La La Land...review, well sort of..
Jan. 16th, 2017 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatHad the day off, so went to see La La Land thinking it would be an uplifting and inspiring fun film. I should have gone to Hidden Figures instead.
The movie theater was packed and expensive. It's $15.50 to see a matinee nowadays. I saw the film at 12:25 PM. I remember when it was $5. Actually I remember $1 movies.
Held the audience's attention throughout. We had a bunch of kids near us and they watched more or less compelled.
Singing in the Rain it's not, if anything it's a commentary and possibly a homage on Singing in the Rain and other musical films of the 1960s and 50s, and not necessarily a pleasant one. If you know anything about musical films, you'll pick up on the meta, if you don't, I think a lot of it may well be lost. So, in some respects it is film that rewards the film buff, more than the average film goer. Films it references include the Umbrella's of Cherbourg, American in Paris, Band Wagon, Singing in the Rain, Pal Joey...
The story is your basic tale of boy meets girl, boy and girl finally get together, but seem to mislay their dreams along the way, they break up, and decide to pursue their dreams separately. Each achieves them, but, it feels strangely hollow. At the end, five years later, they see each other again and there's a musical montage or dream sequence right out of Singing in the Rain, except with less dancing and singing, where they pursue their dreams together and end up happily ever after, but of course that's well..."La La Land", the reality is quite another story. She's a great actress, with a great house, a kid, a nanny, and a hubby, while he's the owner of a successful jazz bar, no the twain shall meet.
I found it to be a depressing, if informative, meta on our ego driven culture and our nostalgic view of romance and the American dream, all wrapped up in a nice candy-colored bow, yet in reality is just a dark jazz club, with a pianooist trickling the blues across the keys.
Both characters achieve their dreams, but seem hollow at the end. Their dreams but the clouds upon which they dance upon in a lovely montage at the California Observatory, which is why you sort have to see the film on the big screen to truly appreciate it. Their romance too feels a bit hollow at the core, something dreamed up by Hollywood, with a Monet Painting placed strategically behind it.
Neither character seems to care about much more than achieving said dream, although there are points in which they care about each others...and seem willing to put the other first, but this leaves them hollow and floundering themselves, it's not until they let go of each other...that they seem to realize their dreams. Making their romance seem to be merely a starting off point for two separate artistic careers that...from an audience perspective seem hollow and less than inspiring. Sure they are successful, but it is hard somehow to care.
There are two lovely tunes entwined within this - one sung by Ryan Gosling, "City of Stars" and the other by Emma Stone, which is about dreamers, hoping to accomplish, seemingly futile dreams. The second one made me, and those next to me cry. The wonder of the movies, is sitting alone in the dark laughing and crying with strangers. That is an experience one cannot obtain in one's living room with the lights dimmed.
It is a movie that sticks with you long after the final reel, that plays with one's head. When asked if it was a good, I had to pause..."yes, it is a good movie, but I'm not certain I liked it all that much. I found it to be depressing yet insightful in what it had to say about my world. A world that seems to care a bit too much about hollow dreams and accomplishments, and a bit too little about love, friendship and kindness."
When I stated this to a friend, their response was simply, that was shy the film is called "La La Land."
And in a way, the film's final meta-narrative on the 1950s and 60s romantic musicals is an apt one. That final musical montage showing how we want the romance of Mia and Sebastian to play out, is a nice homage to the musicals of yesterday -- the way we want to remember the 1950s and 1960s, as Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds musicals, where the hunky star, Gene Kelly sweeps the lovely heroine off her feet and together they shashay into the sunset living their dreams in bright rosy techno-color, no less. Except reality never quite plays out that way. The world is never quite as bright and shiny as the Hollywood movie musicals make it out to be. Debbie Reynolds marriage to Eddie Fisher was not the romance so many imagined, rip off the veil, and you see a junkie has-been singer, who cheats on his wife with her best friend. They didn't go off singing and dancing in the rain.
No, their romance much like Mia and Sebastian's ends with Mia accidentally stumbling five years after her parting with Sebastian, with her hubby, into a jazz bar and seeing her past love, Sebastian, trickle a tune across the keys of the piano, as what might have been dances across their eyes.
La La Land, indeed.
The movie theater was packed and expensive. It's $15.50 to see a matinee nowadays. I saw the film at 12:25 PM. I remember when it was $5. Actually I remember $1 movies.
Held the audience's attention throughout. We had a bunch of kids near us and they watched more or less compelled.
Singing in the Rain it's not, if anything it's a commentary and possibly a homage on Singing in the Rain and other musical films of the 1960s and 50s, and not necessarily a pleasant one. If you know anything about musical films, you'll pick up on the meta, if you don't, I think a lot of it may well be lost. So, in some respects it is film that rewards the film buff, more than the average film goer. Films it references include the Umbrella's of Cherbourg, American in Paris, Band Wagon, Singing in the Rain, Pal Joey...
The story is your basic tale of boy meets girl, boy and girl finally get together, but seem to mislay their dreams along the way, they break up, and decide to pursue their dreams separately. Each achieves them, but, it feels strangely hollow. At the end, five years later, they see each other again and there's a musical montage or dream sequence right out of Singing in the Rain, except with less dancing and singing, where they pursue their dreams together and end up happily ever after, but of course that's well..."La La Land", the reality is quite another story. She's a great actress, with a great house, a kid, a nanny, and a hubby, while he's the owner of a successful jazz bar, no the twain shall meet.
I found it to be a depressing, if informative, meta on our ego driven culture and our nostalgic view of romance and the American dream, all wrapped up in a nice candy-colored bow, yet in reality is just a dark jazz club, with a pianooist trickling the blues across the keys.
Both characters achieve their dreams, but seem hollow at the end. Their dreams but the clouds upon which they dance upon in a lovely montage at the California Observatory, which is why you sort have to see the film on the big screen to truly appreciate it. Their romance too feels a bit hollow at the core, something dreamed up by Hollywood, with a Monet Painting placed strategically behind it.
Neither character seems to care about much more than achieving said dream, although there are points in which they care about each others...and seem willing to put the other first, but this leaves them hollow and floundering themselves, it's not until they let go of each other...that they seem to realize their dreams. Making their romance seem to be merely a starting off point for two separate artistic careers that...from an audience perspective seem hollow and less than inspiring. Sure they are successful, but it is hard somehow to care.
There are two lovely tunes entwined within this - one sung by Ryan Gosling, "City of Stars" and the other by Emma Stone, which is about dreamers, hoping to accomplish, seemingly futile dreams. The second one made me, and those next to me cry. The wonder of the movies, is sitting alone in the dark laughing and crying with strangers. That is an experience one cannot obtain in one's living room with the lights dimmed.
It is a movie that sticks with you long after the final reel, that plays with one's head. When asked if it was a good, I had to pause..."yes, it is a good movie, but I'm not certain I liked it all that much. I found it to be depressing yet insightful in what it had to say about my world. A world that seems to care a bit too much about hollow dreams and accomplishments, and a bit too little about love, friendship and kindness."
When I stated this to a friend, their response was simply, that was shy the film is called "La La Land."
And in a way, the film's final meta-narrative on the 1950s and 60s romantic musicals is an apt one. That final musical montage showing how we want the romance of Mia and Sebastian to play out, is a nice homage to the musicals of yesterday -- the way we want to remember the 1950s and 1960s, as Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds musicals, where the hunky star, Gene Kelly sweeps the lovely heroine off her feet and together they shashay into the sunset living their dreams in bright rosy techno-color, no less. Except reality never quite plays out that way. The world is never quite as bright and shiny as the Hollywood movie musicals make it out to be. Debbie Reynolds marriage to Eddie Fisher was not the romance so many imagined, rip off the veil, and you see a junkie has-been singer, who cheats on his wife with her best friend. They didn't go off singing and dancing in the rain.
No, their romance much like Mia and Sebastian's ends with Mia accidentally stumbling five years after her parting with Sebastian, with her hubby, into a jazz bar and seeing her past love, Sebastian, trickle a tune across the keys of the piano, as what might have been dances across their eyes.
La La Land, indeed.