When La La Land came out in 2016, nobody quite knew what to do with it. A full-blown Hollywood musical, shot in widescreen Technicolor, with tap dancing and a jazz club and two beautiful people falling in love against the Los Angeles skyline — it won six Oscars and broke something loose in audiences that had forgotten musicals could do that. Then came the think pieces. Then came the people who decided loving it was embarrassing. The backlash arrived so fast it practically lapped the film.
A decade out, neither the worship nor the dismissal quite fits. What La La Land actually is — what it has quietly become — is one of the more honest films about ambition and romantic love that Hollywood has produced in a long time. It just hid that honesty inside a lot of pretty colors.
Continue reading
