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
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AuthorStephen Tronicek. Archives
July 2017
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