What gave Black Swan its most enduring legacy (aside from the seemingly endless font of memes it inspired that year) was its unique twist on the psychological thriller. A nod to the Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger classic, The Red Shoes, Darren Aronofsky’s film tells the story of Nina Sayres, a corps dancer who dreams of becoming a prima ballerina. As Nina, Natalie Portman skillfully displayed a range of emotions not before seen in previous roles: vacillating between fear and elation, anger and obsession — all in the time it takes to flutter one’s imaginary wings. What results is a mesmerizing psychological breakdown that has Nina sacrificing the most important thing of all: herself.
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At the risk of subsequently praising nearly every film released that year (and sounding like a cheap imitation of a sommelier), it must be said that, yes, 2010 was a very good year for film. Kicking off the decade in a major way was none other than David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010). The film marked the first collaboration between Fincher and another titan of screen and stage, writer Aaron Sorkin, merging the former’s unique visual storytelling with the latter’s signature rapid-fire dialogue. The result is akin to what many of my fellow Letterboxd mates would term as a “chef’s kiss” of a film. Along with the excellent direction and writing are the dynamic cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth, expert editing by both Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, and remarkable performances by the young, star-studded cast; each element of Social Network — visually, sonically, and otherwise — all perfectly coalescing into one, albeit fast-paced, cohesive unit.
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For nearly the past twenty years or so, movie-musicals have seen a resurgence in the public consciousness. One such film that has done so, and with as much fanfare (or perhaps even more so), is none other than Damien Chazelle’s own ambitious take, La La Land (2016). Chazelle’s second attempt at a musical (after his debut Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench [2009]) and the third in an informal trilogy centered around jazz (along with Guy and Madeline and the Oscar-winning Whiplash [2014]), La La Land is perhaps best known for its controversial and precedent-setting tie for Best Picture with fellow nominee Moonlight at the 2017 Oscars (the honor would eventually go to the latter film). Despite this, the film garnered a record-tying fourteen nominations (alongside classics Titanic and All About Eve) and five Oscar wins that year, and seemed universally hailed as the ode to the grand movie-musical productions of yesteryear.
La La Land follows two young Angelenos as they struggle to follow their respective dreams: Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress who, between auditions, makes ends meet as a barista at a café in the Warner Bros. lot; and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz purist musician who moonlights as both a jukebox pianist at a restaurant and as part of an eighties tribute band (the latter much to his chagrin). After they meet not-so-cutely at a traffic jam (that most quintessential of Quintessential Los Angeles Locales), Mia encounters Seb again at the restaurant, and yet again at a party Seb’s band plays at. Over the course of the first act, they start to get to know another, each sharing their individual hopes and dreams. Snippets of their brief but heady summer romance are heightened through sweeping instrumental sequences and montages (this one taking place at the Griffith Observatory is particularly breathtaking), and when they — spoiler alert! — eventually part ways, we as the audience are heartbroken. Boy-meets-Girl, Boy-falls-in-love-with-Girl, Boy-eventually-loses-Girl.
Admittedly, the film lives up to (some) of its hype. As the title suggests, La La Land is as dreamy a confection as could possibly be whipped up onscreen: a dizzying whirl of large-scale chorus numbers packed with nostalgic old-school romance (and even old-schoolier, if problematic, notions of jazz). Just in case you didn’t get the hint already, the film shows you the first of many cinematic vestiges it’ll pay homage to over the next two hours: that of a widescreen title card touting the old Cinemascope logo, setting the tone for what’s to come. From then on, it’s a flurry of visual allusions to the cinema of olde, with nods to Hollywood’s Golden Age of musicals on film: An American in Paris(1951), Funny Face(1957), A Star is Born (1954), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), West Side Story(1961), Sound of Music(1965), and Cabaret (1972)all get their due here; not to mention the offbeat musicals of the French New Wave, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Une Femme est Un Femme/A Woman is a Woman (1961), and Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and The Young Girls of Rochefort(1967).
Of these, it is perhaps Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (along with Vincente Minelli’s An American in Paris), which proves to be the strongest influence on La La Land; not only in its storyline but in its music, as well. Most of the cues taken from Umbrellas are, obviously, the influences of jazz within an operatic structure: Demy’s film (the score for which was composed by the late, great Michel Legrand) is entirely sung-through, punctuated by throaty brass riffs and off-kilter drum beats during moments of high emotion. It’s this juxtaposition between the old and the new which Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz (previous collaborators on both Guy and Madeline and Whiplash) clearly try to replicate in La La Land, if in a much different way.
Traditionally, musical theatre utilizes music either as a tool to help push the story along, or to propel the fullest expression of a character’s innermost thoughts and feelings, when mere action simply cannot. There are a couple of pieces that do follow this important tenet, as in the case of ‘A Lovely Night’, a flirty tune that hearkens back to the old “I-Like-Ya-But-I-Ain’t-Tellin’-Ya” musical theatre trope. However, if we’re talking about expression through song, none get us there quite like the film’s excellent eleven o’clock number, ‘Audition (The Fools Who Dream)’. Featuring wonderfully-penned lyrics by Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman hitmakers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, it is La La Land’s most character-driven piece, calling to mind Cabaret’s own passionate, eponymously-titled closer, and undeniably its best song, despite ‘City of Stars’ lamentably chosen as the film’s Best Song nominee.
Other musical moments worthy of mention in La La Land (and which duly pay further homage to the movie-musical traditions it pulls from) include: ‘Summer Montage/Madeline’, which bears hints of the ‘A Basal Metabolism’ scene in Funny Face; as well as ‘Epilogue’, a hazy dream sequence which not only makes further blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visual references to Funny Face, but also wonderfully evokes the famous dream sequences from both An American in Paris and A Star is Born,‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and ‘Born in a Trunk’, respectively.
Mostly, the music in La La Land works to softly underscore the overall feeling of romance blossoming between the two lovers. Many of its instrumental pieces, performed by Hurwitz on the piano, do so to great effect. In particular, ‘Mia and Sebastian’s Theme’, an elliptical, beautifully lilting piece which memorably accompanies the characters’ journey in following their dreams and, hopefully, each other. Its melody, just like their relationship, seems it might go on forever — that is, until it doesn’t. Just as with the instrumentals, songs like ‘City of Stars’ — a melancholy duet between Mia and Seb about the heartbreak of ambition in Los Angeles — attempt at some reflective moments, while other songs seem to merely be there to help to establish a time and place or to convey a mood, as in the case of opener ‘Another Day of Sun’.
The John Legend-led track ‘Start a Fire’ is a straggler, both in terms of its obvious “jazz-pop-fusion” style and in its ability to highlight the characters’ evolving relationship, if deceptively so. By this point in the film, Seb has accepted an offer by his old friend Keith (played by Legend) to join his band on tour as keyboardist, if a bit reluctantly. Not only does he have the defense of his purist principles to think about (to which Keith says: “Jazz is about the future”), but there’s also the question of Mia, with whom Seb has now progressed into a live-in relationship. Still, with Mia’s encouragement, he takes the gig, and it is when the band are back in town that our scene takes place. In the song’s chorus, Keith proclaims:
We can start a fire
Come on, let it burn, baby
We can start a fire
Let the tables turn, baby
We can start a fire
It is as typical a pop chorus as any like it: repetitive lyrics rife with trite metaphorical content. But as pointed out in an episode of the Switched on Pop podcast, the above lyrics — despite the upbeat rhythm with which they are presented — provide the perfect foreshadowing for the following scene in the film, wherein Mia and Seb have an argument. Home for the first time in months, Seb surprises Mia with dinner at the apartment they share. They catch up over dinner, and all is well — or so it seems. When Seb nonchalantly mentions he’ll have to go back on tour again soon, now beholden to the album cycle of contemporary mainstream artists, Mia counters with the question of Seb’s own satisfaction with his work, asking him if he even likes the music he’s playing. As the argument reaches its apex, the food Seb is still cooking in the oven burns. Let the tables turn. Let it burn.
A pretty straightforward reading of a not-so-straightforward song, to be sure, but it marks a turning point in the film’s main thematic arc — and gets to the heart of what makes this movie musical slightly different than its canonic predecessors. By all appearances, Mia and Seb’s relationship seem poised to follow the fate of the Star-crossed-Lovers trope found in practically every love story since time immemorial. That they do — however, what makes this story interesting for today’s audience is that the conflict over which the relationship ultimately deteriorates is not that of love for someone else, but rather the love of something else.
The real tension in “La La Land” is between ambition and love, and perhaps the most up-to-date thing about it is the way it explores that ancient conflict. A cynical but not inaccurate way to put this would be to describe it as a careerist movie about careerism. But that would be to slight Mr. Chazelle’s real and uncomfortable insight, which is that the drive for professional success is, for young people at the present time, both more realistic and more romantic than the pursuit of boy-meets-girl happily-ever-after. Love is contingent. Art is commitment.”
In this regard, as pointed out by Genevieve Koski in an episode of her podcast The Next Picture Show, the film perhaps more closely owes its debt to American in Paris, wherein the titular American Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) finds himself having to choose between a life of literal security with patron with would-be paramour Milo (Nina Foch) — or go back to his old bohemian lifestyle in order to be with his true love, Lise (Leslie Caron). And unlike this past year’s hit remake, the Bradley Cooper- and Lady Gaga-led A Star is Born (wherein the two main characters choose both Love and Ambition, to ultimately tragic consequences), La La Land’s characters ultimately choose not each other, but their individual dreams.
This, for all its unabashed affection for the long-lost romanticism of Hollywood’s golden age, is how La La Land sets out to place itself among the 21st-century canon. Wherever its merits as a movie-musical stand, it is this emotional juxtaposition which at the very least has made much of the film’s surrounding attention just this side of justifiable. Call it, perhaps, the most Millenial movie-musical of the decade thus far (with the possible exception of Jason Robert Brown’s cult 2001 hit, The Last Five Years, adapted to film in 2014): where the hopes of today’s youth dwell in dreams more down-to-earth, rather than up high in the starry-eyed rapture of true love.
Those who know me personally (or have read my literary blog,starts & stops.) might also know of my particularly soft spot for Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. (And when I say soft, I mean like…ooey-gooey-caramel-filled-Stroopwafel-melting-atop-your-espresso soft.) (Yeah…that soft.) (Can you tell what I’ve just been snacking on before typing this?) (This is a lot of parenthetical asides, huh?) (Okay, back to the post, now.) I first came across Before Sunrise (1995), the series’ first installment, when it aired on the Lifetime network back in high school, around the time its sequel Before Sunset (2004) was released. I was about sixteen or seventeen at the time, and though I’d only caught the middle portion of it, something about the conversation between the boyishly handsome American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and the ethereal Frenchwoman Celine (Julie Delpy) that captured my teenage imagination.
I never actually got to finish that first viewing, and it wasn’t until roughly two years later, at what was then the Times Square Virgin Megastore (R.I.P., sob sob!), that I would purchase my own copy and finally see the whole thing through. Quickly after that initial purchase followed Sunset in its wake. By then, I was a freshman in college–and as one on the cusp of her early twenties, heavily steeped in culture and armed with a personal “yen” for travel, the idea of having a philosophical, intellectually-charged conversation with someone whilst traipsing around a European city over the course of an evening was, at the time, just about the highest form of romance there was.
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How must one transform oneself in order to be fulfilled as an artist, especially if one is a woman? And what sacrifices must be made in order for that to happen? Welcome to the first installment of FILM STRIPS, where I share with you some of my favorites and hopefully have some fun deconstructing them along the way. Here, I submit for tonight’s double feature Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar®-winning Black Swan (2010) and Rob Marshall’s controversial Memoirs of a Geisha (2006). Both films immerse the viewer in two worlds which seem different, but actually are much similar at second glance: the former, a ballet company in modern-day New York City; the latter, a geisha house in 1930s Japan. Both worlds, despite being inhabited mostly by women, find themselves at the hands of powerful men.
A nod to the Hans Christian Andersen-penned classic The Red Shoes, Aronofsky’s film tells the story of Nina Sayres (Natalie Portman), a corps dancer who dreams of becoming a prima ballerina. On the cusp on a new season, Nina’s dance company undergoes preparations for an exciting new production of Swan Lake. Obsessed with nabbing the lead role as the Swan Queen, sweet and innocent Nina desperately tries to convince the show’s director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) that she can play both sides which inhabit the Swan Queen: not only the equally pure White Swan, but also the dark Black Swan. What results is a psychological breakdown which has Nina sacrificing the most important thing of all: herself.
Memoirs follows young Chiyo, a fisherman’s daughter who sold to an okiya, or geisha house,when her mother falls ill. Not understanding the more lenient fate she is given compared to that of her sister Satsu, who is sent to a house in the Pleasure District, Chiyo at first defies house rules, racking up a debt which eventually bars her from her future as a geisha. Years pass until the fate of now-teenage Chiyo (Zhang Ziyi) is lent a hand, in the form of a mysterious veteran geisha, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh). Under Mameha’s tutelage, Chiyo blooms into Sayuri, the most desired geisha in the the whole hanamachi. However, with success comes its burdens, and Sayuri must choose between a life of love and the life of a geisha.
Watching these two films back-to-back recently, what struck me the most were their similar themes of sacrifice for the sake of art, the rivalries that often occur between women, and of course the powerful men who control them. While both Nina and Sayuri have very different objectives at the start of their respective journeys (Nina wishes to be prima ballerina while Sayuri takes on the task of becoming geisha to get closer to the Chairman [Ken Watanabe], the man she has loved since she was a little girl), they both endure much physical and emotional pain to get there. In Swan, there is a short scene in which, one-by-one, Nina and her mother prepare various pairs of pointe shoes, ready to be broken in. For many dancers, the process is familiar: the burning of the toes, the scraping of the sole, the sharp needle threaded through silky ribbon.
The moment in the film is brief, but it called to mind another film where the same process is shown: Nicholas Hytner’s Center Stage (2000). One of my favorite moments ever in a dance film (nay, perhaps the favorite), is a montage showing dancers breaking in their shoes in Center Stage—it is a time-consuming act, but is demonstrative of the rigor and discipline which governs the lives of ballet dancers. We see this in the case of geishas, as well, through a similar montage in Memoirs, during which Sayuri learns the practice of becoming a geisha. As Mameha states: “Agony and beauty for us live side-by-side,” a theme that is resonant throughout both films:
Another parallel between the two films is, of course, the interactions among the women; particularly the idea of the young ingenue replacing the prima donna figure. In the world of ballet, this is represented through the role of Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder), a former principal dancer for the company who, like Nina, was also famously favored by Leroy. Not long after we are introduced into the world of ballet at the film’s start, we learn that Beth is being phased out of her place as prima ballerina, eventually making way for Nina to make the official transition. However, Beth isn’t going without a fight, and confronts Nina after the company’s launch party for their Swan Lake production, asking the younger dancer what she had to do to get the role.
Similarly, in Sayuri’s world, Hatsumomo serves as the reigning “prima donna” of sorts; one of the most desired geishas in the whole hanamachi, Hatsumomo provides the means necessary to keep the okiya running. In their first encounter, Hatsumomo finds a young Chiyo in her room and immediately chides the girl for touching her things. That encounter is then mirrored once Chiyo becomes the successful and desirable Sayuri, as she now holds ownership of Hatsumomo’s former quarters. This time, it is Hatsumomo who trespasses — in more ways than one. What happens next is a confrontation that quickly escalates, resulting in Sayuri coming to the following realization:
“I could be her. Were we so different? She loved once, she hoped once. I could be her. I might be looking into my own future.“
It’s not just the prima donnas that try to get in the way of these two protagonists. Other female characters in both films seek to derail each respective protagonists’ goals. In Swan, there’s the mysterious Lily, the eponymous Black Swan whose darker inclinations only help to further Nina into madness; as well as bad girl Veronica (Ksenia Solo), who becomes bitter and suspicious when it is Nina that nabs the role of the Swan Queen. In Memoirs, when Sayuri finally has a chance to be with the Chairman, it is her childhood companion Pumpkin (Yuki Kudo) who plots to have the chairman’s best friend and confidante Nobu (Koji Yakusho) waiting for Sayuri instead.
However, though the two films center on a world of women, we must not forget it is one that is ruled by men. For Swan‘s Nina Sayres, it’s Thomas Leroy; as for Sayuri in Memoirs, it is the various men acting as patrons (danna): The Chairman, Nobu, Dr. Crab and perhaps more ominously, Mameha’s danna, The General. These powerful men of influence assert their power over the women the only way they know how: by taking advantage of them. Scenes in which Leroy kisses Nina during rehearsal and The General forces Sayuri’s robes off of her behind closed doors prove that sometimes there is a higher price to pay for your art.
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