We watched La La Land tonight – something that’s been on our list for a while now, and I’m glad we finally got around to it. I’ve NOT watched anything like it in a long time, and it’s good to have something that surprises all my horror / sci fi / adventure reflexes (it’s OKAY for them to walk out in the streets at night!) and it was beautiful to watch something that could have drama without violence and emotional depth without tortured childhoods.
It’s a beautiful movie. I Loved the music, I Loved the sets, the camera work was like something out Children of Men bought brought into a world of light and optimism! And ever since Crazy, Stupid, Love I’ve had a crush on Ryan Gosling ONLY controlled by my adoration of Emma Stone, in TURN only quelled by my absolute SQUEE over watching the two of them together.
Was that too much? I can probably confirm that I’ve never used the term “squee” in a Journal entry before. But I won’t. Because that’s not the point. They’re exquisite together and I don’t want to know the truth (damn it internet, he’s with Eva Mendes?!?!?).
And it’s a beautiful movie, and it’s a painful movie. All about growing up, or not. About realizing your dreams. Or not. Sticking to it and Love conquering all. Or not.
Years ago I tried writing a song about a love affair that fails because of the practicality of soup boiling over on the stove, and I return to it time and time again because it seems like a pretty fair metaphor for so much stuff in our Lives – but I haven’t written it yet – and movies like La La Land (which, I mean… I even Loved the kerning in the title font) do it so much better that maybe I don’t need to…
Movies like La La Land… Like the Muppet Movie? (Life’s like a movie, write your own ending) written in the throes of Jim Henson’s eternal youth… will Emma Stone and Ryan Baby Goose ever age? Will they have to? They get a little parallel universe action going on in the movie, and you don’t know if they’re going to be happy. They saw the alternate could’ve been world, transformed by a kiss. It’s a painfully beautiful thing – to see they could’ve had it all, the career, the jazz club, the baby, the beautiful home… if they’d come back to one another. You have no impression if the movie and the fame and that OTHER man makes Emma happy, you have no idea if Baby Goose has some woman waiting in the wings… I come away thinking “was I just told to hang it up? Was I just told that I CAN have it all? That I COULD’VE had it all but now I won’t?” I never CAN seem to get over the habit of thinking movies and television shows are speaking to ME and that someone’s telling ME something… no more than I can get over the feeling that singers only sing truths from their Lives…
And so I’ll probably have trouble sleeping tonight, thinking about how Rock and Baby Goose got what they wanted in a decade of movie Life, and I’ve been working for nearly two decades on my dreams. By now I don’t know how to do anything else – even though there are vague backup plans and alternate stories I’m writing for myself. Next month I get married (holy shit, I just wrote that) and another chapter of Life begins. I’m not sure what changes… we’ve been Living together for eight years or so, Kristen and I have been together for almost a decade. We’re playing music, it’s stable, but not exploding. We have something of a routine. I’ve practiced playing with the ring… is the only thing that changes that clacking sound when I go to play on the low-E? Oh, and I click a new box in on-line forms…
I’ve wandered. La La Land. Great movie. Beautiful movie. But movies about artists are hard when you’re an artist. I warble betwixt inspiration and heartache, knowing that this response is the realization of someone ELSE’S vision, someone who’s yet to hit their Jesus year. Worried that my dream is just another colour in the bucket, graying and losing definition. Ha. I keep getting greyer. Photos keep getting higher-def. Should’ve gotten married when my hair was brown and the photos were fuzzier.
Additional notes just because that way we can end on a different note : the whole time I was watching I was thinking “Mosno would HATE this” (he hates musicals) and “Susan would find it hilarious that I’m watching this” (because she seems amused that I like technicolour movies with lots of singing in them).
