(Note: This article may contain spoilers)
“Here's to the hearts that ache.
Here's to the mess we make.”
- ‘Audition (The Fools Who Dream)’, La La Land
On a 70 mm screen, love looks larger than life. Sighs of young love look ravishing in technicolor, obstacles appear intimidating in surround sound and everyone expects a happy, satisfactory end and a long walk into the sunset.
“I’ll always love you.”
Sitting on a park bench, Mia (played by Emma Stone) tells Sebastian (played by Ryan Gosling), and he responds with a sardonic “You know I’ll always love you too.”
Both Mia and Emma appear to be characters from a different era, stuck in 21st century Los Angeles solely on the strength of their dreams. He is a jazz pianist, fiercely passionate about its history, only to realise that the kind of music he wants to play is heard by only 90-year-olds. She grew up staging plays with her aunt, working as a barista at a cafe in the Warner Brothers’ lot and being rejected in one audition after another.
But when they fall in love, they do so quickly and unabashedly. There’s no ‘should I text him first?’ conundrum of modern love and no ‘we-don’t-yet-know-what-we-are’ dilemmas. Mia and Sebastian’s love plays out in modern LA, is entangled in messy ambitions but is unafraid of being romantic.
As an exasperated Sebastian asks his practical sister, “What’s wrong in being romantic?”
“That’s the window where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman used to look out from.”
An excited Mia tells Sebastian as she shows him around the Warner Brothers’ plot right at the beginning of their relationship. The reference to the 1942 movie Casablanca is not incidental. Just as Rick and Ilsa swear eternal love but are forced to hold on to the memory of Paris; Mia and Sebastian too must choose between eternal love and their dreams. And towards the end of the film, when Mia walks into Sebastian’s jazz club, one can almost hear Rick saying “Out of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine..”
Chazelle takes a risk with La La Land by making us invest so heavily in Mia and Sebastian’s love and then gently reminding us that sometimes love needs to slowly bow down to everyday hurdles. It reminds us that even though Mia and Sebastian’s love may not get a happy ending, they will always love each other — and ‘always have Paris.’ (Or Los Angeles)
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land is a musical, but at heart, its a jazz performance. Raw, spontaneous, full of conflict and unforgettable. The songs in the film are not an artifice as it is in some musicals, but seamlessly blends with its characters and their moods. Linus Sandgren’s luminous frames are in tandem with Justin Hurwitz’s scores; each note scored and each frame shot with unflinching love.
La La Land has got seven nominations at the Golden Globes 2017, including the Best Director gong for Chazelle.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)