*blows dust off of Weebly account*
Well hey, everyone. Long time no blog. So I finally saw La La Land last Thursday and was mightily impressed. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, great as always. Really catchy tunes (that I’m listening to as I write this), and some awesome design and choreography (except the lack of tap dancing left me a little disappointed). But I’m not going to go into a whole review here, ‘cause that’s not what today’s blog is about.
What’s been wracking my brain these last few days is how people keep saying that La La Land is marking the return of movie musicals, which is true in one sense and totally bogus in another. Critics and audiences are celebrating this revival, but I think the musical never went away in the first place. Instead, I believe (and hopefully you will too by the end of this piece) that it evolved, finding its place in different genres and modes of expression.
Generally speaking, people think of musicals in such restrictive terms. When they talk about what constitutes a film in the genre, they think it has to be the whole song and dance thing in the style of something like West Side Story, Oklahoma or any number of Gene Kelly’s movies. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore these classic musicals and I’ll always go to bat for them (I’ve had to be the sole defender of them a couple of times), but that’s not the only type of musical out there, cinematically speaking.
While these types of musical films faded from the public conscious by the end of the 1960s, the tried and true formula did not. For the last 80 years, Disney animated films have been a safe haven for the classic musical. Thinking about it now, it’s really interesting that audiences never acknowledged movies like Pinocchio, The Aristocats or The Lion King as musicals, but just as animated features. The relationship between music and animation has become so synonymous, that it’s basically expected to have characters sing somewhere in the course of one of these movies.
Animation lifted the restrictions of what characters can do or say whilst expressing themselves through song (“I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” from Lion King and “Dig a Little Deeper” from Princess & The Frog come to mind). The possibilities for more elaborate choreography combined with vivid set design and memorable songs made and continue to make animation a consistently reliable vessel for the musical genre.
Well hey, everyone. Long time no blog. So I finally saw La La Land last Thursday and was mightily impressed. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, great as always. Really catchy tunes (that I’m listening to as I write this), and some awesome design and choreography (except the lack of tap dancing left me a little disappointed). But I’m not going to go into a whole review here, ‘cause that’s not what today’s blog is about.
What’s been wracking my brain these last few days is how people keep saying that La La Land is marking the return of movie musicals, which is true in one sense and totally bogus in another. Critics and audiences are celebrating this revival, but I think the musical never went away in the first place. Instead, I believe (and hopefully you will too by the end of this piece) that it evolved, finding its place in different genres and modes of expression.
Generally speaking, people think of musicals in such restrictive terms. When they talk about what constitutes a film in the genre, they think it has to be the whole song and dance thing in the style of something like West Side Story, Oklahoma or any number of Gene Kelly’s movies. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore these classic musicals and I’ll always go to bat for them (I’ve had to be the sole defender of them a couple of times), but that’s not the only type of musical out there, cinematically speaking.
While these types of musical films faded from the public conscious by the end of the 1960s, the tried and true formula did not. For the last 80 years, Disney animated films have been a safe haven for the classic musical. Thinking about it now, it’s really interesting that audiences never acknowledged movies like Pinocchio, The Aristocats or The Lion King as musicals, but just as animated features. The relationship between music and animation has become so synonymous, that it’s basically expected to have characters sing somewhere in the course of one of these movies.
Animation lifted the restrictions of what characters can do or say whilst expressing themselves through song (“I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” from Lion King and “Dig a Little Deeper” from Princess & The Frog come to mind). The possibilities for more elaborate choreography combined with vivid set design and memorable songs made and continue to make animation a consistently reliable vessel for the musical genre.
Back in the world of live action cinema, aspects of the musical began to find its way into other types of films from all over the world, as filmmakers began to experiment more in ‘60s. The French New Wave resulted in some unique applications of song, dance and theatrical stage design.
Directors like Agnes Varda and Jean-Luc Godard (Cleo From 5 to 7 and Band of Outsiders, directed by them respectively) implemented song in a quasi-musical way. These moments, which you can see below, are done in such an effortlessly masterful way, adopting a traditionally Hollywood genre into their own experimental and endlessly watchable style.
Directors like Agnes Varda and Jean-Luc Godard (Cleo From 5 to 7 and Band of Outsiders, directed by them respectively) implemented song in a quasi-musical way. These moments, which you can see below, are done in such an effortlessly masterful way, adopting a traditionally Hollywood genre into their own experimental and endlessly watchable style.
In Japan, Seijun Suzuki’s 1966 film Tokyo Drifter was actually rewritten to highlight the talents of lead actor Tetsuya Watari, who was a singer. The titular song he sings is an important motif that appears throughout the film. As alluded to previously, the film has incredible set design that purposefully feels like the characters are on a stage, with very minimalist composition and striking lighting.
The musical mode continued to be expressed in foreign cinema well past the 1960s, continuing to today. Chinese director Tsai Ming-Liang combined full musical numbers with a bleak tale of poverty and death (fun times) in 1998’s The Hole. These moments serve as an escape for the characters, a way to cope with their miserable lives. The disjunctive nature between the quiet, morose and contemplative narrative and the musical numbers plays off of the surreal nature of musicals in general, albeit in a darkly comedic way.
But what about good ol’ American cinema, you ask? Well, the musical has been alive and well in our movies hiding in plain sight for decades, even within the last couple of years. Scenes like the dream sequence from The Big Lebowski take the Busby Berkeley style of dance and twist it in trippy and hilarious ways. The Coen Brothers in general have musical-like qualities to a number of their films, with music evolving naturally, complimenting their trademark style throughout movies like O Brother Where Art Thou. Granted, there are scenes where people play music on a stage, but there are also scenes like the one with the Sirens that use music to contribute to the bizarre and mythic tone of the film.
Even more recently is Spike Jonze’s Her, which has a number of moments that feel like a nuanced, tender musical. In a peculiar way, the pastel color palette and sci-fi setting totally compliment not only the beautiful romantic story but the music as well. The scene where Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) composes a song based on her day at the beach with Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is a brilliant riff on musical expression in the genre. clip. The more obvious take on movie musicals is the scene where the two play a song together, with Theodore on the ukulele. Like the best musicals, these scenes serve as a way to strengthen the relationship between the characters, exploring the way they feel inside and expressing it outward.
Even more recently is Spike Jonze’s Her, which has a number of moments that feel like a nuanced, tender musical. In a peculiar way, the pastel color palette and sci-fi setting totally compliment not only the beautiful romantic story but the music as well. The scene where Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) composes a song based on her day at the beach with Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is a brilliant riff on musical expression in the genre. clip. The more obvious take on movie musicals is the scene where the two play a song together, with Theodore on the ukulele. Like the best musicals, these scenes serve as a way to strengthen the relationship between the characters, exploring the way they feel inside and expressing it outward.
With all these examples, it’s hard to see La La Land as the return of movie musicals. True, it’s a return to a specific type of musical (the classic, Technicolor song and dance thang), but over time the musical took root in different genres of film, different cultures and through different modes of expression. People may think that musicals disappeared for the most part after the 1960s, but in fact they’ve been changing and reinventing themselves for decades, hiding in plain sight.