La La Land is back on HBO. I know, it is a quintessential "stuff white people" like kind of movie (in fact, there is a great line from the short-lived FOX TV show LA to Vegas where a black flight attendant tells a white flight attendant he did not like the movie because he "did not need Ryan Gosling to whitesplain jazz to me") but I still love it. Less so because I care anything about jazz (I don't) but rather in the small moments that beguile me. The quasi meet cute at the outdoor party, Mia, recognizing Sebastian as having brushed past her months before right after he got fired from his Christmas-season piano gig, but now slumming it in a cheesy 80s Brit Pop cover band (complete with key-tar and multi-zip leather jacket) requesting I Ran and watching him squirm through the first verse. Their banter afterwards, "I was curt ..." "Curt?" and the rest of their romance.
It really is a rom com mixed with a musical with a dollop of drama. It captures the struggle that artists go through, the sacrifices we make for others thinking we are doing the right thing but not realizing what we are missing, how we often talk past each other and how our goals change. How we are often unkind to those we care about the most and how often that behavior is simply projection of our own insecurities. It is ironic that a movie that is a paean to Hollywood denies the thing we have come to expect - the Hollywood ending. The boy does not get the girl in the end. Each gets what they want (Mia, a fabulous movie career, a husband and a child; Sebastian, his jazz club) but they do not get each other. The alternate timeline montage at the end breaks my heart every time I watch it. The idea that there is some sliding door universe where Mia and Seb are together and parents and having an equally happy, albeit different future, is a poignant touch.
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