La La Land exists in a daydream world of desires of the future and influences from years before, cautiously infatuated with its own impossibilities. Nostalgia is inherently authentic, but it is also inherently inaccurate, effacing certain truths to create a warmer memory of the past. Like Sebastian's vague goal of "saving jazz", we too attempt to legitimize impossible myths, whether they be resurrecting a past that never was or pursuing a future that we have planned out already. But, more importantly, so many of us recognize the futility of the endeavor. Yet that acknowledgement still coexists with our human tendency towards nostalgia and dreaming, one which we are unable to truly sacrifice. And so, this simultaneous indulgence and awareness of artifice and myth comes to pass in what is the most indulgent and self-aware, the most artificial and mythic film genre of all. The American western was practically begging to be shot, hanged, and buried during the political hotbed of the Cold War. Now, another bygone genre gets a belated chance at the guillotine. Finally, fifty years after it had starved and perished, Damien Chazelle has recognized that the time has come to resurrect the American musical to give it a shot at being killed.

With La La Land, Chazelle demonstrates how we both can and cannot have our cake and eat it too. Its elegant self-contradiction is made apparent in the opening number, the camera moving through automobile gridlock like a hot knife through butter as dreamers leap out of their cars in a rainbow spectacle of individualist defiance, meeting the world's beat down with the battle cry of "Another Day of Sun." It is uplifting. It is impressive. It is glorious. But notice the lyrics they sing, how they choose ghosts of the past over present connections and compete in a game of “Who Wants It the Most?” Notice how other cars move in the background, apathetic to the dreamers' rallying group therapy. Notice how the number ends with the darkly humorous punctuation of everybody climbing back into their automobile, back into the reality of the gridlock, back into too many people being in the same place at once and each resenting the others for blocking one’s own progression.

It is equal parts the film's thesis statement as well as its summary, indulging in nostalgia, both formally and lyrically, before drawing attention to its own artifice and sending the characters crashing into reality. Many people have complained that the musical aspect of this dies once Sebastian and Mia get together, but the transition from song-and-dance kineticism to one-on-one calmness parallels the film's gradual settling into routine. Each number is smaller than the last, the ensemble evaporating as the romance grows to dominate the film. It's more intimate, and the emotional gut punches bruise harder because of the tonal shift. But Chazelle's mood ring abstraction of the city of Angels, which transforms it from Los Angeles to the dreamy La La Land (or: Los Angeles Los Angeles Los Angelesnd), does not die with the music. It pervades, always teasing the characters of the dreams they still desire. In its darkest moments, it feels as if the surreal landscape transforms into a nightmare of artifice. That Vertigo dinner fight feels real like how a lucid dream feels real.

But it wasn’t enough for Chazelle to make a musical that somehow builds off its own deconstruction; he also makes a damn good musical. Every single number is an absolute treat. "Someone in the Crowd" effaces its selfish lyrics through seduction and color, a brief moment of Mia's introspection digging into the hollowness of the party scene it labors to glamorize, and then exploding into a violent spin that blurs individual people into one collective haze of color. "Start a Fire" evolves from intriguing to divergent to full blown torment, though whether I'm supposed to interpret the song as bad is still a question mark in my head (as is most of Legend's involvement, but more on that later). "A Lovely Night" evokes the romantic pairings of classic Hollywood films while the one-shot technique makes each motion feel fluid, the flirtatious scene naturally evolving with each gesture that flows into the next.

It's difficult to think of the musical sequences without responding to two common readings I’ve heard, both of which strike me as entirely wrong-headed. Numerous responses that Gosling and Stone are "the next Astaire and Rogers" are entirely incorrect; these two are far from technically impressive singers or dancers. But on the other side of the coin, several of the film's more ardent critics argue that Chazelle should have hired people "who can sing and dance." But the duo’s imperfection is entirely the point, grounding the numbers in a more relatable, tangible plane. Though Mia and Sebastian exist in an artificial dreamscape, their performance styles are humbler and more grounded than their environment; I think I even heard Stone's voice crack a bit in "Audition.” They are not fantastic singers nor dancers, and yet they are still able to produce movie magic, their performance's realism somehow matching up with the surrealism of its context. It is yet another demonstration of the film's self-contradiction: the coexistence of mythic pastiche and an almost Bazinian approach to photography, the two simultaneously calling attention to one another, destroying one another, reinforcing one another.

I fully understand the frustrations with the movie’s post-racial whiteness, yet, though it is an ugly flaw, it is one that is demonstrative of the film’s own interests, an evident danger of fully buying into certain nostalgic myths. How fitting that the entrance of Keith, a black man, marks the beginning of the film’s collapse in artifice, and that he is the one to expose Sebastian’s self-proclaimed martyr/pariah status as both overdetermined and hollow. Sebastian craves to “save jazz,” but his mission is one that effaces certain hard truths. Legend’s vaguely antagonistic aura is a code that I’ve yet to fully crack, though I have hunch there’s something there. I do wish the film acknowledged race more deliberately, but the problems fascinate me in a way that enriches my current reading. The irony that a film about the falseness of dreams and nostalgia is entirely unaware of the problematic politics it has adopted from the past both enamors and terrifies me. It is its own cautionary tale. And, I mean, look at that diversity in the opening number! And Mia's roommates! And all the black jazz players! This is a two-hander starring two white people, but it's so incredibly diverse.

Moving into spoilery territory, the ending—gosh, that ending—blows up the wrestling match between artifice and reality into an ultimate spectacle: a reminiscence of lost love that waltzes from one obvious soundstage to another. The vision it posits is somehow both tragic and optimistic. Even if we achieve our dreams, we will always create new ones, always reaching out for something more. And we can pursue them, and even reach them once again, but some dreams are ultimately unattainable. They will occasionally contradict one another. They can exist in the past to which we can never return. And they are all fundamentally constructed, as artificial as the sets Mia and Sebastian dance across and as the film stock that Chazelle shifts to so effectively. The past didn’t play out exactly as we envision it in our minds, and neither will the future. And, as life progresses, we start to nostalgically dream about the past as much as (and perhaps, eventually, more than) we dream about the future. It is a statement as existentialist as they come, arguing for the existence of a fundamental dissatisfaction to the human condition that becomes more unfulfillable as we move closer and closer to death.

And yet, La La Land sees an almost utopian beauty to that. We can indulge in our dreams, but we must recognize that they are mere constructs and often blind us to truths. We can pursue those dreams, but they may not unfold exactly as we envision them to. We must always wrestle with self-constructed perspective and the unpredictability of reality, but the sheer act of wrestling, oscillating between both indulgence and skepticism, can lead us to happiness. This paradox, of mankind caught between artifice and reality, can never be remedied, but it can be recognized and lived with. Both characters are happy at the end of the film. Craving the past? Undoubtedly. Dissatisfied? A little. But, they are happy. And when the “The End” title card flashes across the screen of life, isn’t that what counts the most?

It is a ceaseless battle that fuels La La Land. Chazelle revives the musical for the purpose of killing it, but that murder then allows it to live again. A Schrödinger's movie, if you will, both murdered and born again. It seems that Chazelle is doomed to be mentioned in the same breath as the Sorrentinos and Iñárritus of the medium, part of the Evil League of Overdetermined Directors That Try Way Too Hard and Say Far Too Little and Win Too Many Awards, and maybe I’ll come to loathe him for his egotism, which is an undeniable element to his work. But La La Land is entirely his movie. Not only that, it may be the quintessential sophomore film—yeah yeah, it’s his third one, but, more importantly, it is the successor to his first hit—in that it’s practically a front row seat to watching Chazelle figure out what kind of an artist he’s going to be, providing far more questions than answers. It recognizes both the fundamental fakeness of art and our tendency to be absorbed nonetheless. It asks whether art needs an audience or can be great in solitude. It meditates on the personal toll of time, and how pursuing success—whatever that word means—also means leaving others in the dust. La La Land is a messy, confused, audacious piece of filmmaking, but it is also a genuine one, helmed by a director who is standing at a fork in the road. I cannot wait to see what path Chazelle goes down. The man is a born filmmaker, and he’s somehow managed to share his artistic process as a crowd pleaser for the books. He’s climbed the hills and reached the heights. What comes next?

Ranking 2016 (at #2)