Admittedly, the husky voice of the minor key song that is so prominent in the trailer had me whistling to the movies; but much to my regret, the melody flattened out along with its melancholia throughout the screen performance. By the time the film had ended, I knew that all these mourning tones and gaudy pictures had betrayed me into a trap of smug Hollywood and our monopolized mainstream culture.
We are on the topic of Damien Chazelle’s film La La Land (2016). Although there are numerous reviews buzzing with appreciation for the movie, needless to mention its many Oscar nominations, I would like to stick my hand up in the air in this provincial corner of the Netherlands to raise some two-fold words about this cinematographic experience (for it really ought to be seen on the big screen).
First, consider the bones of the plot. It is wintertime, we meet at a highway in a “hot and sunny day in California”. There is a traffic jam, and it takes merely seconds until every stranger has stepped out of their car and dances wildly between the vehicles and sings about their American dreams. This is the onset of La La Land’s central theme: individuals seeking to fulfill their dreams in Los Angeles. After this soundtrack introduction, we catch our first sight of protagonists Mia and Sebastian. They too are stuck in the traffic, she in her car paying no heed to the moving queue before her, he in his car right behind honking with hostility because she won’t move.
All she wanted to do is practice some lines for a casting, as she is in the making of her career as an actress. All he wanted to do is listen to jazz tapes on his way home, as he is a pianist who hopes to open his own jazz bar one day. By hazard, they encounter one another time after time this season, start fancying one another, and eventually fall in love. Their relationship lasts throughout a spring and summer of color and music; autumn brings a sudden dip. Both their careers start to take an upward spin, but one has to move around the country while the other is bound to Los Angeles. This gives way to difficulties and a growing awareness that they cannot compromise the pursuit of their dreams for the other’s company.
There is a time leap; we jump five years ahead to see a successful Mia with an anonymous husband, child and nanny. The New York-based couple leaves their five-star L.A. hotel suite for a night out, and coincidentally stumble into a bar they find to be Sebastian’s finally-realized roaring jazz club. The couple sits down, Sebastian tickles the ivories on stage, and what follows is a five-minute sequence that represents the fusion of the former lovers’ imagination during the piano play. It is an alternative vision of the present, where Mia and Sebastian manage to stay together, and all is sublime. Any spectator who believed that, to this point, he has seen all of La La Land’s extravaganza is mistaken, as the theatrical flamboyance of this scene is at its climax. But Sebastian’s song finds an end, and with it their momentous love story.
Let us consider the film from the angles of two different types of audience members. The sensation-seeking cinemagoers who regularly slouch into the theater for a highly recommended screening take a seat. They would revile any dry plot summary, for what they experience in the theater is markedly more. They see a nostalgic and yet modern-day montage that is lofty with vigorous dances and loud visuals in yellow, red, blue, and green. They understand the film is embedded in the romanticism of days bygone, not only because the protagonists make a fair amount of references to Ingrid Bergman, Hoagy Carmichael, and Charlie Parker.
Details like the pomaded hairdo of Mia’s initial boyfriend, or the revival of the polkadot all contribute to the movie’s old-fashioned flair. The eye will notice that Mia and Sebastian’s taste in clothing and furnishing establishes how different they are in character. The girl wears all the bright dresses, her facial features are constantly in motion; she is clumsy but vivaciously charming. The guy is by all means her contrast, dressed in smart beige-toned apparel and living in what could be a reclusive old gentleman’s jazz refuge. La La Land also offers scenes for hard-core romantic souls, as when the protagonists waltz from an observatory into the universe, scurry through a painted Parisian film set, and finally dance onto a frozen Seine beneath a black light-bulbed canopy.
Yet the sceptics among the rows of the movie theater find themselves slightly irritated while watching the film. If they don’t feel like the La La lifestyle is looking down upon them, they will however shake their heads at contradictions and inconsistencies in the story. Does a little dance suffice for two strangers to fall in love? The neat principle of cause and effect is often completely ignored in this easy fantasy world. When, for instance, Mia sits in a restaurant with a date and hears what she refers to as Sebastian’s “elevator jazz”, she has the sudden epiphany that she would much rather sit in the movies with Sebastian, and runs merrily off in his direction. This is Hollywood, and there will be no regretful scene from her turned-down date.
For a large part, there is no character development of the mains. Despite their grittiness, the protagonists never undergo any emotional turmoil, even when it seems like they cannot realize their ambitions. Since the movie’s plot claims to center around the two protagonists’ professional aspirations, it is astonishing how under-emphasized their efforts are to get to the positions they rise to by the end of the musical. This whole issue of the out-of-touch storyline decorated with cliché and gilded characters results in the worship of the very world it seeks to unravel. While La La Land may please our senses, it is a Hollywood-caliber love story that does not deliver greater intellectual depth – and the somewhat untraditional ending cannot distract from this fact.
Mina Jaff, Class of 2019, is a literature major from Germany.
