and has direction issues and the end result is a bland mess. The music in La La Land is nothing special with only two songs in my memory those being City of Stars and Another Day of Sun, I don't enjoy either of them. La La Land also has a strange pacing issue towards the middle of the film where it slows down to explore the characters more and there is a lack of any musical number until the last 20 minutes. To me it felt like an idea more than a screenplay, Damien Chazelle wanted to win an Oscar and the best way to win an Oscar is to include content about Hollywood and also be a musical. As I said before the story feels like the story of Xanadu smashed together with Whiplash, the most interesting part of the film being the plot about Gosling wanting to open a nightclub, that would have made a far better film.

Lighting is the Key to All of This

This film looks awful, its an ugly film to look at, the majority of it is washed out and dull, the foreground and background constantly feel separated. Why is it a trend now for films to look less cinematic than they did ten years ago, it really makes me angry that La La Land gets all this attention and praise whilst looking like trash and a film like Silence gets little attention and looks stunning. People are stupid and it annoys me that its only a select few people that can see through this facade that Chazelle has. This film needed to be colourful and yes you can say that the costumes were colourful, but it is vibrancy of the frame that i am talking about. A dull image is a sin, how can we be in 2017 and have films that look like they are 1950's industrial movies.

In Conclusion

Overall i would say La La Land is not the worst film ever but it does not deserve the majority of the praise it has garnered since its release. This was just my thoughts on why i believe that Damien Chazelle is a shallow filmmaker and why i personally did not enjoy La La Land. We shall see how it does at the Oscars but i have a sneaking suspicion that it will be another Boyhood, expected to sweep but fails. I can only hope. Here is to a better 2017 and I wish you all a good Oscar night and do remember that they don't really mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

Written By
Ashley Harvey