“ La La Land: More than Chicken Soup for the Soul ”

Why La La Land soothes our psyches…

“La La Land” is running as a serious Academy Award contender this Oscar Season. With seven Golden Globes, five BAFTAs and 14 Oscar nominations, it may top all records or at least tie with “Titanic” and “All About Eve.”

Movies, called the “Seventh Art,” conjugate literature, theatre, photography, painting, music and dance.

What is it about this particular movie that moves people as opposed to others? What psychological mechanisms are put into play? Why do we react the way we do to some movies?

Something happens when we immerse ourselves in the ocean of darkness inside the movie theater and we enter into a very special relationship with its characters which transcends into our imagination.

Identification is the quintessential element. It is an imaginative process- experience in which a person surrenders his own identity and experiences the world through someone else’s point of view and through an alternative social reality.

Achieving this reaction is what makes this relationship so whimsical.

Successful movies actually project our own desires. Some movies establish a very powerful and unique connection with the spectator who identifies with the story being presented, creating a strong psychological bond. This double bond (spectator-actor ) is reinforced by mirroring each spectator’s own story with the one being told on screen.

On a sunny day, with almost glittering colors on an L.A.freeway, the film at first takes up from the angry Michael Douglas’s “Falling Down,” turning instead into a gleeful “summery” dance on and over car roofs, more reminiscent of “West Side Story.”

When Mia and Sebastian (Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling) pass each other in their own cars, they put in motion feelings that will remain until the very end.

Both protagonists are in their early 20’s, with their entire future ahead of them, at the gate of maturity, facing all of its challenges (dreams to accomplish and projects to be drawn). This is what Eric Erickson calls the entry into the stage of Intimacy vs Isolation. And in fact, as millennials they have not yet left behind the previous stage of ‘Identity Formation’ vs.‘Role confusion’. In essence, they are transitioning from adolescence into adulthood.

In a platonic way, they tap-dance, sing, love, quip, smooch,cry, until finally parting their ways. Yet, throughout all of this, they help each other reach their future goals and aspirations.

The movie is peppered with a few recurrent songs such as “City of Stars” and “Mia’s and Sebastian’s theme song,” sung with gusto and immense talent. The spectators find themselves joining in with their own inner voice and dance style.

Mia and Sebastian’s chemistry transcends the entire screen and soon we fall into that special trance where we are dancing with our own past. In a very bold final act of looking back with wistful regret (in an implicit “Play it again Sam”) they ultimately recognize that the road less travelled lies behind.

Oxytocin, that reputed hormone of love, flows all over the screen. Most remarkably, evocation triggered by the image on the screen has awakened our own hippocampus (our photographic brain chest of buried feelings) which then inundate us in a sea of neurotransmitters: Dopamine, Acetylcholine, GABA, Glutamate, Norepinephrine. This is the wonder of film: it affects us neurobiologically. How many times have we looked to experience that?

This musical is nostalgic and yet Baby Boomers looking for “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” or “Singing in the Rain” will not find them in this movie. Neither will they find Fred Astaire, or Ginger Rogers.

Instead, they will encounter a revitalized musical genre, adapted to this century. La La Land is not just a maudlin, feel good movie; it is more than an ethereal break. What will make this movie win Oscars and all other accolades is the replay of our lives catalyzed by stories like this.This is the irresistible magnetism of a romantic and yet a realistic movie.

As we face serious doubts and unclear present and future dilemmas, in a world of simplistic tweets and boisterous statements, the “seventh art” bequeaths us a balm, a chicken soup for the soul. The magic wand of the celluloid has generously done it again. It has allowed us to dance within our imagination, and has transformed this collective “Id” into our very personal, fulfilled or unfulfilled alternative life. It has allowed us to own this La-la Land, albeit for just a couple of hours.

Movies like this give authenticity to our own past, present and future dreams. After all, “This (la-la)land is your land and this (la-la)land is my land.”