La La Land joins a long line of traditional tales about spousal romance, but with its own fascinating, original, and tragic-comedic twist, focusing on a romantic relationship that ends in neither self-destruction (like Romeo and Juliet) nor spousal bliss (like pretty much every romantic comedy ever produced) but rather in self-fulfillment, and we the audience are not quite sure whether this ending is perfect or tragic, or a bit of both.
The film begins with the two main characters (Sebastian and Mia) stuck in traffic on the Los Angeles freeway. Mia is rehearsing lines for an upcoming audition, and when she does not notice that traffic has begun to move, she suddenly hears an obnoxious car horn of a man who himself is studying a tape of jazz music. Mia does not know this man is her future romantic flame, but he does spark an unforgettable emotion within her: she gives him the middle finger. Such is the beginning of Sebastian and Mia’s journey towards an unforgettable relationship, which is not quite love at first sight but more like animosity at first sighting.
The initial hostility between these characters slowly diminishes (but does not disappear) through the following scenes, when Sebastian and Mia have unplanned encounters at the same social outings. After a delightful duet (A Lovely Night) in which both characters profess their undying dislike for one another, something begins to grow within them. Mia begins to wonder if there might be something more to this horn-honking, self-centered jazz artist than she was able to appreciate in the mid-afternoon heat on the LA freeway.
Eventually, Sebastian goes to visit Mia at her place of work, and they begin discussing the thing they have most in common, which is their dream for a successful career in the performing arts. Mia tells Sebastian about her plans to become a great actress, about her love for acting which started through one-person plays performed with her aunt, and Sebastian encourages her to break the mold and try to create an original play that is suited to her instead of trying to replicate the infinite prototypes she has encountered in every audition. This sparks a totally new horizon for Mia’s dream, and she is visibly moved by this discussion. Seeing her reaction, Sebastian says with satisfaction that “my work here is now done”. It seems that their relationship is now coming to a close, until Mia utters a cataclysmic phrase: “I hate jazz”.
Sebastian literally stops in his tracks, unable to comprehend how anyone could utter such a statement. “What do you mean ‘I hate jazz’?”, he asks. He decides that the only way for her to understand jazz is to see jazz, and so they go to a jazz club to experience this musical art in a visceral way. In this club, it is now Sebastian’s turn to tell Mia about his dream in the performing arts, which is to rekindle love for jazz in a culture where jazz itself is, in Sebastian’s words, “dying”. Sebastian dreams of one day starting his own club where he and his friends can play “whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, as long as it is pure jazz.” Sebastian is a musical purist determined to carry on jazz’s tradition of creating original music in a diverse American culture, and he will stop at nothing for the realization of this dream, or so it would seem…
At this point, we are now introduced to the two main characters of this film and their underlying dreams which have motivated them for so much of their lives and swirl at the depths of their being. Both of their dreams have substantiated backstories, such as Mia’s joy while acting out plays with her aunt and Sebastian’s fascination for music as a vehicle of communication, but these dreams also provoke areas of mysterious and inexplicable motivation for each of them as a person. For all their understandable origins, there is something about each of these dreams which remain beyond the grasp of reason alone; these dreams are not just something they have thought about but, perhaps more importantly, they represent something they are passionate about. And right in the crucible of all this dream sharing and dream developing, amidst these lively discussions about their not-so-rational passions, a quite unexpected thread begins to emerge in their lives, a very tiny ripple moving along their relatively unchanged (and somewhat stagnant) pool of dreamy thoughts: slowly and unexpectedly, there begins to arise a bond of affection between these once-antagonistic artists. Neither Mia nor Sebastian have spent much time developing their capacity for such a relationship, and they are now faced with an entirely new challenge which was never part of their original dream, and that is to love somebody as much as they love their art.
At first, in the summertime of their love, they flourish as a couple, playfully celebrating their friendship, their dreams, and their deepening bond of mutual affection. The first day Sebastian picks up Mia from her apartment, he is loudly honking his horn, and when one of Mia’s roommates asks, “Is he going to do that every time?” Mia joyfully smiles and says, “I think so”, which translated visually means “I hope so”.
But as their playful relationship begins to mature, so too does the reality of unfulfilled dreams begin to weigh down on the hearts of these protagonists. Sebastian himself is especially convinced of his dream, but like many dreamers, he is much better at thinking about the dream than bringing it to completion. He lives in a bum apartment, he cannot pay his bills, his roof leaks, and he can’t hold a job much longer than one night, which is hardly the fiscal foundation for opening a top-of-the-line jazz club in a culture where jazz is dying. Mia, like the females of many modern relationships, is able to hold a job but is unable to sustain them financially for the long-term.
One day, motivated by overhearing Mia justify to her mom the reasons for Sebastian’s unfinished dream, Sebastian takes matters into his own hands and accepts a job playing unorthodox jazz music in a band called The Messengers. Sebastion does not really appreciate their style of jazz, and although they are popular and he can now pay his bills, his involvement with this band has a very unintended impact on Sebastian: he begins to lose his desire to open his own club. He begins to “grow up”, which in his mind is a very naughty word because it means sacrificing a dream for something else.
One night, Mia unintentionally but quite necessarily points out that Sebastian’s life as a member of The Messengers is not leading him to his dream of a jazz club. Sebastian gets very defensive, arguing that “nobody likes jazz, not even you”, to which Mia retorts, “I do like jazz, because of you!” Sebastian continues with his rant: “What I am supposed to do: go back to playing Jingle Bells? Scraping pennies so I can start a club that no one wants to go to?” For reasons totally unexplained by the film, Sebastian is utterly resigned to playing in The Messengers for the rest of his foreseeable future; not only is pure jazz dying in the culture around him, but it is now dead in his own heart. Arising from the emotional friction of this tragic scene, Mia herself begins to realize that Sebastian without his dream is no longer her dream guy, and the scene ends with Mia silently leaving the dinner table while Sebastian clears out the smoke from a burnt turkey in his oven. The flames of their love have begun to smolder in the ashes of an overcooked dream.
Tragically, and perhaps necessarily, it is then Mia who also allows her dream to die. This happens after she manages to put on a performance of her self-created one-act play (called Leaving Bolder City), but only a few people are in attendance, and she judges it as critically afterwards as she did beforehand (she says multiple times that “nobody is going to like it”, and she has almost wished this prophetic utterance to fulfillment). Sebastian could not attend because of an unexpected photo-shoot with The Messengers, and he only arrives at the moment when Mia is leaving the theater; unfortunately for their relationship, she is leaving in a rage. Mia says that she is giving up on acting, that she is exhausted from all the disappointments and thus is leaving LA and going home. The tragic irony is all the more poignant in light of the fact that Mia is from Bolder City, Nevada, and although her play is called Leaving Bolder City, this is precisely the place to which she is now returning. The dream she tried to fulfill in creating this play is not only unfilled but actually reversed.
But there was more professional enthusiasm for this play than Mia could see, for Sebastian gets a call the next morning from a casting director who was in attendance and wants to invite Mia to audition for a major film. This gives Sebastian a chance (and a good reason) to visit her in Bolder City, and showing up in the middle of the night, he once again bombastically blows his car horn until she comes out to speak with him. It is now Sebastian’s turn to tell Mia that she should not give up on her dream, but she resists him by quoting none other than Sebastian himself: “You said it: you change your dreams and grow up”. Sebastian pushes back: “Why don’t you want to do it anymore?” Mia responds, “I think because it hurts too much.” Sebastian pushes her further, telling her that he is going to pick her up at 8am for her audition, but he will leave it up to Mia to decide overnight if she will join him. Sebastian arrives at 8:03am the next morning (dreamers are known to be late), and although Mia is also late (another dreamer), she gets in his car and goes off to the audition.
At this audition, we experience the first of three climaxes in the film. This first climax is a musical score (The Fools Who Dream), sung by Mia, in which she relates a story about her aunt who, while living in Paris at a younger age, once jumped into the river Seine, with the most memorable point of reflection being that “the water was freezing, she spent a month sneezing, but she said she would do it again”. This song goes on to celebrate the pain experienced by all the dreamers of the world, all the sufferings that follow the pursuit of a wild dream like jumping into a winter river, a dream with real costs but nonetheless is a feat that she would do again. Mia sings that “A bit of madness is key, to give us new colors to see. Who knows where it will lead us? And that’s why they need us…So bring on the rebels, the ripples from pebbles, the painters, and poets, and plays. And here’s to the fools who dream, crazy as they may seem.” The song is a musical celebration of the self-acknowledged madness in every poet and dreamer, in every artistic act of lunacy (“lunacy” is a word Mia stumbles over in the opening moments of the film), in every vibrant new color that is memorable precisely because it is an outlier. In speaking of her aunt, Mia concludes that “She died in a flicker, but I’ll always remember her flame”. It is a climactic justification for flames of passion arising within all dreamers, who though dying in a flicker, created a flame which is preserved in the memory of all who experienced these dreamers in their full splendor.
Mia gets the major role for which she has auditioned, so she begins preparing for a long journey to Paris, leading to the second climax of the film. This occurs when Mia and Sebastian are preparing for Mia’s departure, and it is a climax because is the last time they will speak to one another in the film. Of course, it is the girl who wants clarity about their relationship: “Where are we?” she asks Sebastian. There is a humble resignation on the part of both characters, for they seem to know that this new opportunity in Paris is a fundamental transition in their relationship. Sebastian insists that “you got to give it everything you got, because it is your dream”, and although neither character says it, they both seem to intuit that “giving everything” to this dream means not being able to give everything to their relationship. As a couple, they have navigated great challenges together, and just when they are healed from their relational and professional crises and have re-established mutual trust in one another, at precisely this moment they are unable to commit to one another in a stable and lasting relationship. It is Mia herself who predicts the doom-like fate of their relationship when she says, in a simple and gentle manner, “I’m always going to love you”, to which Sebastian responds “I’m always going to love you, too”. Mia and Sebastian have learned so much from one another, they have been transformed by one another, and they have even helped one another overcome obstacles that would not have been overcome without the presence of the other. Yet for all that is good, true, and beautiful about their relationship, it cannot coexist with the demands of their mutual pursuit of rather lofty dreams in the performing arts. They will always love one another, but they have to say this because they both seem to know that they are not able to love one another as husband and wife while on this path of “self-fulfillment”.
This scene leads to the third and final climax of the film, in which we are transported five years into their future. Sebastian is preparing for the opening night of his jazz club, and Mia is a major actor in popular films, but Mia is married to another man and happily enjoying life as a new mother. Mia and her husband go out for the night and randomly stumble into Sebastian’s jazz club, filled with various jazz memorabilia accumulated over the years and displaying the logo designed by Mia earlier in the film (“Seb’s” with a musical note for the apostrophe). After noticing each other from a distance, Sebastian begins to play the musical piece he was playing when they first met, and then suddenly we are transported to world of what could-have-been, a world where Seb and Mia begin their relationship with affection instead of animosity, where job’s for money are passed up in pursuit of authenticity, where the surrounding world supports their dreams instead of providing mounting pressure for the dream to die. In this fantasy world, Seb and Mia end up married, they have children and a family and live happily ever after.
But this fantasy is like any other fairy tale, existing only in the mind but not in the real world. Here, in the real world, people make compromises to pursue their dreams, and what both Mia and Seb have compromised is not their dream but rather one another. And looking one another in the eyes, mourning what could have been and yet celebrating what they have both become, they flash a deep and profound smile to one another. In the stillness of this smile, in the subtlety of a moment in which the characters are allowed to thank each other, to encourage each other, and even to love each other, the viewer gets just one moment to savor all that they gave to one another over the course of the film. Then, necessarily and yet undesirably, it is in this supreme moment of their relationship that the story abruptly ends and the credits begin to role.
Even if this is a great ending, it is not to be confused as a happy ending. Sadly, some dreams do not come true; some paths in life do not lead to “happily ever after”; some relationships begin later than we would like and end sooner than we would desire. Both Seb and Mia have fulfilled their dreams beyond their wildest expectation, and they are both smiling at the end, but we the audience, who have just watched their playful and captivating love grow and evolve over the course of the film, are we satisfied with their ending? Haven’t we just watched a tragedy? It certainly feels like something tragic has happened, but if that were so, then why are the main characters smiling?
Although often not captured in film, La La Land tells the story about one romantic relationship that ends, not with sex, but with a smile. It tells the story of a man and a woman who truly love one another, who grow from one another, who complement and are even deeply attracted to each other and yet express their love only through a smile; they can show their love through their lips, but not by kissing. In a world where love is at its greatest when it is exclusive, the love between Seb and Mia comes to a tragic ending, for it does not reach the exalted height of spousal exclusivity, and the viewer mourns with Mia that this height was never reached with Seb.
But there is more than one type of love in the world, more than one type of relationship in the world, and this film captures the often-unacknowledged power of a very special type of relationship. What their smile ultimately communicates is the joy of sharing celibate love, a love which can be just as committed and just as authentic as married love and yet expressed in a radically different way. It is actually a source of gratitude to realize that human persons were not made to have sexual intercourse with everyone to whom they are attracted, and thankfully the human body has an outlet which can still express love in these situations: a smile. Not some cheap, reactionary, forced upper curvature of the lips and cheeks, but an authentic expression of deep joy that comes from having the opportunity to meet another human person, whether they be of the opposite sex or not.
Furthermore, the tragic inability of their relationship to reach spousal love makes their dream all the more special, for it represents one more sacrifice that was required for the fulfillment of their dream. Sure, Mia can fantasize about what it would have been like for her and Sebastian to love one another as husband and wife, but every relevant detail outside of this fantasy points to the improbability (or impossibility) of that ever happening. In the end, their acceptance of this necessary sacrifice, and their willingness to surrender their relationship to this necessity, deepens the value of the dream they have attained and validates the dream as something worth living for. Seb and Mia follow a long line of human persons who have come to the conclusion that some dreams require sacrificing spousal love, but even though they are not married, Mia continues to fulfill her promise to Seb: she is always going to love him, and he is always going to love her, too.
The sacrifice is especially deep for Mia, subtly portrayed at the end of the film in which she is comfortably distant from her husband in the jazz club and yet, in her fantasy, Seb is sitting in the same seat as her husband but now Mia is leaning against Seb with his hand gently placed on her legs, followed by a kiss. These differing levels of intimacy represent more of a sacrifice than a scandal, because celibate love creates situations in which very close and intimate friendships arise with those to whom one is not married, and sometimes, this celibate love is stronger than the bond of married love (people are forever confused by a line in scripture that says David loved Jonathan “more than his love for a woman”). If that is a scandal to the modern mind, then the modern mind knows very little about the variety of loves which feed the human heart.
At the very beginning of the film, we see a highway jam-packed with people listening to their own music and occupied with their particular activities, but in this melting pot of human diversity, two enemies become acquaintances, who then become deep friends with a bond of love that endures for the rest of their days. At the end of the film, we can go back to that opening scene, wondering what other relationships were triggered in that cacophony of noise and one day were blended into a symphony of sound. Mia herself is a complex mixture of a variety of pivotal relationships, including her roommates, her parents, and her inspiring aunt. But within this diverse array of established relationships, another critical ingredient is added to the melting pot of her personality, which is her relationship with Sebastian. It’s potency does not come through sexual activity (although it is a sexual relationship) but rather through complementarity, and this complementarity is worth smiling about even when it remains thoroughly celibate. The highways of LA are literally filled with people who have the potential to form such sacrificial and valuable relationships, and everybody is looking for that “someone in the crowd” who “could be the one you need to know, the one to finally lift you off the ground”. Through its enjoyable musical scores, unorthodox but not distracting sequencing, through the continual reappearance of a playful palate of colors, memorable dialogue, and heart-wrenching acting, La La Land creates a delightful cinematic experience which celebrates the incomprehensible treasure of every human relationship, especially those that do not end in marriage.
In closing, it is important to acknowledge one significant sub-theme in the film: the constantly evolving tension between originality and traditionalism. For example, Sebastian’s love for pure jazz is trapped in a perplexing paradox, for he loves its originality and yet is constantly trying to preserve its original form. Thus Keith asks Seb, “How are you going to be a revolutionary if you are such a traditionalist?” Sebastian has no direct answer to this question, but it does nothing to diminish his determination to live this dream. In the end, Keith sums up their relationship when he tells Seb, “I love you, but you are a pain in the ass, man”.
La La Land also participates in this paradox, as it is a film which provides so much of what is desired from a film and yet also deviates so much from what is expected in a movie. It is an incredibly enjoyable blend between the revolutionaries and traditionalists, between conventional expectations and unconventional fulfillment. It has achieved a delicate balance of unique musical flare (epitomized by the opening overture, Another Day in the Sun, which is almost its own film and yet fits seamlessly in the film as a whole) and traditional musical melodies (like The Fools Who Dream, which is a stark and simple solo that was performed in a single take). La La Land is a movie that feels both like something you have seen many times before but also like something you have never seen before, and you get the feeling that this is perhaps the greatest compliment the producers of the film could ever hope to receive. In striking this delicate balance between originality and continuity within the film itself, we are all but certain that the mutual artistic collaboration of so many revolutionaries and traditionalists was a real pain in the ass.
Being a movie that is both revolutionary and traditional, it is appropriate to wonder who (or what) is the antagonist in this film. If Sebastian and Mia are the protagonists, then who or what is the “villain”? This is not an easy question to answer. Is the antagonist that which prevented them from marriage? Well, we know what prevented their marriage: the relentless pursuit of their artistic dreams, and this antagonist is not overcome in the film. When Mia fantasizes about what it would have been like for her to be a movie star and married to Sebastian, although they are together, Sebastian is not an owner of a jazz club. Thus, even in Mia’s fantasy, it is not possible for both her and Sebastian to achieve their dream and for them to be married at the same time. But if the “villain” is that which worked against the fulfillment of their artistic dreams, then this antagonist is overcome in the film, and it is overcome through their relationship with one another.
It seems, then, that there is an antagonist to the real world and another to the fantasy world: the antagonist of the real world is conquered by their relationship, but the antagonist of the fantasy world succeeds in preventing their marriage. Even if the viewer is uncertain about which world they would prefer for Mia and Seb, it is Mia’s smile, here in the real world, which cements the choice of her character and allows us to know that, in her mind, she and Sebastian conquered the “real” villain. Whether or not we are happy with this ending reveals how much we ourselves are content with living in the real world, or would trade it all for life in La La Land.