It was no coincidence that the last big release of 2016 was La La Land. A film about regrets. Every dying year is also essentially about that-- regrets. Just as every life folds within itself several lives that it isn't, every passing year too, is a chronicle of things that didn't come to be.
La La Land--a musical drama about heterosexual intimacy and its tragic demise in the face of worldly ambitions-- as it were, a lingering suspended chord that is unable to find its resolution (I can not resist this operatic metaphor since the Hollywood musical, as a genre, is deeply indebted to the Italian Opera)is fundamentally about loss and creating a redemptive philosophy out of regret. Sometimes slipping into downright sentimentality, almost routinely touching upon the formal imperatives of the genre every now and then, the film denies you the comfort of closure at the very end, like a true modern classic. With its ethereal visions of the 'What-If', La La Land is a detour through the miracle that is wired into the mundane, i.e the road not taken at the turn.
In commercial cinema around the world, wherever individualistic choice of upward mobility is brought into a polarized conflict with romantic fulfillment, more often than not minor and temporary compromises on the road to success guarantees the securing of both the laurel and the lady; the choices, as it were, are flippantly or leniently played around. The process is divested of its starkness. The guy takes one deep, long look into the weepy, blue eyes of the delicate girl in his arms and he happily throws away a high-flying career in business/ law/whatever- translates- as- ruthless moneymaking in cinematic shorthand. But then worry not, their sacrifices shall be rewarded and more than compensated-for at the end which is compulsorily feel-good: the normative/ procreative heterosexual couple must not perish in poverty on the streets of the town, paying for their youthful folly.
La La Land shows you the more serious and damaging effects of choosing success over 'happiness'. 'Happiness' in this sense is an inclusive idea that finds realization by positing the self in a mutually enriching conjugation with the other ( here a romantic other to be specific) as opposed to 'success' that is exclusively focused on the material betterment of the self.
To be 'happy' in this sense you have to surrender a crucial part of the self to the other, expose your most vulnerable core to the mercy of the other, surrender to the moment and wait for the transforming miracle that may or may not happen. You strip yourself of the defenses of reason, and commonsense, and wait to be overwhelmed by a divine un-reason.
The choice is risky. Terrifying. It can, and does, end in rejection, humiliation and the endless agony of having to watch the ideal die; and each time it happens, a part of the self dies too, beyond redemption, beyond resurrection. And yet, without this choice, we are dead. La La Land, if anything, lays bare that deep death of the spirit.
It encourages us to commit that awful daring,of a moment's surrender,which an age of prudence can not retract. At the end of the day, we are not rationally optimized systems, guaranteeing predictable outcomes, but unique consciousnesses surprised by our own depths. The way we articulate our rational consciousness is often, by going against reason; by making choices that are mired in the gore of self-wounding motives, confused and irrational the way a human can be. Not an ant or vole in heat.
The ending of La La Land is packed with such beauteous surprise. Like a knife suddenly stuck through your heart, it is unbearably beautiful. It is the pure enchantment of the counterfactual, the sublime play of fantasy unleashed, with a vengeance, into the quotidian. Its power makes you soar above gravity itself. The final, lingering gaze of the former lovers, with a vast physical distance in between, is a cinematic tour de force. The last shot packs in a lifetime's regret in a single moment, without a single word of dialogue being spoken.
Life after all, is lived in the detritus of such ordinary loves and losses: a word written with a quirk, a scent, a song, a certain way of starting a hug. Nothing momentous, but it is by this, and this only that we have existed-- not by the wills and bank statements we leave behind.
The final, somewhat complicit, glance of the lovers is what redeems this tale of heartbreak and failure that is intimate as well as epic.It is a fleeting resolution, after all, to the series of dissonant chords that the love-story degenerates into, after our heroine Mia, the struggling actress is stood up by her jazz- pianist lover, Sebastian on her debut night. Like an island of empathy, and consolation, it stands out in the choppy waters of sorrow and regret that is past repair. In existence surrounded by death, loss and separation the least we could offer each other is the momentary awareness of a truth that is far more enduring than the signposts of external reality, a recognition of an affection that extends far beyond the end of an affair, the acknowledgement of something inalienable that outlives the mortal and transient.
An year ends with regrets, ritualistically reminding us of things we could not get, the ones we lost to death and neglect. And like the year yet- to- be -born, life too promises a way of salvaging things out of the wreck of the past: if only we would dare to take the risk. Let's, for a moment, give compassion a chance instead of regret and hatred. Let's take a cup of kindness for old times' sake!
The cafe outside the theatre, in keeping with the valedictory mood of the year-end, was playing 'Auld Lang Syne' on it's sound system. Who says that life doesn't give you closure outside the text?
-----------------
Picture courtesy: https://www.fastcocreate.com/3063128/quick-hit/emma-stone-melts-our-hearts-in-the-new-la-la-land-trailer
La La Land--a musical drama about heterosexual intimacy and its tragic demise in the face of worldly ambitions-- as it were, a lingering suspended chord that is unable to find its resolution (I can not resist this operatic metaphor since the Hollywood musical, as a genre, is deeply indebted to the Italian Opera)is fundamentally about loss and creating a redemptive philosophy out of regret. Sometimes slipping into downright sentimentality, almost routinely touching upon the formal imperatives of the genre every now and then, the film denies you the comfort of closure at the very end, like a true modern classic. With its ethereal visions of the 'What-If', La La Land is a detour through the miracle that is wired into the mundane, i.e the road not taken at the turn.
In commercial cinema around the world, wherever individualistic choice of upward mobility is brought into a polarized conflict with romantic fulfillment, more often than not minor and temporary compromises on the road to success guarantees the securing of both the laurel and the lady; the choices, as it were, are flippantly or leniently played around. The process is divested of its starkness. The guy takes one deep, long look into the weepy, blue eyes of the delicate girl in his arms and he happily throws away a high-flying career in business/ law/whatever- translates- as- ruthless moneymaking in cinematic shorthand. But then worry not, their sacrifices shall be rewarded and more than compensated-for at the end which is compulsorily feel-good: the normative/ procreative heterosexual couple must not perish in poverty on the streets of the town, paying for their youthful folly.
La La Land shows you the more serious and damaging effects of choosing success over 'happiness'. 'Happiness' in this sense is an inclusive idea that finds realization by positing the self in a mutually enriching conjugation with the other ( here a romantic other to be specific) as opposed to 'success' that is exclusively focused on the material betterment of the self.
To be 'happy' in this sense you have to surrender a crucial part of the self to the other, expose your most vulnerable core to the mercy of the other, surrender to the moment and wait for the transforming miracle that may or may not happen. You strip yourself of the defenses of reason, and commonsense, and wait to be overwhelmed by a divine un-reason.
The choice is risky. Terrifying. It can, and does, end in rejection, humiliation and the endless agony of having to watch the ideal die; and each time it happens, a part of the self dies too, beyond redemption, beyond resurrection. And yet, without this choice, we are dead. La La Land, if anything, lays bare that deep death of the spirit.
It encourages us to commit that awful daring,of a moment's surrender,which an age of prudence can not retract. At the end of the day, we are not rationally optimized systems, guaranteeing predictable outcomes, but unique consciousnesses surprised by our own depths. The way we articulate our rational consciousness is often, by going against reason; by making choices that are mired in the gore of self-wounding motives, confused and irrational the way a human can be. Not an ant or vole in heat.
The ending of La La Land is packed with such beauteous surprise. Like a knife suddenly stuck through your heart, it is unbearably beautiful. It is the pure enchantment of the counterfactual, the sublime play of fantasy unleashed, with a vengeance, into the quotidian. Its power makes you soar above gravity itself. The final, lingering gaze of the former lovers, with a vast physical distance in between, is a cinematic tour de force. The last shot packs in a lifetime's regret in a single moment, without a single word of dialogue being spoken.
Life after all, is lived in the detritus of such ordinary loves and losses: a word written with a quirk, a scent, a song, a certain way of starting a hug. Nothing momentous, but it is by this, and this only that we have existed-- not by the wills and bank statements we leave behind.
The final, somewhat complicit, glance of the lovers is what redeems this tale of heartbreak and failure that is intimate as well as epic.It is a fleeting resolution, after all, to the series of dissonant chords that the love-story degenerates into, after our heroine Mia, the struggling actress is stood up by her jazz- pianist lover, Sebastian on her debut night. Like an island of empathy, and consolation, it stands out in the choppy waters of sorrow and regret that is past repair. In existence surrounded by death, loss and separation the least we could offer each other is the momentary awareness of a truth that is far more enduring than the signposts of external reality, a recognition of an affection that extends far beyond the end of an affair, the acknowledgement of something inalienable that outlives the mortal and transient.
An year ends with regrets, ritualistically reminding us of things we could not get, the ones we lost to death and neglect. And like the year yet- to- be -born, life too promises a way of salvaging things out of the wreck of the past: if only we would dare to take the risk. Let's, for a moment, give compassion a chance instead of regret and hatred. Let's take a cup of kindness for old times' sake!
The cafe outside the theatre, in keeping with the valedictory mood of the year-end, was playing 'Auld Lang Syne' on it's sound system. Who says that life doesn't give you closure outside the text?
-----------------
Picture courtesy: https://www.fastcocreate.com/3063128/quick-hit/emma-stone-melts-our-hearts-in-the-new-la-la-land-trailer
