Pondering "La La Land"?

Sweet, my first opportunity to really type away on the new forum.

I can only talk about what I loved about the movie, so I'll just dive right on in and do that. What I found so refreshing about the movie was the tension between the sentiments of old-fashioned musicals with the contemporary postmodern school of thought, or to put it another way: how to continue dreaming in a world that chastises dreamers for being unrealistic. Yes, many films cover the issue of dreams, but while many other films are about a dreamer overcoming a set series of obstacles to accomplish a goal, this film is more about the dreamers having to weather the storm as literally everything is an obstacle kicking their ass. And it chose to do so in a musical, fittingly enough, a fantastical genre that is largely out of fashion for being too ridiculous and even in more modern incarnations is often infused with postmodern senses of irony and cynicism.

The central characters have fallen for an illusion of what their lives could be but have had trouble actually fulfilling such ambitions for different reasons. In Mia's case, she's been to audition after audition with no success amidst a bunch of women in identical uniforms and mindsets. For Sebastian, he's passionate with his ideas on jazz to the point that he struggles with any compromise needed just to keep a steady job; he's frustrated with the process while still wanting the end goal and the longer it goes with no progress, the more hopeless it seems. And that's a big part of the attraction between the two of them: they are in a similar place of having their heads hopelessly in the clouds while reality continuously seems to be telling them that they won't make it. The only other thing they've got that's positively reinforcing their fantasies and pushing them to continue to pursue their passion is each other, and for me that's more than enough to totally buy their relationship.

The juxtaposition of old-fashioned wish fulfillment with modern compromise and cynicism is built into the fabric of the film itself. The first half ending with the lovely planetarium sequence is all classical Hollywood right down to the iris out, setting our characters up for an awesome romantic journey where they'll lean on each other to fulfill all their dreams together into a wonderful happily ever after. Then the second half happens and there are no more elaborately choreographed numbers, no dancing among the stars, and the tone is a lot less "Another Day of Sun" (itself having its sprinkled moments of melancholy) and a lot more "City of Stars." The characters are going further than ever to accomplish their dreams, and with that comes the natural inclination towards guarding your emotions if it doesn't turn out the way you hoped. Mia is working on her own one-woman show, putting herself entirely into something to get herself more exposure and finally be able to stand out among the other would-be actresses out there. Sebastian is part of a poppy I-guess-jazz-can-technically-be-anything band that he doesn't really care for, but it's successful and he's finally a part of something that puts him out there and people enjoy. His ties to the band do provide a bit of a strain, though, as his notions of owning his own club have fallen to the wayside as he plans to just ride out the fame of the band, trading the passion nobody but Mia seemed to care about for an idea of success. When Mia questions him on this, his insecurity shines through as he gets defensive and escalates it into a full-blown argument. He ends it with his own verbal jab at her needing people to like her to become an actress, hitting at Mia's own insecurity regarding whether or not her show will work out. Shortly thereafter, we see Mia's show totally bomb with a tiny audience that didn't seem to care for it all while a fairly dour Seb stuck around for a photo shoot he didn't want to be in because it was the easier thing to do. When she could have used his support that he fully displayed earlier, he wasn't there and now that her biggest risk failed she's hurt enough to give up on the dream she's had since she was a kid and go back home in defeat. Seb, meanwhile, is now disillusioned with his dream of owning a jazz club, not enjoying the success of a band he doesn't want to be part of, and has lost Mia.

Holy fuck, I need to hurry this shit up. One phone call later and we can cue the big gesture for him to go after Mia not because he's trying to win her back, but because he's trying to reinvigorate her own passion. Once that's finished, he tells her that she needs to do everything she can to pursue what she really wants to do and assures that he'll do the same; after all, what initially brought them together was that they were each pursuing a passion that seemed utterly foolish. Boom, years later, and they both seem to have accomplished everything that they set out for at the beginning of the film only with the added fact that they did it separately, a slight subversion of audience expectation but one that feels plausible. There are trade-offs to following one's dreams that may not jibe with the compromises it take to maintain a healthy, loving relationship so why should we expect the characters to have it all? Hell, even in the grand dream sequence that shows us a happy romantic fantasy that we expected, Sebastian doesn't have his club so there's still a little bit of compromise that seems to be preventing them from having it all. And who's having the dream sequence: her, him, or both? Personally, I go with the idea that it's a mutual dream sequence and the reasoning for Seb not accomplishing his dream in it is because in some way he's happier with pushing Mia towards her dream than accomplishing his own. He got in the band to financially support them and reassure Mia that he's working on a career, he went out of his way to find her when she went back to Boulder City just to get her to an audition, and he's the one who said that she needed to go all-out to be an actress and said he had to do his own thing presumably so that his lack of a career or progress on his own dream didn't serve as a distraction. Still, regardless of whose having that ending fantasy, the point is that there's still the romantic notion of what could. They've persisted through the cynical attitudes and very real obstacles to hold on to some flights of fancy, though in this case they can still be happy for each other in the mess they made.

Great response! And don't worry about length, I'm willing to take any and all thrown my way in its defense. Definitely make good points about the plot, but they pretty much came off obvious to me while watching the film. Didn't really feel any of it was necessarily subtextual. Kind of ties into how I felt the screenplay was pretty by-the-numbers to many films of the rom-com genre - only Chazelle goes a not-so-happy direction with it toward the finish line (or more, I should say, bittersweet than cynical). 

However, everything you claimed about its being a musical (thus old-fashioned concepts clashing/paralleling with the modern) is an interesting viewpoint. Most musicals - even ones recently - are focused more on setting their stories in decades prior (Moulin Rouge; Chicago; Nine), but they also apply modern concepts to it by being a bit anachronistic. 

I'm more frustrated over the film not necessarily doing anything reinvigorating to the genres its influenced by. I can't really see what the story is telling, but its ultimately about what point its trying to make that hasn't been made before. A list of dozens of films can be applied to doing similar concepts. 

I mentioned Across the Universe, and I'm also not a fan of it (La La is better, for sure) - but they're both films with thin stories touching on similar romantic notions, glossed up in musical setpieces that are technically well-executed. Only La La Land doesn't act as a full-out musical in that essence. 

I don't think La La Land is trying to do anything within the musical genre that hasn't already been done by Jacques Demy or other more contemporary musical directors.  The fantasy vs. reality of dreams, the role of Hollywood as a "dream factory" clashing with the logistics of its functioning, slight subversion of romantic expectations, the modern film techniques such as the impressionistic sweeping camera and high contrast color palette, the lack of complete cynicism is novel in this day and age but not in general (which is refreshing for me, hip cynicism has been played out).  Really, the only thing somewhat original is that the film has it built into its structure that one half is more classical musical and the other half is not, but while I really like that choice it isn't terribly original to have the film's structure be part one genre and then another genre later.  Originality isn't much of a concern to me, though, so much as the film's vision and how it approaches that.  I'm totally cool with a film adhering to formula (my 2015 BP was The Force Awakens for crying out loud) so long as it does it well with sincerity and hopefully with some degree of energy, charm, and an understanding of why the conventions work.  And La La Land did that for me, to put it quite simply.  Everything it said about the pursuit of passions, the ideal lives we create contrasted with the reality of our situation, and how drive can turn into delusion and then become total disenchantment (though it then upholds the values of dreamers to counteract the postmodern conventions) felt honest and hit me in a pretty personal way given my current existential dilemma.  Perhaps, as David Foster Wallace once talked about, its act of rebellion isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, but risking the yawn for something that could be called old hat, sentimental, unsophisticated, etc.  And for me, it worked like magic.

You mentioned Across the Universe, a film that covers some similar themes but in comparison feels so inauthentic in its catering to some teenage wanna-be artist mentality with shots like this and lines like this.  Throw in some trying-but-not-really-clever surreal dream sequences and a fairly rudimentary use of Beatles music, and it's the Tumblr classic that came out a tad too early.  This isn't entirely relevant or pertinent to the discussion, but I just don't really care for Across the Universe and felt like throwing that out there.