A review of Chazelle’s “La La Land:” A dualistic view at his “inner self”
I was raised by film. Not on film; by it. My vivid imagination was tickled by images that came to life and presented a world to me, different than my own, but, nonetheless a world that coexisted within my physical reality. I could not conceive of the word “medium” nor did I want to sully the effects this medium had upon me by deducing it to such. Jim Carrey taught me how to contort my face into weird comical fixtures; Robin Williams taught me that it’s okay to not shut up if you have something to say (but to at least make it entertaining to watch), and Natalie Portman portrayed the older sister I never had, mature beyond her years, navigating this space called life before I would ever have to. To say I idolized these actors would be a misinterpretation; rather, I felt like they were my teachers, confidants, and friends.
In the wake of the beyond favorable reviews I read from people in the industry that filtered through my news feed, I was even more compelled to see “La La Land” than I originally had been after viewing the enigmatic trailer. I was transported to that place of hope in my mind where all my unrealized dreams would come true by watching this film; to think that I would be transported back to my younger self and escape into the imagination of someone else was romantic. I yearned for the innocent gaze upon life to be romanticized again.
I am not going to weave through the plot and offer my comparisons because there is a barrage of articles that have already accomplished this upon my behalf. But, I would be remiss if I didn’t also state my claim that as the curtain dropped, I groaned:
“I hated it.”
Many people have discussed the film’s ability to encompass the old Hollywood feel of cinema with the costumes, choreography, and musical numbers. Furthermore, they have discussed the film’s ability to capture the macrocosm of Los Angeles highlighting the self-referential jokes about the weather, traffic, and the industry.
A.O. Scott concisely described the film’s theme as “traversing through the ancient conflict between ambition and love.” And Chazelle does romanticize L.A. life as A.O. Scott suggests; but I realized that ultimately that wasn’t what I wanted.
I approached this movie with the wrong mindset. I thought I could escape into a world that I had once inhabited. I had once been an aspiring actress in Los Angeles; I had once written a pilot that I wishfully thought would be my springboard into fame; I had once struggled to pay rent, driving through town in a broken car, refusing to sell out and give up, while working as a cocktail waitress and living pay check to pay check. Therefore, I felt cheated; his aesthetically pleasing version of ambition versus love had distracted the audience from his dilution of all the parts in between. It even used an inter title of “five years later” to highlight the indecision over those ambiguous happenings for both characters together and separately; the mini failures, the speed bumps, the self-doubt, the negotiating, THE INEVITABLE GROWTH.
Therefore, I felt cheated by the glamorous portrait that masked the truth of the narrative; I wanted the pain and confusion. I did not want the Glee-ified version of Friday Night Lights. I wanted to see someone go through all I went through, and, eventually, come out on the other side, carrying not only pride and satisfaction, but also, humility; a humility that could only be shared with the person who watched Mia grow into what she had become. And, although there was a hint of that at the end, I was initially shocked at his choice to end the movie the way he had from the literal representation of Seb and Mia’s as a love story. And that is why I still maintain my own personal love affair with movies (despite the frustrated complication it sometimes brings); their ability to offer the perspective of the way one person conceives of life.
It was a reminder to my inner child that film is not objective. Film does not portray the truth. This chosen film was not a love story between two separate people; rather, it was in fact a medium that projected the writer’s inner feelings through two characters on a screen. Those two people — Mia and Seb — served as the vessels of the separate, dualistic parts of Chazelle’s inner self (If you do not already know, Chazelle attended Harvard as a jazz major but having pursued it as far as he wanted to go, switched to a film major. “Whiplash,” his first film that gained him instant notoriety, was in part autobiographical). Therefore, we can look at “La La Land” as the tribute to “Whiplash,” the past jazz self [Seb], whom he left behind in order to pursue the silver screen dreams of film [Mia]. It was the hypothetical manifestation of the past-self meeting the future-self and the realization that his experiences as Seb are what got him to where he is now.
This tension of ambition and love is there, but it represents Chazelle’s dualistic love for music versus his ambition for film. He is not the kid he used to be anymore; he is not the boy from Jersey who believes that owning a jazz bar is a large enough reflection of who he is, his talents, and his love for his craft. And, ultimately at the end, he says goodbye to himself; Seb performs an eerily soulful number of nostalgia, of all that could have been had he just stuck with jazz, but for as bittersweet as those memories may be for Mia (Chazelle’s current self), she got everything she ever wanted by not staying stuck in the past, and, rather, moving forward towards her loftier dreams in life: a career in “pictures.” He tips his hat to “Whiplash” and recognizes that those experiences, however painful they were, served as the springboard to his current, star studded life now.
And, when I look at it that way — as “La La Land” as a metaphor for his own life — I applaud him. I did not need to watch the five years in between; I did not need to see the growth. I understand now that you are letting go of those dreams that will never be, but you are grateful you had, because they led you to your present reality; a reality that you could not have imagined for yourself five years ago.
