J Jagannath: Making it big

Watch 'La La Land' and 'American Honey' to understand it's not such a bad thing to dream big

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I  know I promised a best of 2016 list in my previous column but I can’t not write about La La Land, the most Christmas-y movie that needs to be watched by everyone. I wasn’t too impressed with Damien Chazelle’s wretchedly uneven albeit runaway hit Whiplash but his follow-up about a young, ambitious couple in Los Angeles warmed my cockles like Christmas mittens. The leads are Emma Stone as Mia, an aspiring actress with a day job of a barista, and Ryan Gosling as Sebastian, a jazz pianist who wants to open his own jazz club.

I am not an aficionado of musicals unless they get macabre like Dancer in the Dark or downright hilarious like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend but I have to make an exception for La La Land. Apart from an electrifying lead couple, sun drenched Los Angeles, Linus Sandgren’s sumptuous visuals that evoke Edward Hopper’s sensibilities, Justin Hurwitz’s music is swoonworthy. City of Stars, a piano-driven tune, is my most favourite track of the year.

Right from the opening shot on a crowded flyover where an impromptu sing along happens, Chazelle doesn’t let go of his Kevlar-like grip on the proceedings. Both the conflicts and banter between the couple are equally engrossing. Emma Stone shines in her role, especially when she goes to numerous auditions and nothing works out. Her infectious disposition is what raises the movie during its handful of what-would-have-been dull moments. Gosling does his Gosling thing as a jazz enthusiast who might come across as a pedant with respect to jazz music. The whole movie is leavened with intelligent humour and slice-of-life observations.

The scene where Gosling goes for a photoshoot as part of a poppy-jazz band is full-on funny. Or that scene where Emma Stone talks about Kenny G as a jazz maestro much to the chagrin of Gosling. The movie can be seen as a modern-day ode to the great American dream, not the one espoused by Donald Trump. The leads have a dream that with the right kind of discipline they can make it big in America, their humble background not mattering a whit. That leads the audience to the wrenching climax where our hearts are wrung out to tell us the unsettling truth of life: permanence in relationships is a zero-sum game.

Speaking of working towards a dream, British film-maker Andrea Arnold’s American Honey is a perfect movie if someone feels 2016 has been a terrible year, which it has been and wants quiet holidays. Debutant Sasha Lane as Star, an ingénue from Oklahoma, joins a team of teens full of delinquents and drug addicts ostensibly selling magazine subscriptions. She gets swayed by the cocky talk of Shia LaBeouf as Jake, the star doorstep huckster of this wolfpack. Arnold’s brand of cinema is the kind that threatens to get under the skin and stay there. American Honey is no different.

A still from La La Land

For 163 intensely hypnotic minutes at the Goa film festival, the movie feels like it wants to show us the America that conjured Donald Trump as the new President. If you need to know about the fermenting discontent among working-class America against the Obama administration, look no beyond this movie that travels along Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota. With a bunch of rookie actors, Arnold extracts performances that are achingly beautiful. Like La La Land, music plays a strong role. In their camper van, the teens have music as their solitary solace from a seemingly pointless existence.

Robbie Ryan’s camera work is exceptional. The Financial Times’ Nigel Andrews says right now he’s the best cinematographer in the indie cinema world and rightly so. His striking imagery with a busy, handheld camera evokes a home movie atmosphere. In a particular scene, a squirrel climbs up the head of a guy and I was glad to see Arnold harking back to her Fish Tank days.

As a coquettish 18-year-old who thinks she has figured out life, Sasha Lane is scintillating. Her bohemian outlook towards life comes to a screeching halt when she starts thinking LaBeouf has an affair with their exacting boss (a brilliant Riley Keough). Despite its unremitting grimness, the movie tells us that we should ask ourselves once in a while a big question, “What’s my dream?”
 

jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in