It’s hard to explain why certain movies move me to the point that I have regular urges to see them again. Why waste time on an old movie you’ve already seen when so many great unseen movies are available with just one click on Amazon Prime?
La La Land is one of those films that still has a hold on me. I just watched it for the fourth time, and it probably won’t be my last.
There’s one easy explanation for my fixation– I’ve grown to love this town, with all of its warts.
New York City was always my first choice when I was a kid in Montreal dreaming of America, but fate brought me to the City of Angels, a sprawling metropolis that feels positively sleepy compared to the electricity of Manhattan.
You can feel that electric vibe in hundreds of films and TV shows that have used Manhattan at the world’s greatest movie set. From the films of Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen and countless others, a “New York City movie” was a badge of coolness. No one can forget West Side Story, Taxi Driver or Serpico, not to mention Eyes Wide Shut.
Films set in Los Angeles have had their own alluring appeal, as directors like Paul Thomas Anderson and Michael Mann have shown. I’ve seen a whole bunch of them, many of them that I’ve loved.
But there’s something special about La La Land.
La La Land is not a crime thriller or a film noir classic—it’s a musical. Just as the West Side Story musical fit seamlessly on the gritty streets of New York City, La La Land, somehow, found a way to fit seamlessly in a city where you have to drive 20 minutes to get anywhere, often in traffic.
La La Land brought out the iconic jewels in that urban sprawl and married them to a story of dreams. The shots of Mulholland Drive under a golden light, among many others, have a beauty that matches any I’ve seen in other great musicals.
That might be the key word: beauty. La La Land conveys a raw, authentic beauty for a city no one would ever describe as beautiful.
But there’s a deeper reason why I can’t stop watching the film. It confronts us with one of life’s mesmerizing questions: what comes first, love or ambition?
The two protagonists are both dreamers with big dreams. That’s why they’re in LA.
The drama revs up when their dreams are ambushed by love.
What does one do then? What does one do when following your dream means you can’t follow your heart? How do you choose?
I won’t give the story away for those who haven’t seen the film. But I must add that the musical score transports you into the story in a way that holds your heart and doesn’t let go.
It’s quite a mix. Beauty in the images and the music, and emotional pain in a love story that makes you fall for the lovers.
We have many loves in our lives. We love our friends, our families, our community, our professions, our causes, our dreams.
But then there is that other kind of love— romantic love for a person that you can’t imagine being without.
Set in the City of Dreams, La La Land makes us confront the clash of individual dreams, those moments in our lives when one love conflicts with another love. There is an odd beauty in just the presence of two loves.
That may be why the film never gets old.
