Random Topic Generator: La La Land's Ending - Changing the Way a Traditional Love Story is Told (Warning: Spoilers)

I would like to take a moment and discuss La La Land’s ending. Some people disliked it because Mia and Sebastian don’t ultimately end up together, whereas others, including me, like the ending because it’s a true outcome that had to happen based upon the events that happened throughout.

Nearing the end, when Mia returns to Hollywood after spending five years abroad in Paris, we discovered that she has moved on from her relationship with Sebastian. She’s married and has a daughter. One night, Mia and her husband is scheduled to attend a party, but they unfortunately get stuck in traffic, which leads Mia to decide to abandon any plans for the party and go and have dinner instead. They come across a club. Mia doesn’t know who’s club it belongs to until she walks in.

Sebastian’s love of jazz allowed him to see that it was a dying art. It needed to be revitalised somehow, and the only way he saw of doing that was to build his own club where traditional jazz musicians can play and show the audience what real jazz is. Mia and Sebastian’s relationship develops and they declare their love for one another, they move into a place together, and they start slowly building their life and their dreams together.

In most love stories, when the titular characters get together, that’s it. They meet each other at the beginning of the movie, and after a couple of complications here and there, they do end up together. La La Land explores an aspect of a relationship that doesn’t get enough attention. Sebastian wants the relationship to work, and after overhearing Mia’s conversation with her mother, decides to take the job of becoming the keyboardist in a jazz band.

We, the audience, knew that the band was not heading in the direction it was going to go, even before Sebastian discovered that when the leader switched on a disco backing track. He understood there and then that the band was steering him away from his dream, but he stayed after some convincing and wanting his relationship with Mia to continue solidly. He loses himself in a world he previously didn’t want to be associated with, and Mia saw this immediately when she attended the band’s first concert.

With him being lost in a new world, he failed to see what the problem was when the band was scheduled to go on tour the next day for a few years, before returning home but only ending up in the recording studio before going off on tour again. He believes this is what Mia wanted. Mia’s mum wanted Sebastian to have a stable job, because she wants the best for her daughter, which is perfectly understandable. Mia couldn’t lie, she had to tell the truth and admit that Sebastian’s dream of running a jazz club does take time with a good couple of years’ prior of no prominent movement forward. He took this and ran with it, also wanting the best for Mia, when instead all that Mia wanted was for him to be happy as the manager of his new club.

Mia’s side of the story saw her being a passionate aspiring actress. In the acting world, it’s always disheartening when an audition doesn’t go exactly to plan, and even more so when you have a few in a row. At the beginning of the story, she’s optimistic, confident, and doesn’t want to turn her back. Over the course of the film, we see all that positivity slowly falling away. After a sudden conversation with Sebastian, a spark of inspiration goes off and she writes and sets up her own play. A one-person play where she tells a story by a monologue. We don’t get to see the play, just the ending when she turns off the lamp. It’s up to the audience to fill in the gaps, but my main focus with this scene is when the houselights turn on, showing Mia who actually showed. The theatre wasn’t sold out, and Sebastian wasn’t in the front row, because he was attending a photoshoot for the band.

Mia’s optimism and confidence blinded her from the possibility that her play wouldn’t be as successful as she thought it would be. It was Sebastian, the person she loves and who was supporting her throughout the process of setting up a play from beginning to end, giving her the confidence she needed to step out on stage. This was the final nail in the coffin. With so few people in the audience, she was unable to pay the theatre back, and her dream of becoming a successful actress was dead in the water.

Sebastian realised too late that he wasn’t heading down the right path, and turned up when Mia was exiting the theatre, borderline hysteria as she struggles to fully process what has just happened. She leaves Hollywood and returns home to her parents. Their relationship seemingly dead in the water.

La La Land took the basic formula of a love story and turned it into its own thing. Man meets woman, they fall in love, they have a fight, man or woman leaves, the other one comes and apologises and makes it up to the other person somehow, and the film ends with them being back together again, and they all live happily ever after. Not all films do that, granted, but La La Land showed us a unique perspective on the love story. The formula was present throughout, but it was how the film ended that I believe gave the most impact and therefore split the audience down the middle.

When Mia left, and Sebastian returned, that was the start of the basic ending to a formulaic love story. Sebastian received a phone call about an audition for Mia, and as a way to make it up to her, drives to her home, gives her the information, which after much thinking does accept. During the play, although the seating area wasn’t bursting at the seams with people, there was one person who did enjoy the play. A casting director who had big plans for a film in Paris. There wasn’t a scrip yet because they wanted to mould one around the actors. She nails the audition, gets the job, and turns the tables around.

It was now Mia who had to leave for a few years, but there was one major difference. This is what Mia wanted, whereas Sebastian knew he needed to stay in Hollywood in order to follow his dreams. Instead of living happily ever after, they make the decision to end the relationship and go their separate ways, allowing them both to follow their dreams. We only see them briefly discussing themselves, because the film was telling us, the audience, the rest.

The entire film up to that moment was building up to that conversation. The writer and director, Damien Chazelle, gave us only what we needed to help the story move forward. Damien wasn’t following a script that somebody else had written, which allowed him to have more freedom and also allowed him to see precisely what needed to be done with each scene. The visuals, the music in the background and the stunning musical numbers, and the development of the characters sucked us all in. I was drawn and I knew everything about a scene, even if the characters didn’t say it or do it, because the previous scenes explained that via Damian’s directing and storytelling. We didn’t need the full conversation between Mia and Sebastian about where they are in their relationship, because in a way, we knew why it was going the way it was.

It was disappointing that Mia and Sebastian couldn’t end up together, but I’m glad that they didn’t. They both had a dream. They both wanted a strong relationship that would last for the rest of their lives. They realised that sometimes, you can’t have both things at once. You have to sacrifice one to make the other work, and in this case, they sacrificed their relationship for their dreams, a decision that needed to happen if they were to both remain happy. What they had between them was special, and we, the audience, knew that, and so did they.

When Mia walked into Sebastian’s jazz club, we both saw the remnants of their time together, when he named the club, Seb’s a name suggested by Mia because she knew it sounded better than Chicken on a Stick, a thought that I shared. Mia knew instantly where she was, but couldn’t turn around because that would mean an awkward conversation with her husband. In this situation, it was easier to remain quiet.

In the final stunning musical number, we see a montage of a life they wished they had together. From the very moment they met each other, we saw them hitting it off immediately, instead of the slow process of going from dislike to love, Mia’s play being an instant hit, Sebastian’s club becoming a hit, right up to when we saw Sebastian taking the role of the husband, saying goodnight to their daughter, getting stuck in traffic, heading off to a bar and watching someone else play for the night. It was a story they wished they had, but they also accepted that it just wasn’t the case. Mia’s play wasn’t successful, Sebastian did take that position in that band; they saw that their relationship together was pulling each other away from the dreams they’ve always wanted, and so they decided to put their dreams first, and end the relationship.

When we were first introduced to the characters, they didn’t like each other, but they grew to love each other. They felt the necessary feelings, but when it came to that inevitable conversation, they both knew that it wouldn’t last. When Mia returned five years later, and we saw that she had moved on with a daughter, I was surprised at first, because I was expecting them to reunite after so long and restart their relationship once more, but during that montage, I realised that it just wouldn’t have worked. The way it ended was the way it had to end. It didn’t have to end that way if all the factors came together the way we all hoped they would.

The way the film was directed, there were moments when I thought that the film would end, and the credits would start, but then it continued and I was happy about that, because if it had ended where I thought it would, it wouldn’t have been the perfect ending we were given. As I was driving home, I realised then that those moments when I thought the film would end were moments when each stage of their relationship ended, and a new one began, where the characters could develop some more, and move ever closer to that powerful ending.

La La Land took a traditional love story and turned it into a unique experience, complete with sensational musical numbers throughout and incredible dance routines, which only sucks you into their world even more. People are saying that more films need to be like La La Land in the future, but I disagree, because if they were, then this film would lose its uniqueness and subsequently its power and impact. Twisting and bending a traditional love story into something new does need to be done, but differently to La La Land. There have been so many films that follow the same formula; La La Land has reminded us that there are plenty of ways it can be used.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)