La La Land

La La land is one of the best films in the new century, and it will certainly be in the forefront of classic song and dance films in film history.We may have seen some early comments on various occasions about how the film moved and how it made tears. However, we must not form such expectations. From a certain point of view, this expectation is a narrow understanding of La La La land. It seems that if the audience does not cry, it is a failure.

It is a great happiness to see a new film that can enter the ranks of film history classics. As a movie fan, it seems to have witnessed the birth of a miracle.There is no disrespect to say that "La La Land" is "conventional", but the stereotype here is not a derogatory term. On the contrary, the stereotype here is a more profound commendatory word.

It can be said that the classic movies are stereotyped. The stereotype here does not mean that there is no innovation, no new creation and no development in the art form. The stereotype here refers to the classicality on the "motif" level.

The theme of La La La land is simple: dream and reality and love.This is one of the most common motifs in literary works and film works, and the reason why the motif is called the motif lies in its eternal attribute.Dream, reality and love are the core (conflict) of human's real life and emotional life in any era, and they are also the secular dilemmas that can never be explained and the Tao is not clear.

"La La Land" has a strong mystery plot. The audience who are familiar with Hollywood classic song and dance films in the 1950s and 1960s will find the shadow of many classic works in the film. The director Damian shazeler also admits that this film is influenced by many classic old-fashioned song and dance films. The most influential one is that Jacques Demi captured the golden palm's "umbrella of thurburg" in 1964.

La La land has an unparalleled visual beauty. To a large extent, it relies on the excellent display of color matching and space scheduling. The costume colors between actors and actors, the colors of actors' costumes and the surrounding environment have been carefully designed.Emma stone's performance of MIA and her roommate at the party sets the tone for the color matching of the film: four passionate girls, the blending and collision of red, yellow, blue and green.——A short paragraph pays homage to some classic song and dance films: grease in 1978, West Side Story in 1961 and melody of life in 1969.

There are also many scenes, such as streets, billboards, alleys, apartments, cafes, restaurants, etc. the color must be in line with the protagonist's dress (from head to toe), and also implies the protagonist's state and mood at that time - not simple and lively colors corresponding to lively emotions, but on the contrary, to achieve the effect of rendering and highlighting.

This method, as early as more than half a century in "the umbrella of thurburg", in the use of color, "thurburg's umbrella" is simply the pinnacle, the role and the surrounding environment are perfectly superimposed and contrasted, almost every scene has an ingenious, whether conspicuous or not color matching.It should be noted that every song and dance film attaches great importance to the costumes and costumes of the actors. When they are in the state of singing and dancing at any time, the colors on these costumes will also have rhythm, which will add to the whole scene.

La La land has an old school style. From jazz elements to various retro style props, there is an interesting detail: except for the mobile phones used by Sebastian and Mia, there are almost no 21st century elements (almost, not absolute). The opening of the film with very strong color saturation (Sebastian's car is also a retro model) makes it hard to imagine that it is the present,There is a kind of trance back in the 1960s and 1970s.

This old-fashioned style connects la la land with the classic song and dance films in the history of film. We can easily see the influence of the umbrella of thurburg on the film in terms of story and color processing. Here, the story of the umbrella of thurburg is also very conventional. The two young people who love each other are separated by war, and the girl is waiting for her sweetheart to return,Reality forced to marry others, and then the boy came back, things changed, leaving only sadness.

The classic Hollywood love film "broken blue bridge" and the Soviet Union's great poem film "flying wild geese in the South" are almost all similar story patterns.Not to mention last year's Woody Allen's "coffee commune" is also a hypothetical love tragicomedy, full of regret and sentimental beauty, but also a variety of jazz elements - "La La La Land" resonates with all kinds of masterpieces. On the surface, it is conventional, but actually rises to the level of "motif".

On the plot of Sebastian's love affair with classical jazz in this film, the way to show his "forgetting his original intention" is that he joined a pseudo jazz band which was once disdained and has undergone modern transformation, performing a new type of kitsch and frivolous jazz.——In another literary film, set out again, Keira Knightley's boyfriend "betrays the music dream" by adding disgusting electronic elements to the new song.This kind of similar detail processing once again shows that there are some connections between good works. At a certain advanced level, they are all the same.

The love story of La La La Land and the umbrella of thurburg share a common motif with the above-mentioned classic love films, which is "beauty of regret".Life is full of regrets, after which there is a kind of sad beauty, like stones from nowhere, breaking the ripples of life from time to time. This is not chicken soup, but the cruel truth of life."La La Land" only boldly uses images to realize this assumption: if we were together at that time, what a beautiful picture it would be today.This hypothetical plot has also become the climax of the film, and it is also the heart breaking point of the movie fans.

In Hollywood classic song and dance films, there are basically such scenes: in an uninterrupted scene space, the protagonist uses a series of superb dance movements to perform acrobatic singing and dancing performances, and have interesting and ingenious interactions with pedestrians, ready-made goods and props in their hands, and sometimes even some circus juggling to entertain the audience.——There are a lot of such scenes in the dance with me in 1937, song in the rain in 1952, caravan team in 1953 and sweet girls in 1957.

The dazzling long shot group singing and dancing scene at the beginning of "La La Land" has been inherited from the "acrobatic dance performance" of these classic song and dance films, Ryan Gosling and Emma stone, and the great immortal Fred Astaire (especially his works,In this film, it can be described as a pattern of homage), Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Audrey Hepburn have a resonance across time and space.

Not all musical films have dynamic camera movements. For example, the scenes in "music in the rain" and many classic song and dance films are in fact fixed positions. In an open space, the actors are allowed to play and then switch the lens of different positions. However, the lens head movement of "La La La Land" has made more patterns and innovations, and the use of motion lens is very free,Let the whole film surging with continuous beauty.Many scenes also directly use the approximation of "remake" to pay homage to the classic movies in the history of film.

For example, Sebastian's red jacket is the "rebellion without cause" (homage to James Dean), including the dreamlike dance in the planetarium where the film was shot.The hypothetical paragraph at the end, dancing in the starry sky, has traces of 1940 Broadway Melody 1940 and 2001 Moulin Rouge.

——These are just a small part of the classic films that this film pays homage to or involves. A large number of phantom elements make this film have a psychedelic and surreal color. After all, Mia's coffee shop is located in the large area, opposite the famous window of Casablanca.Falling in love here, if you don't pay attention to it, it will resonate with the plot of the famous historical works, which makes the original conventional story of the film have a deeper light rhyme.

In addition to all kinds of fan film salute, entertainment is an important attribute of song and dance films (mainly Hollywood, for example, the umbrella of thurburg is obviously not this trend, here will not be discussed in detail). In the caravan team, Fred asnell's role is "entertainment", all for the purpose of entertaining the audience, of course, it is high-level entertainment, not entertainment.The entertainment of La La La land can also be said to be sensory, such as visual color, but it is not entertainment. For example, there is no juggling performance (in recent years, a large number of Hollywood song and dance films can not do without this kind of juggling, and Channing Tatum is very good at it). What it pursues is that the works of art generally focus on the cohesive and deep lingering effect.

Therefore, this film does not make people laugh, nor does it make people cry heartbroken. It aims at the classics of film history, demands itself with the standard of classics, absorbs and creates with classic nutrition, develops new independent stories in the common motif, and finally becomes a new classic.