At the cinema

The Oscars are coming up pretty soon, and while I don't plan to watch, we have actually seen more recent movies this year than in the past. This viewing trend began over Christmas vacation with Hacksaw Ridge and Silence and is now slowing down, but the past two weekends in a row we went to the base theater to watch movies that were very different in subject and style but had a similar feel.

First we saw La La Land. Actually, I went with just my 14 year old daughter and her friend, which is a different experience than going to the movies with my husband and the whole crew.  It was opening night for this show at the base, but we were some of the younger people at the theater. I've never seen so many white heads at a show there. The base theaters tend to show a lot of action flicks and dumb comedies to appeal to their primary audience, young sailors. So this musical romance attracted a different crowd.  This phenomenon interested me; I wonder how the word got out.

I can see why this movie appealed to an older generation, on that grew up with shows that featured music and dancing.  Someone told me that the movie was refreshingly clean, but I was still a little on guard for anything inappropriate.  There might have been a few bad words, but from the very opening, the ensemble song and dance routine on the jammed up LA highway, I was charmed.

And the movie continues to be charming.  The cinematography is color-drenched during the happy parts, the dance numbers are fun; the songs are sweet; the dresses are pretty. Although neither of the stars, Ryan Gosling nor Emma Stone, are strong vocalists, they are good dancers together. The scenes featuring Griffith Park and all the Priuses on the LA roadways are familiar. The movie feels like it could have been made 50 years ago - hence, the age of the crowd? - but it also has an immediacy that makes you feel like not everyone in Hollywood is involved in conspiracies and murder mysteries.

The movie is much fresher and cleaner than most movies rated PG-13, although there are some bad words, and about halfway through the movie, the two stars, who have fallen in love, move in with each other. (No heavy love scenes, fortunately) After their initial romance, which is all bright colors and bright songs, the movie takes on a more muted tone, a minor key.  Both Gosling and Stone, as Seb and Mia, are dream chasers: he wants to be a jazz musician and she wants to be an actress. Seb's apartment is bland and poor looking; Mia lives with friends in a cute, colorful, feminine apartment. Both are struggling when they meet, but Seb finds success - big success - with a former high school friend who has a jazz band that plays contemporary jazz.  Their group tours and sells albums and has a fan base. However, Seb isn't playing the kind of music he wants to play. Meanwhile, Mia has a spectacular failure in her self-authored one-woman show, which she pens after failing audition after audition.

In between Seb's success and Mia's failure, their romance falters. Mia questions Seb's integrity as a musician, and Seb questions Mia's idealism.  They accuse each other of jealousy of their success or passion for their dreams.  In tears, Mia runs away home to start over again and mourn her broken dreams. Seb pursues her when he answers a call from a producer interested in Mia's writing.

SPOILER ALERT:

The two briefly reunite, and Seb apparently leaves the band. But their relationship is still doomed: Mia's new writing gig requires her to go to Paris. In a touching scene back at the Griffith Observatory, they split apart to pursue their dreams.

The ending challenges what has so far been a predictable movie.  Flash forward five years: Mia is a big success; she is married to a guy who looks like the guy she broke up with to be with Seb initially, and they have a toddler. She and her husband head out to an event, get jammed up in LA traffic, and stop at what turns out to be Seb's successful jazz club. Seb and Mia lock eyes, and he begins to play their theme song, while a dreamlike sequence of what might have been plays for the audience. For a minute, the audience wonders, Is it a return to the beginning? Is Mia going to leave her husband and child? But as she leaves with her husband, she and Seb share a secret smile exchange that seems to say "Congratulations and goodbye."

So the ending is a big let down and feels a little unbelievable.   If it had been 10 years later, or if Mia were only on a date and ran into Seb, it might feel more natural. Five years isn't very long to get over a romance that seems to be the real thing, then become a big success, get married and have a small child.  They didn't write or call each other? Social media? Mia never knew Seb finally gets his club?

Regardless of the timing, the ending raises a few questions: Do the two have to sacrifice their relationship to realize their dreams?  Is the conclusion saying that two dreamers can't live together?  I felt that there was a subtext that Mia was more heroic in a way than Seb because he had some dumb lines, but I'm not sure that this is fair. While he may seem stubborn and convinced of his own talent and vision, he apparently does have talent. Meanwhile, Mia's acting ability is dubious. But apparently her storytelling is better because she makes it as a writer, although how many writers have their pictures on a billboard, as she does? And the story she tells to the producer in her audition for the writing job, seems a little weak - maybe because she sings it.

Is the ending a critique of dreamers - showing them to be selfish? - or a celebration of the dedication that it takes to realize a dream?  Were Seb and Mia jealous of each other, or too dedicated to their own dreams to help the other make it?  Is their love not the picture perfect relationship it seems to be at first? Is their art more valuable than their relationship? Perhaps it depends on where you stand on the platitude urging to Pursue Your Dreams Whatever the Cost.

I halfway believe that truly genius artists are somewhat doomed to be loners - because they have to be wed to their genius, like a contemplative religious. Perhaps because - true or not - artists often seem to be mentally unbalanced in a way, either manic-depressive or monomaniacal or something that gives them a different vision of the world. But in La La Land, the characters don't seem mentally unbalanced at all.  In order to realize their dreams, they can't give their relationship the energy it needs to survive, although they can invest in other relationships. (How Mia manages a handsome, seemingly successful husband, a toddler, and a pretty house in addition to writing is the happy fiction. I was glad that she walked away with her husband and didn't run up to Seb.)

So final assessment, I'm glad I saw La La Land because of the pleasure it brings in the first hour and a half, overlooking the shack up. It's fun entertainment.  I really, really enjoyed watching it. I'd see it again.  But since I'm still puzzling about the ending, I'm not running out and telling everyone to go see it.

*****

Because of this slight disappointment, when we walked into the theater to watch another highly recommended film, Hidden Figures, I was afraid of losing my enthusiasm.  This is the story of the three black women who work as calculators for NASA at Langley Field during the early 60's as the space program is building up. This movie I give an unqualified two thumbs up, even though there were several points where the plot could have become troubled. Surprise! No dark turns, no over-dramatization of failure and corruption. The characters face challenges, but they succeed!  Go see this movie, and take the family!

Based on a true story, the characters are bright and motivated students and conscientious employees in a white male dominated business. The three main characters are working moms - all three have young children at home. And their homes seem happy. Two are married, but the main character, Katherine Johnson, is a widow.  She meets a man at a church picnic, and I kept fearing that he would turn unfaithful or something negative would happen, but their relationship develops positively, and he proposes marriage to her and her three girls. Happily, the notes at the end of the movie report their marriage lasted 56 years until their deaths.

In addition to highlighting the challenges that these three women faced during segregation, the movie also alludes to the advancements in technology occuring so rapidly at this time.  While Katherine is involved in calculating landing locations for the first manned space flight, and her friend Mary Jackson studies to become NASA's first black female engineer (even though she is already doing the job), the third character, Dorothy Vaughan, works her way to becoming NASA's first black female supervisor, moving up from unofficially overseeing the black female computers, to overseeing a whole department of computer programmers, because she realizes the future will be about adapting to the changes the come with the enormous IBM computer - the giant, room-sized version of the machine. This machine presents Dorothy with the challenge of potentially becoming outdated and out of a job.  So while Katherine proves her worth by catching other people's - and the machine's mistakes - and by seeing alternative explanations, and Mary goes before a judge to petition to go to graduate school at an all white male night school program so she can become an engineer, Dorothy goes to the library, learns Fortran and how to program the IBM, and then teaches it to all the women in her department.

This movie also harkens back to an earlier time that seem full of possibility.  It seems like a fairy tale that all three of these women succeed.  Mary goes on to be NASA's first African American woman engineer, Katherine continues to work there as a strategist, and Dorothy teaches the white women how to program. They all had long successful careers at NASA for decades.

These women achieved great success by working hard, looking forward, and maintaining their dignity.  I haven't seen a movie this uplifting in a long time.

I read an article not that long ago about how these movies that are filled with nostalgia for a better time are a part of the political desire to return to this era of technicolor possibilities.  I can't remember where the article was, and I don't have time to look it up, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with the premise.  It's not unique to today to look backward warmly.  And it is worthwhile as well as wholeheartedly entertaining to revisit success stories of heroes like these previously hidden women of NASA, and to celebrate arts like ballroom dancing and jazz that are often overshadowed by more lucrative performances.