It doesn’t happen very often that you end up watching two films on one weekend where you don’t like the leads but still think the films will be good and end up gobsmacked because they are not just good, they are stupendous. Especially if both are throwbacks to films you’ve grown up watching. And it is even better when the movies are as different as an out-and-out war story like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and a larger-than-life romantic musical like La La Land. I was the lucky one at the movies this weekend and here’s what blew me away...
ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY
“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armoured space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy....”
When I first saw these lines in the opening crawl of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, I didn’t spare even a second to think about who those rebel spies who stole the plans were, and what kind of hell did they have to go through to get those plans.
Well, now I know, thanks to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and I feel horrible that I did not care before. And if that is not a sign that the film was great, then I don’t know what is.
A film that cares: In 133 minutes, the film made me care about all the people involved in the mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, not just Felicity Jones’s Jyn Erso, even though she is the protagonist of the film. Jones, like many reviews are saying, is great in the role, playing it with the right amount of bravado and vulnerability as she goes from being a sceptic of the Rebellion to leading a mission. But she is definitely not the only good thing about the film, else I wouldn’t be wiping copious tears when things seemed to go south for many of the characters.
Feeling the love: I love Donnie Yen’s Chirrut Imwe, the blind warrior with his unshakeable belief in the Force. I love his gruff and grizzly counterpart, Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), and their very married couple-like bickering. I love Riz Ahmed’s goofy Bodhi Rook, an Imperial pilot who defects to the Rebellion and proves to have immense courage when there is need. I love Diego Luna’s I-do-what-I-have-to Captain Cassian Andor, who has a moral compass even after being a spy for the Alliance and committing many heinous crimes. I love the fact that the woman is more courageous and a better fighter than a man who has been fighting in a war since he was six. And I love the fact that the man in question, who is used to issuing orders, makes no bones about following a woman with no credentials because he knows she understands it better than him.
Crushing on a droid: But the character I loved the most is the one without a heart, literally, because he is a droid. K-2SO, played through motion capture by Alan Tudyk, a reprogrammed Imperial droid who has the tendency “to say whatever comes to his circuit” and a predilection for quoting the probability of failure, was for me the standout character in the film. When you are emotional about a droid, you know that he has hit the right note. You are still the man, Wash (that’s for the Firefly fans)!
The fan-pleasers: Oh, I love the fan-pleasing moments, whether it is the mention of the Kyber crystals that lightsabers are made of, or the Yavin 4 Rebel base, or the old-school look of the film, or even the ridiculous things like gates opening with a pew-pew from the blaster gun. Then there is the grand entry of the man in black, and of course it’s Darth Vader I am talking about. That’s not a spoiler, we’ve seen he is in the movie from the trailers already!
Regular, not ordinary: But what I loved most about the film is the fact that this group of rebels, and a handful more who join in, are flawed and, well, very regular. There are no badass pilots with swag, there are no princesses protected by the Alliance and there are no Jedis with mind tricks and lightsabers. These are regular people who have to do things the hard way and make hard choices, but they are in no way ordinary and their extraordinariness comes from their determination and desperation to make a difference and to make every hard choice they’ve made matter.
A war movie: Because, unlike the films in the Star Wars Saga, Rogue One is an out-and-out war movie starting from the imagery to the feel of the film. There are always people calling the shots from a room and then there are those who have to execute those orders. There is no luxury of debating right or wrong for those in a battle, and often without the war the soldiers fail to justify how many lives their actions have cost.
What went wrong: What the film could have done without was the freaky CGI to get back people that would draw the cheers from the fans. Well, one of them ended up looking like the BFG and the other looked like she was wearing a mask. And these films have to stop wasting talent in sometimes small and sometimes unnecessary roles. Case in point: Mads Mikkelsen as Galen Erso and Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera. While the former played a role that was tiny and could have been played by just anyone, the latter was a role that could have been easily bypassed.
In conclusion: Most of the people who are heroes in the film are those that get overlooked in the rest of the saga — the pilots, the foot soldiers who die amidst the pew-pews — and I am glad that there was a film that made their stories count.
LA LA LAND
If you’ve grown up watching Fred Astaire romancing Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly dancing with Cyd Charisse on TNT, how can you resist going to watch a musical? Even though you are one of those very, very few people who don’t swoon over Ryan Gosling (my glands work just fine, thanks very much!) who is doing the singing and dancing and romancing. By the time the end credit rolled, I ended up feeling way more than I had bargained for.
That wow opening sequence: The prolonged shot of people of different shapes, sizes and colours, dancing with abandon while stuck in traffic on a sunny day is just gorgeous. That buoyant feeling carries into the film about a girl who dreams of being a movie star and a boy who wants to open a jazz club.
The heart-warming romance: Of course, as per formula, when boy — Sebastian — and girl — Mia — meet, sparks fly. And in a pretty aggressive, abrasive manner. Anyone who has seen them together (this is Gosling and Emma Stone’s third film together) knows they have chemistry in spades. They are just so cute together! I love it when she calls him George Michael just to hurt him. I love it when he is mean about wasting a pretty night on her. I love it when he comes to the cafe she works in and makes her go all aflutter. I love it when they go to see a film and oh-so-tentatively hold hands for the first time. I love it when she jives to his music at a jazz bar.
But most of all, I love the scenes where they push each other to go after their dream. When Mia performs her one-woman play for Sebastian, he tells her she should go ahead and do it. It is Mia who draws the signage for Seb’s dream club. And it is Sebastian who convinces Mia to go for that final audition when she is all but ready to give up.
It is an easy-breezy storybook romance full of innocence, magic and passion.
The passion: Whether it is Sebastian holding on to the bygone era with his vintage car and antique phrases or Mia’s love for the old movie stars or Sebastian and Mia’s love for each other, passion runs high through the film. My favourite moment? Sebastian’s impassioned explanation of how jazz is a misunderstood medium. You wonder if this isn’t the director talking about musicals that this film tips its hat to.
The grounding in reality: The film might have the grand romance of the musicals of old but it is a very modern tale grounded in reality. Mia is a barista going for auditions day after day, just like hundreds of others, a fact made evident by the girls all in the same clothes as Mia waiting for their turn to audition. Modern day conflicts play a big role and dreams clash with ‘being grown-up’ and taking responsibility. And passion and ambition clash with love too.
The visual spectacle: It’s beautiful with bright, bold colours and flights of fantasy. From the smoky club interiors to the sunny LA parties, from that moment in the Griffith Laboratory to the waltz through the what-could-have-beens in the end, it leaves you breathless. Watching Gosling and Stone waltzing through the stars makes you sigh.
The song and dance: From that spectacular opening number Another Day In The Sun which sets the tone for the film to that haunting melody Gosling plays, it’s music that stays long after the film is over.
The dancing doesn’t have the flair of Fred Astaire or Judy Garland but Gosling’s concentration and studied movements make the sequences more real, especially their first song-and-dance routine overlooking the glittering lights of LA where he sings about how the Lovely Night was wasted because he was with Mia and not someone special. I especially love how Stone takes out matching tap dancing shoes from her bag and then starts matching steps with Gosling, as if they know that they are in a musical.
The actors: Emma Stone as usual speaks through those big expressive eyes. She is stunning with all her passion and vulnerability laid out for everyone to feel. I still don’t like Ryan Gosling’s face or that annoying piece of hair that keeps falling on his forehead, but there is something poetic about him in this film that made me fall in love with him a little bit. I think that body clad in tight, white shirts and tailored pants might have something to do with it. I am not saying this in a lustful way, nuh-huh there are still no tingles, but it is sheer poetry.
The ending: I watched the movie with a smile on my face, sighed and stared in awe but it wasn’t until the ending that I had my breath knocked out. I seriously couldn’t breathe through the knot in my stomach during the last chapter (like the first one) called Winter, only five years later. You are left reeling thinking about choices and consequences.
With Rogue One, I howled my eyes out; with La La Land it wasn’t until the end credits rolled that I sat back and cried. And I promise watching it once is not enough.
The best two films I have ever watched in one weekend are.... Tell t2@abp.in
