By Chris Nashawaty

La La Land

By Chris Nashawaty

Every once in a while, you come out of a movie theater feeling like you’re walking on air1walk on air 欢天喜地，得意扬扬。. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it restores your faith in the power of cinema. Damien Chazelle’s dreamy neo-retro2retro 再度流行的，回归的。musical La La Land is one of those rare films. It’s stunningly ambitious and thrillingly alive the way the best movies are. With just his third feature, it’s safe to say that Chazelle is a major American filmmaker. With 2014’s Whiplash, the sado-masochistic teacher-pupil drama, the writer-director seemed to arrive on the Sundance3指圣丹斯国际电影节。《爆裂鼓手》获得2014年该电影节最高奖评审团剧情片大奖及剧情片观众奖。scene fully-formed as an ace storyteller, turning a milieu that few moviegoer’s probably thought they could care about (jazz) into a tense and toxic viper’s nest of artistic ambition and sacrifice. But with La La Land, Chazelle also displays a mature sense of style and emotional depth far beyond his years. At 31, he’s precocious and confident enough to tackle a mothballed genre long thought to be corny, old-fashioned, and way past the point of resuscitation.

偶尔，走出影院时你会心情愉快。这种时候不多，但只要有，就会让人对电影的力量重拾信心。达米恩·查泽雷轻松悦目的新复古歌舞片《爱乐之城》便是这样一部少有的好电影。像所有佳片一样，该片极富雄心且活力四射。这仅仅是查泽雷的第三部作品，但说他是重要的美国电影人也毫无不妥。2014年的《爆裂鼓手》是一部描述师生间施受虐关系的剧情片，在圣丹斯国际电影节崭露头角时，编剧兼导演查泽雷俨然已是炉火纯青的讲故事高手，他把可能几乎无人关注的爵士乐圈变成了紧张刺激、负面彰显的恶人群，这些人满怀艺术抱负，甘愿为艺术牺牲。不过，影片《爱乐之城》还展示了查泽雷超越其年龄的成熟风格和情感深度。31岁的他老练自信，足以把一个无人再碰且早被归为老套过时、难以复兴的电影类型驾驭得风生水起。

[2] An unapologetic love letter to the color-crazy song-and-dance fantasias of Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and classic Hollywood musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, La La Land stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling as two young artists struggling to achieve their dreams in contemporary Los Angeles. Stone plays Mia, a sunny, wannabe actress who barely gets by as a barista at a coffee shop on the lot of a Hollywood studio. Every day she takes a latte order from some undeserving ingénue and is a day closer to giving up. She’s inside the Dream Factory, but it remains just out of reach. Gosling is Sebastian, a jazz pianist whose traditional taste in music and stubborn idealism put him at odds with the century he finds himself in. He’d rather make it his way (alone with his vinyl collection) or not make it at all.

[3] The film opens with a bravura4bravura 精湛技艺。five-minute sequence on an L.A. freeway as cars are stuck in gridlock traffic—a prosaic enough daily frustration that Angelinos know all too well. But Chazelle turns the cacophony of honking horns, tinny radio music, and cell phone chatter into something unexpectedly lyrical and poetic. One passenger in a yellow polka-dot dress begins to sing an upbeat ode to California, then gets out of her car and breaks into dance. Before you know it, all of the other passengers in the cars around her are joining her until the 105 turns into an explosion of pure sunkissed joy. All of these people trapped in their own private compartments of annoyance joining together in one synchronized leaping, singing communion. It’s a hell of5a hell of 极其，非常。an opening gambit. But it tells the audience right off the bat what to expect—two hours of blissful shoot-the-works exuberance.

[2]《爱乐之城》是写给两位前辈的一封赤裸裸的情书：一是雅克·德米色彩艳丽的歌舞幻想曲《瑟堡的雨伞》，一是好莱坞经典歌舞剧《雨中曲》。影片讲述了在当代洛杉矶为实现梦想努力奋斗的两个年轻艺术家的故事，由艾玛·斯通和瑞恩·高斯林主演。斯通饰演米娅，一个怀揣演员梦的阳光女孩，在好莱坞片场一角的咖啡店当服务员，勉强维持生计。每天都会有个故作纯真的女孩找她点一杯拿铁，而她每天都离放弃更近一点点。……