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La La Land

16 February 2017

I could not stop but think about this movie. I am obsessed with it. I am obsessed about what it was about. I like the director since Whiplash and I have always thought that Whiplash is more beautiful than the Birdman. Because Birdman was surreal in a way that I did not like. It was not surreal like Marquez, it was surreal artificially. I am not a critic of literature or films. But I have to say a few words about La La Land and how it made me feel.

First of all, I enjoyed the music immensely. It had been a long time that I have listened to good jazz like this. And jazz is the only type of music that makes me feel lighter in this world. Other than that generally I feel quite heavy about the regimes, migration, refugees, life, family problems, future, money issues, ending friendships etc. But when comes jazz, life is different, it makes some kind of sense in a non-sensical way. It makes fun of life, takes the joy of life and gives it to you. I loved the jazz music and I especially loved the scene where he tells her about why jazz is so important and so special. (Although I had not understood all because I was watching the movie with Italian dubbing).

Second, I like the obsession of this director with failure and failing in life. He also was describing the fear of failure in Whiplash and how the ambition made this young actor forget about his family and his lover and give all he had to music. What did he do in the end? He tore himself apart. He gained the confirmation of his music teacher, maybe that was what he had lived for rather than enjoying music. Please see this explanatory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugCUhKj0jNg

Well, who said that one would not have the pains of a work that one loves so much! But well, in Whiplash the pressure was a bit too harsh. In this movie, La La Land too, there is the prospect of failure, dim lights, going back to one’s family, not being able to live up to a dream, and then comes the dreams realized and so many things sacrificed to realize these dreams, amongst them there is love again. If we think of the neo-liberal world of the post-1980s just think about how much competition our generation had to get into since we were six years old. I remember the first days of the primary school as the grimmest days of my life, almost as bad as the days that my mom died. Because those were the times that I realized ‘it is not enough to know but you have to show and shout that you know’. In our 80 children class, with all the cleverest kids of the town, I had developed an inferiority complex to a limit I cannot explain to you now. My life has been full of failures with work, with job applications, with PhD and post-doc applications, with rejections from other works, with rejections to be loved, with failed relationships, failed friendships and not understanding why and where I did wrong. I knew that as long as I did not put my whole heart into it, I would not be able to succeed, but in fact, even when I did put whole my heart and mind into something, there were cases where I was criticized and I failed. It is a tough world and we learn it sooner or later. The characters in the movie therefore, seemed familiar to me, for what they had done for reputation and passion and for their dreams and for becoming who they want to become. They are also good representations of our century’s people who follow their dreams, travel, take risks, and in the meanwhile can let someone special in their lives go.  

The problem is though, people let go maybe too easily for these big dreams. And all the characters realize their dream in the end. They just smile each other, and they say ‘I notice you have done it, congratulations!’ But well everything has a price.  

I remember the day I exited the university exam where everything lost its meaning. For two years I did not read proper poetry, I did not have a proper talk with my family, I did not have so much fun in anything, I did not have a boyfriend and neither did I enjoy life doing things that I like doing. I felt guilty when I was preparing for an exam, if I hung out with my friends. Life was like a tunnel in which you were searching for the light, and before you reach the light everything seems like there is no detail, there is nothing, it is dark. But in fact in that darkness there are all the relationships, faces of the people you love. But we do sacrifice them. And when you succeed there is this emptiness in your heart where you have not lived the moment constantly everyday and all those moments add up to each other and form an emptiness that cannot be filled. This is the life of someone, who has given up everything for the next dream and has sacrificed everything to reach this dream. The only problem is that it never finishes!

The third, as soon as we know someone, the love and energy that is at the beginning of the relationship, loses its charm and we take for granted that person, we just think that she or he will stay forever. Not only in relationships in marriages and even with our parents we do the similar s… We forget to put that little labour in things. Also in those hard times, if we cannot stand with the people we love, we just lose them. Because people do not become two to become one. They become two to become two. It is that simple. Times go by, the hair goes white, people get old, they become wiser and calmer, their jealousies cease, they feel stable and booom! There comes the surprise, all these loves we had in the past, all these non-loves that we could not have, all these interrupted relationships and we face the truth! It could have been in another way but it did not!

Another important point about the movie is this: it makes many references to the old movies and classics like the West Side Story and Casablanca. Even others maybe actually, that I cannot think of now. But I have really had a great two-hour experience in that movie, I thought that I had to go to the bathroom but I even forgot about it. It is not a typical Hollywood in-love-happily-ever-after-movie. But well, it is a good love story for the romantics and the jazz lovers.

Let’s also talk about other things. To give what it takes is what we need, but always individually. In West Side Story the love story would not be possible because of the conflicts between communities. This movie in fact is about more individual successes of the people without much support from any community or anyone that one can receive help from. Everybody talks about millenials and things in these movie but we should stop connecting these movies to millenials. It is not about millenials, it is about surviving as an individual, it is about the democratization of the world in terms of dreams, everyone can dream, in this way it resembles the Hollywood dream cliché thingie. In West Side Story love wants to overcome everything but it cannot because death comes. In here, love cannot overcome everything because individual pursuits and dreams overcome. So basically, despite being a romantic story it is also a very pragmatic non romantic story because the characters are totally witnessing amnesia when they look at the place they were before, the Planetarium, when they look at each other… so she asks: ‘where are we now?’. He says ‘I do not know’. We expect her to say “come with me to Paris” but it does not happen. We expect him to say, we should reconsider where we are! We should restart, "pleasestart again, I am ready now", but he does not say it. So this beautiful song of Tinder Sticks, cannot be realized in the movie. Their love is as short and inspirational as a classical piano song. It is that and this. But no more comes out of it.

Turning points, what if Emma Stone’s mother did not ask about his job and his prospects, would he have done that job for a regular salary? Being in a band and touring, he would not have much. No. So basically the turning point is not that we blindly follow our dreams. We create our dreams with different people we love and we follow them because we want to be true to ourselves. But we do define dreams when we are in love much better. Then when the charms are gone we continue because we are vain and proud and we want to show that we actually did not want the relationship more than the dreams.

People do not fall in love with each other because they see a future, they fall in love because of the special traits that their lovers do not have in anyone else: the way that one writes poetry, the way that one talks, the way that one is passionate, the way that one writes, the way that one is unique… having a regular good salary job is not a good reason to fall in love. One has to sell one’s labour till s-he gets what s-he wants. That is to sustain a family but love is something else as we know it. And when there is love there is constant instability and there is constant struggle. Because the forces of liberal capitalist nature are against taking what we want without paying for it. Because the forces of our world are weird: Even if we deserve something after all we have to fight for it. Because in the fighting process the economy will be able to self-sustain itself, we will have to make ourselves acceptable and flexible, we will try everything to keep the wheel turning. When we are doing this we have to be pragmatic, do you really have time to read poetry? Then you are not only lucky but you are down to nature and earth and you are true to yourSELF!