Here's to the Fools who Dream (La La Land, in review)

     There are few movies that have come out in recent times that I've thought about as much or as deeply as I have about La La Land. At first glance, I really knew almost nothing about this movie other than the fact that it was a musical. I was actually even more confused by the beginning of it, as it starts out in black and white until it says "presented in cinemascope," so I thought it was going to be set in old times, maybe right whenever movies started being made in color, but then the whole opening scene is people sitting in a traffic jam in modern looking cars, so I got even more confused. As the movie progressed on, I was more and more confused as to who made this movie and what it was even about, to the point where the film reached its climax, and more so when it ended, I wasn't even sure that I liked it. Was the singing good? Kind of. Was the dancing good? It was pretty good I guess. The score is actually excellent, but the story really left me feeling confused. In the days, weeks, and months afterwards, it made me think a lot, which eventually led me to the conclusion that I liked the movie a lot. There was something about it that grew on me over time, and though I've only seen this movie twice, it still sticks in my head as one of the most inspiring films I've seen in a long time. This is a movie all about following your dreams, and it has encouraged me to follow quite a few of mine, to be honest. We'll touch on that and more today as I talk a lot about the movie that almost won an accidental Oscar for best picture. Also, I have to give a big spoiler warning here, if you haven't seen the movie yet, please go watch it before reading this post! I highly recommend it, because I talk about basically the plot of the entire movie and I don't want to be responsible for ruining this movie by reducing it to the most simple elements possible and breaking it down for you here!

Localized, yet could speak to anyone anywhere

    As suggested by the name, this movie takes place in Los Angeles (L.A. or La, which took me longer than I care to admit to figure out), and I feel like many people who have talked about this film have referred to the city itself as a character. This is somehow a love letter to the overpopulated home of red carpet premieres and celebrities, but it is also much more than that. Although the movie literally is in this city, and many of the landmarks and buildings are obviously meant to appeal to people who have been there and fallen in love with the landscapes, as someone who has never been to LA, I found the themes and ideas way more compelling. The cinematography is beautiful, as you can see, and I hope I don't sound disrespectful to some of the gorgeous visuals that were captured in this film, I feel like there's just more to it than just that. Mia is an aspiring actress who moved to this area to hopefully get her big break, along with many others, of course, and she finds out that it's a lot harder than she was prepared for. When the movie starts, she has already seemingly faced rejection again and again for many parts, and is instead working at the Starbucks store on the Warner Bros. lot. Sebastian, a jazz pianist who also apparently felt the siren song calling him to this "City of Stars," hoping to get a solid gig and to eventually make enough money to open his own club. In his first real story moment, he's working in a fairly classy restaurant as the pianist. The only problem is that he wants to be a real artist, working on works of art and composing some pieces himself, but the owner (J.K. Simmons) wants him to just play Christmas music like the patrons want to hear. Sebastian gets fired from his job when he trails off and begins playing one of his original pieces, and he begins having to play smaller gigs to make money. These two characters, our protagonists, are set in their goals, but both have a hard time actually fitting in to the mold of their competitors who may be more successful in their fields than they are. In Mia's case, she wants to be known more for her actual talents instead of who she knows, or who she's dating. In Sebastian's case, he doesn't want to sell out and play what's popular, even though that will get him much more money than he gets from playing gigs, or even what money he would get from opening a jazz club. These two characters are just trying to make it in the often-cruel world of L.A., as many people do every year, but their plans are somewhat sidetracked when they meet each other.

Turns out that relationships are a lot harder than playing jazz.

    Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) meet at a party and bond through a flirty musical number, then have a lot of random encounters as they run into each other in different places. They get closer and closer and eventually begin dating as they share with each other about their different dreams, perhaps best put in the scene where the song that Sebastian had been singing earlier in the movie as a solo then becomes a duet, with the lyrics slightly changing and becoming more about love than dreams in general that they want to come true. The love story between the two of them is beautiful and extremely well orchestrated (I promise I'll come back to the score soon, I just have to mention it), but ultimately the movie is not about that. It is about relationships, and the importance of them, but there are many different interpretations of the situations in this movie. Both of them seem to ultimately get a lot out of their relationship beyond just the basic "being in love" perks of sunshine and rainbows. Sebastian gets some much needed support with someone who believes in his dream, potentially even more than he does, as she even gives him an objectively better name for his club. Mia, on the other hand, gets the respect and encouragement of someone that also cares about her dream, though he is seemingly more realistic about her chances of hitting the big time, especially later on. Mia decides that she wants to put on a one woman show to prove to the world that she has what it takes to make it in this industry, even without the backing of someone bigger to help her make her way, and Sebastian fully supports her idea, as he clearly sees how talented she is. All of these wonderful visions of dreams and their date to the planetarium where they dance through the stars in a magical vision of life ultimately begin to fade however as money begins to creep in.

    All throughout the movie, Sebastian has been talking about one of his colleagues who sold out to the popular music industry and is now rich and famous because of that, but he and Mia both scoff at the gross practice of selling off your ideals in order to achieve financial success. This continues until Mia is talking to her mom one day, and her mom asks something to the effect of "When is he going to get a real job to support you both though?" I don't remember how long into the relationship this is, but I'm going to say that they've been dating for quite a while and share an apartment for this conversation to make sense in context, but just know that this is the spark that lights the beginning of the end for their good times. Sebastian decides to take his former friend (John Legend) up on the offer of playing piano in his band because it will get them more money, and will allow Mia to quit her job at Starbucks and begin working on writing a one woman show that she's been dreaming of. Sebastian knows what Mia is potentially giving up for this relationship with him, and decides that he needs to work harder to make things good for her. Of course, Mia assures him that she just wants them to be happy and for their dreams to come true together, but he knows that he has to do this professional gig. He spends a lot of time away and Mia misses him more and more as he continues to not listen to her and develops a swelled head from becoming famous and being on the road for months at a time. All during this, Mia is putting together a little one woman show for months and rents out the theater and everything, but almost no one shows up on the night. Sebastian doesn't even show up, and because of this, Mia decides to give up on her dream, and goes home to be with her parents. Things are as low as they could possibly be, and though Mia and Sebastian are basically broken up since he didn't show up to her play, sometimes things have a way of working out in the long run.

    Sebastian shows up to the house of Mia's parents to tell her that a casting director was at Mia's play and that she loved it and wants her to audition for a movie the next day. Mia initially refuses because she doesn't want to get hurt again and fears that she just isn't good enough to compete with others in the industry. Sebastian eventually convinces her to come back with him and come to the audition and she does a really good job, but she's still not sure about her chances, telling a story about her aunt who was crazy and dreamed all kinds of wild and ambitious things. The re-acquainted pair meet up afterwards and discuss their future plans, finally agreeing to break up so that they can tackle their own life plans. Sebastian knows that Mia is going to be a big star and he doesn't want to tie her down with his smaller dreams of running a jazz club, and with a proclamation that they will always love each other, the movie moves five years into the future.

The Epilogue: What did I just watch?

    Mia has two kids and a very nice house, as well as her husband, a man that we've never seen before, and they leave the kids with a nanny as they go out for the evening. The pair decide to get off the road before their exit because the traffic is too heavy, and get a bite to eat at a local jazz club. The jazz club is, of course, run by Sebastian and he's decided to use the name that Mia came up with for him, Seb's. Mia sits down with her husband, Sebastian sees her and decides to give a special performance of their theme from this movie, which quickly turns into the weirdest and wildest scene in the film. Essentially what you see on screen is a more romanticized version of the events of this movie, and there are so many different takes on what this means that I have to talk about at least a few theories. One that I heard a while ago is that this is essentially how an old Hollywood movie musical would play out, where the characters would do the right thing all the time, for example, we see Sebastian make it to Mia's play and he's cheering the loudest out of everyone in the roaring audience (as the seats are full here in stark contrast to real life where only two or three people showed up), and cheered her on all the way along. Sebastian turned down his old friend when he was offered the keyboard job with his band, along with many other things like this. All of the recreations and scenes are done with cheap looking props that could appear to look real on camera in a certain angle, but as the scene is filmed at a slight angle, we're able to see that the cartoony plants are just pictures drawn on plywood standees. There's a recreation of the bridge from the opening scene of the movie, which truly looks like it could have been used in a classic Hollywood musical. There is another  theory of what's happening here that I thought was interesting, which is that Mia is remembering all of these events and playing a little game of "What if" where every problem that their relationship had was glossed over. Even though this is a more idealized version of events, everything is just nice and sweet, but lacking the true beauty and emotional depth of what life is like, which they tried to portray in the actual events of this movie. The best example of this is when Mia and Sebastian are recreating the Planetarium scene. When it happened earlier in the movie, they were surrounded by actual planets and stars as well as a blue cloudy sky, but here the scene is represented by a swirl of white lights behind a black background, as if Mia can't recall the actual beauty of the scene when it happened, in the same way that classic Hollywood would try to create a scene like this. Regardless, as the scene goes on, we see that Mia gets her acting career off the ground and Sebastian goes with her to Paris, plays in a jazz band there, and then we hit the time skip. The couple sits and watches home movies of their children, and the events play out just like we saw at the beginning of this epilogue sequence, but with Sebastian as her husband. They pull out of traffic and go into a jazz club, and a pan around of the scene shows Mia sitting by Sebastian now instead of her husband. Sebastian finishes up the piece and is, in fact, sitting at the piano again, Mia is in the audience sitting by her husband. 

    Once the piece finishes, Mia and her husband are walking out, but she looks back up at the stage, where Sebastian is looking back over at her. They both look conflicted, but eventually they share a smile, as if to say, "Nice to see you again, and I'm glad you seem to be doing well." Mia leaves and Sebastian cues up the band one last time to lead the movie into the end. After seven minutes of the wildest visuals imaginable, the movie ends with this sweet shot of two people who shared a lot of their lives together and owe a lot to each other. Without Sebastian, Mia would have never gotten her successful big break as an actress, and without Mia, Sebastian could have ended up losing himself in the fame of his former friend's group, or at least would have named his club something stupid like "Chicken on a Stick." This is a deceivingly deep story, but it is also a musical, so I have to speak some about the excellent music and other elements of this piece.

The Production Elements!

    No musical would be complete without music, and while there are some very catchy and cute numbers in this movie, I think the score and the weaving of musical cues in and out of the narrative all throughout is brilliantly done. There are a few musical numbers, mostly towards the beginning of the movie, but all of them are well performed, even though our two leads (Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling) may not have incredible voices, they do a pretty great job here in my opinion. their performances are incredible and do a great job of conveying two people who are desperate to achieve their dreams, while also focusing enough on each other to make their chemistry work. They get a lot of the songs out of the way early on so that the score can lean in pretty heavily on those themes that are set up here, and they work really well. All of the songs (other than the song that is performed by the group that Sebastian joins, "Start a Fire") are extremely catchy and will get stuck in your head for a long period of time if you're anything like me. Not only are the lyrical works catchy, but the chillingly beautiful "Mia and Sebastian's Theme" leaves a strange mix of happy and sad emotions, much like this movie does all around. There are a lot of songs in here where on first listen, you think they're just typical upbeat pop songs, but if you listen to the lyrics, things are not quite as upbeat as you may think. In "Someone in the Crowd," for example, Mia's friends are trying to encourage her to come to a party and get someone on her side by whatever means necessary, and she comes to the conclusion that she doesn't want to have a relationship with someone just based on what she can get out of the situation. She leaves the party, which leaves all of the party people left behind to sing the chorus one more time with the camera spinning in such an insane shot even Baz Luhrmann was probably embarrassed. It sounds like a very upbeat song and it's a high velocity scene, save for Mia's little reflective moment in the middle, but many of the characters seem to be trying to talk themselves into the situation that they're singing about.

    It would be a crime for me to write all this stuff and not brag on the cinematography, as it is stellar just about every single shot, and that goes for the lighting as well. This is a gorgeous movie, plain and simple. On top of all this, it really is a love letter to classic Hollywood cinema, with a lot of references to old movies and specific methods that they used to utilize back in the day. My favorite touch is probably the way that the opening credits begin in black and white in a little box, then when the opening scene finally starts, it changes the resolution to wide screen and turns to color as "Presented In Cinemascope" appears just before the first song begins. So many choices in this movie are clearly references to the classic Hollywood films of old, such as the couple going to see Rebel Without a Cause on their first date, and then go to the planetarium which was featured in that movie. Now, I'm sure you're wondering why I've chosen to write this incredibly long and detailed post about this movie that is now about 5 years old. I'm getting to that, I promise.

Why the Self-Proclaimed Dreamer?

    There's something about this movie that really spoke to me in the days and weeks after I first saw it, and for a long period of time afterwards, I didn't know exactly what that was about. This movie truly is a story about following your dreams, and even ends up reading a bit like a tragedy, as the couple does break up in the end. If you look at it in terms of them following their dreams, however, our protagonists, both end up achieving their dreams, and in that way, it has a happy ending. It's bittersweet, certainly, but both of the characters appear to be doing well for themselves in the end. There's something about the way Mia says, "Maybe I'm just not good enough," as a reason for not wanting to come back to LA for the audition that really spoke to me. I've honestly not even started many projects because I was afraid that I wasn't good enough or that it was pointless to even continue on with it. The fact that the rest of the movie after this part goes pretty well for Mia made me a bit more hopeful about my own goals or dreams for the future, whatever those were/are. In a more hopeful note though, I liked the line in "Someone in the Crowd" where Mia says, "...Somewhere there's a place where I find who I'm gonna be, somewhere that's just waiting to be found." I've come a long way from where I once was, but of course, there's always room for more and more improvement. I've always been pretty good at writing, or my teachers told me so all growing up and throughout college, so it's something that I'd love to do professionally in some regard. I've always been pretty quiet about my dreams, unlike Mia and Sebastian, who practically wear their goals on their sleeves, even when they aren't actively working on them. 

    In the audition that Mia is practically dragged to by Sebastian, she sings about "The Fools who Dream," who are out there chasing their dreams even though it may not work out in the long run. As I said, I've been pretty quiet about my dreams for a long time, but with this blog, I'm slowly working towards the person that I'm meant to be, just like those fools who dream. Think of The Self-Proclaimed Dreamer as my little audition to show the world exactly what I'm capable of. Even if it took me a long time to realize it, this movie is at least somewhat responsible for the creation of my blog. I would like to close this post by addressing the people responsible for the creation of this movie. I know you'll never read this entirely too long post, but I hope my appreciation will come through in some small way. Everyone from the actors, the director and the whole crew, as well as the spectacular composer, lyricists, and performers that put together this bittersweet story, thank you so much. You've certainly made something for the ones who dream. I'm fortunate to count myself among those numbers, even if it's in a self-proclaimed spot.

    Thank you all for reading this, I really appreciate all of your support as I continue my little audition which has been going for over a year now. I hope my reasoning makes sense and I hope that you're able to enjoy this movie as well. I would recommend this to almost anyone, I know not everyone likes it, it's definitely not your conventional musical, but I feel like it's a really well made movie. Until next time, I've been your Self-Proclaimed Dreamer, and I hope you're able to make your dreams come true. See ya next week!