I want to preface some of the words that I’m about to write with the fact that I do very much enjoy LA LA LAND. I ranked it as #4 of my favorite films and think that it is a genuinely watchable movie that takes you up with it and really has spectacular timing and pacing, but I also want to highlight the way that LA LA LAND is almost so effortlessly entertaining that often is so to its detriment. That might sound like a weird phrase. How can something be entertaining to its detriment? Well, that’s where the concept of tonal dissonance comes in. The characterization of LA LA LAND creates dissonance.
The most unfortunate thing about LA LA LAND is that it often fights itself. The candy-colored sheen of its beauty is so actively engaging and entertaining that it shrouds the moments of flaws to its characters and creates a tone for the film that is much more fun rather than the somber character study that it seems to go for. To show this dissonance we will highlight moments that Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) have in the film. Let’s start with Seb. The first comes in his explanation of jazz in The Lighthouse Bar. He attacks the moment with passion, with defensiveness, and when confronted with the idea that jazz is “relaxing,” he fires back, “It’s not relaxing. It’s not, It’s not. Sydney Buchey shot somebody because they told him he played a wrong note,” (Chezelle). This is on one hand a funny line, but it also is incitefull to the character in front of us. Seb, for lack of a better phrase, wants to shoot somebody. Not in the literal sense, but in the passion of the moment, Sebastian could shoot somebody over jazz. Much of the way that the film frames his character’s defense of the art form is in a positive light (which in hindsight may be a flaw), but that’s actually not the reality. Sebastian seems to be a man in a mindset of over encompassing passion for jazz, so much that he actively is going to work against his self interest to do so. When Keith (John Legend) tries to explain to Seb, “How can you be a revolutionary if you’re such a traditionalist?” (Chazelle) he’s actually bringing up a good point. Sebastian really does need to stop attempting to die on this particular hill because it is not beneficial to the art of jazz, nor beneficial to Sebastian himself. If Seb continues to run in place with the art form, it will undeniably die. The romanticization of old jazz that comes with the light sheen of the movie almost starts to contradict this, with the drama being formed out of the dissonance. Unfortunately, the dissonance is still present eating away of the core of the movie. And the demise of jazz slow starts to come in the film. No matter how great Seb’s (Sebastian’s jazz club) looks in its success, the film explicitly tells us that this is not necessarily the case, the line in the film is, “Not too bad is great,” (Chazelle). This is the resignation that the club isn’t actually doing well, but Gosling is, which isn’t necessarily the best thing for him as the future goes on. Much like the film that he’s a star in, Seb is almost too passionate about his art of choice. Again, the framing is generally positive, leaving the audience to, at a superficial level, champion Seb’s success, but also at a deeper level, resent it. We know that Seb will never truly be free of his affliction toward jazz, and on one level he knows it too. Mia probably does as well, but her view of Sebastian is much more Romantic and romantic. This will keep him going and going until ultimately Seb’s closes and Seb himself is left playing his piano in his apartment again. I understand that this view is pessimistic, but there is evidence toward it throughout the film. Then there is Mia, who is ultimately successful, but in a way that seems superficial. Mia, as the film goes on seems to sink more and more into the superficial and almost empty emotions of the dreamers Hollywood that we are promised. The film in this way is almost trying to show us that the Hollywood that the dreamers of its opening number, “Another Day of Sun” sing of does exist, but it comes with a cost. Mia, by the end of the film, lives in a large house, divorced from the idea of Hollywood being a dreamers land. As the good man (Neil Gaiman) wrote it, “But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted,” (Gaiman, Sandman #19). Instead of living in a world a startling music numbers, she lives in a happier world of a family, but she still every once in awhile wants to escape back into the passion that fueled her earlier days as an actress. The final prelude doesn’t seem particularly about escaping back into just the love that Mia and Sebastian had, but escaping back into the idea that Los Angeles is a place of wonder. A place where dreamers can take part in a technicolor musical number. That place to Seb and Mia doesn’t exist anymore, and they can only return to it through each other. But the film never accesses the darker tones to its characters, necessarily. The film instead goes for an aesthetic drunk on the stylistic trappings of the musical work of Jaque Demy, and never seems to overcome that to actually turn into a film about the flaws of these people. The dissonance of the film is caused by the fact that as the film plays you can feel the inner depth of the characters fighting to break out of the aesthetic binding it together. It’s a good dramatic hook, but it makes the film harder to love with the sugar high passion it wants you to love it with so badly. I appreciate LA LA LAND. I think it’s a startlingly entertaining, beautiful movie, but it’s not perfect, in the way that it seems to fight its own depth by wanting desperately to entertain. Bibliography
0 Comments
“Ambient” may have first started out as a word that described a style of music, but it has seemed to move on to other forms of art. This often happens. If an idea or expression can be expressed very well in music, which while infinitely complex, is a building block of many other forms of art such as film, it can most likely be very well expressed in other forms of art. This can easily be applied to film for example. As I sat in the bottom hallway of my vast school discussing Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life with a friend, he mentioned that he didn’t prefer Terrence Malick making “ambient films.” This is a fair criticism. As Malick has drifted from his more “grounded” filmmaking, many have been very questionable of the filmmaking trend that has taken over him, with my friend calling it “boring” and nonsensical. Yet, what is ambience and what can it can do for a film?
Ambience, as described in the dictionary, is a form of art (well music, but as described above I’m pretty sure that term can go anywhere) with, “...no persistent beat, used to create or enhance the mood or atmosphere.” This is an excellent description of the late stage work of Terrence Malick. He’s become defined by the floaty cinematography that he seems to harness from Emmanuel Lubezki’s id form. Defined by the classical music that he easily understands can carry a scene more than even his actors can. Defined by the soft, nurturing voiceover of his protagonists. All of these factors define the ambient nature of his filmmaking of late and they all provide sufficient examples to why some will absolutely hate this style, but to those that can reap the benefits, these factors can provide an ever entrancing experience. Ambience can be limiting as it can put a limit on the audience's understanding of the characters (and let’s face it sometimes it’s just annoying), but that’s not the question that should be asked of these films. The question should really be what can this ambience do to expand on film and how the limitations of ambient filmmaking can make a better film. Again, as I’ve written multiple times, filmmaking is ultimately the craft of creating emotion for the audience out of thin air and ambience can do that in a way that many other films cannot. It immediately breaks down the complications of creating effective montage and story because by the nature of ambience there is not much of a story, no real persistent beat, just mood and atmosphere. One of the most emotional things about film is that mood and atmosphere and by taking away the weight (though it can be very useful) than an intimately structured plot can put on a film you eliminate a filmic barrier that is put between the audience and the emotions of the film. Of course, in some ways a deliberation of plot can provide a more emotionally honed experience, but there’s a freedom to ambience. Consider the overwhelming amount of filmic information that is taken in over Malick’s second most recent film Knight of Cups. There is some slight semblance of structure, as the main character moves through multiple women, but there’s more to it than that. Ambience, by nature, is confusing because it lacks some structure. This is replaced with a raw sense of reality though. Something special about the unfiltered jumble of images and music and whisperings that Malick displays on screen is that you never feel like there could ever be an actual film crew there. There’s an unfiltered emotion to even the little touches because it never crosses the mind that these pictures are manufactured. This is simply the world, as it is, emotion as it is, in all it’s jumbled and bipolar form presented to us on screen. In Knight of Cups for example the ambience engages the audience in the noticing of tiny details and lines all mixing in the personification of the dreamscape/hellscape of Los Angeles brought to life with such fervor in that film. The fact that Malick is progressively getting more and more cryptic over time is fitting in this context. He’s attempting to get closer and closer to the idea of pure filtered emotion with The Tree of Life blending both emotional and strong narrative features tapering to just emotional by the end, To The Wonder moving into less of a narrative, Knight of Cups using just a semblance of structure, and Song to Song moving into even more explanation of characters through ambience. Yet, his films always seem to be getting more and more emotionally true. In Badlands or Days of Heaven (Both great) I feel the manipulation of emotions detached from the characters, as with most films. I feel the hilarity, the sorrow of the story, but in The Tree of Life, To the Wonder… etc, I feel the characters emotions run through me, not just the emotions that the film wants me to feel and in that you can find solace, anger, and happiness that you could never have dreamed of. With that, I wish to leave you with a description of the best transition in any Terrence Malick film. There is no easy way to track it down specifically in the screenplay, but the moment appears at the start of The Tree of Life. The very first scene. A large celestial body of orange appears on a screen. Whispers are sent out from a man. Whispers put out in the universe. The screen fades to black. Suddenly, “Funeral Canticle,” starts to play and a beautiful image of childish innocence explodes onto the screen, joyous in her ignorance of the ever expanding grief of life and the universe. The moment is serene and happy and the ambience captures the moment with startling clarity. As we see the girl contrasted with the ambient imagery of the celestial body, we don’t just see the incredible happiness of her ignorance. We feel every bit of it. |
AuthorStephen Tronicek. Archives
July 2017
Categories |