The Big Scream - La La Land

Photo credit: Lionsgate Publicity

You’re probably thinking: ”Oh god! Enough with La La Land already!” Well I’ve chosen to review this, although a bit late in the game, because it was the first time E and I went to the movies together.

The Big Scream is a weekly screening held at Picturehouse Cinemas, where for £8.50, I could sit in the dark with other sleep-deprived parents and their babies and enjoy a screening of some of the latest films. Disclaimer: this was my first time at the Big Scream and it’s quite a different film-going experience to what I was previously used to. I was anxious most of time because E was deeply asleep (the kind of deep sleep where they hardly move and you frantically hold a finger under their nose every 5 minutes to check they’re breathing), and I had a screaming baby right behind me. So I could barely hear some of the dialogue at time. But here goes.

La La Land, directed by Damian Chazelle, known for his 2014 hit Whiplash, follows the story of struggling actress Mia (Emma Stone) and frustrated jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) who meet, sing, dance and fall in love in modern day Los Angeles.
For me, this genre is so deeply stemmed in the classic Hollywood era of the 30s and 40s, where the idea of success was available to everyone and anyone who hoped and dreamt hard enough. This was a time when Hollywood sold you the fantasy of achieving stardom as well as finding that once-in-a-lifetime love that would make you whole and complete as a person. And who doesn’t want that? 

I grew up on a healthy diet of Hollywood musicals. I remember watching That’s Entertainment! with my mother on lazy Sundays, where an ageing Gene Kelly would strut around the MGM backlot. Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is one of my favourite films of all time and I know the lines from Bugsy Malone (1976) by heart. But for some reason, I’ve found modern musicals difficult to appreciate. I got bored in Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables (2012), annoyed with Baz Lhurman’s Moulin Rouge (2001) and don’t get me started about Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You (1996). So I was sceptical about La La Land.

I feel that most modern musicals fail to achieve a narrative flow that justifies that it’s completely normal for people to randomly break into song and dance. However Chazelle nails this perfectly in La La Land whilst paying homage to the roots of the genre. It’s a smorgasbord of classical Hollywood references through its use of colour, costumes, music and sweeping cinematography. You’ve got Top Hat (1935), Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), plenty of Singin’ in the Rain, American in Paris (1951), etc.

This is truly a beautiful film that not only conveys the struggles of the modern-day artist but the giddiness of falling in love. And it also questions the very modern assumption of having it all. Whilst I found some of the large-scale musical numbers a little cheesy at times, it’s really the love story between Stone and Gosling that cements the heart of this film. Their genuine chemistry really carries the story and convinces you that's it's completely normal for them to sing to each other in what could be an awkward social situation for most. All in all, I wouldn’t say La La Land is groundbreaking but it’s a refreshing entry to award season in a pool of some very serious films. It has a whimsical Amelie-esque approach to Los Angeles and you can’t help but get swept away with the romance and energy of it all. It will make you laugh and cry and you’ll have the main theme “City of Stars” stuck in your head for a while.

I breastfeed, therefore I binge-watch

The late film critic Roger Ebert said in the 2014 biographical documentary Life Itself:

"We all are born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us."

At this very moment, I am tirelessly typing this first entry one-handed. Not because I suffer from some typing handicap but because my other hand and arm are being occupied by my 2-month old son: E. He's decided that this is the perfect space for his late afternoon cat-nap because his beautiful aqua Mokee cot adorned with all the amenities of modern babyhood just doesn't quite cut it. Only mama's numb left arm will do.

As I venture into the first few of months of my maternity leave, I find myself glued to the couch, an infant latched on to my breasts for sustenance and a brain fit for binge-watching whatever it can vaguely concentrate on. The first weeks of E's life brought on a zombified state of mind. I could only focus on trashy reality TV and its revolving door sagas of stupidly rich women fighting amongst themselves for some mediocre social supremacy. It was all that I could handled and I make no apologies for blasting through the first 7 seasons of Real Housewives of Atlanta. I've earned back my entire Hayu membership for the year, and then some. But then as the sleep deprivation got slightly better and the days a little easier to handle, I started to feel guilty about all this time I spent with eyes locked on my 42" flatscreen. I started to feel as though I should be doing more... whether it be with E, my time off work. Doing more to figure out what it all means to be a mother.

The one thing I do know is that like the movies, motherhood requires a great deal of empathy in order to take care of this tiny human.  I'm hoping that my years of endless movie binging and my BA in film theory might come in handy. How this fits in this blog is yet to be determined. 
Stay tuned.

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