On one side, there's the "Swingers" way - trying to make love bloom in such a cold place as LA, while being a run of the mill struggling actor, amid all the cynicism, smart alecky-ness, and aloofness. Though it is as unrealistic as growing greeney in the adjacent Nevadan desert, that is life in Los Angeles, a City of Angels (but really, a city of (pipe) dreams). This is where the best looking and most talented come together to weave a techni-color tapestry of hope and possibilities, all the while living in a reality that is the devoid of both the two. Life in LA for someone (trying to get) in show busines revolves around three things alone. 1) The never ending parties - the usual watering holes for the socialities, where every other waiter or bartender is a screenwriter or an actor trying to pitch his idea, where every aspring starlet struts her wares hoping to catch the eye of casting directors or a producer, where the have-beens try to pass off their unwanted wisdom to the wannabees. 2) the run around auditions - the holy grail for the newly minted and the seasoned veterans alike, where close friends become cut throat enemies elbowing each other out of contention trying to grab that elusive role with both the hands, where the crushing reality of every failed opportunity slams one more nail hard into the proverbial coffin, where the intense vulnerability of the aspiring actor is always subjective to the workload tedium of the casting directors. 3) the support/self-help groups - the oxygen ventilator that keeps wick of hope from dying away, where the also-rans rub their shoulders with the fresh entrants into the city, where name-dropping guarantees a higher rung in their social ladder, where encouragement for sticking on a dead end path is dispensed with as much gusto and sincerety as the discouragement to head back home. Now, imagine in this sceneario, the futile attempt at looking for, seeking, and holding on to love. "Swingers" captured it best, the life in the tinseltown in this modern age of pessimism, cynicism, and defeatism. Hope has no place here, and its brother, fortune, is more by accident than by effort or design.

And then there's the "LA LA LAND" way, which is more interested in the romance in life than in life itself set in the same town. When the gramophone record is set on the turn table and the needle slowly placed on the first groove, the initial couple of seconds of the static sound (which is actually the dust particles interpreted as sound) is the romance that the movie goes after before the reality of the record takes over. And making it a musical serves well for its near upbeat tempo. Another traffic jam in the car clogged city, the characters break into an eye popping dance number, an audition fails, the main character pours her heart out in a solo, the lead characters meet, they gently tap in synchronized fashion under a smog covered moonlit night. The dreariness of life in LA lurks just around the corner, but the movie focusses on those brief moments where morose turns to mirth, and gloom becomes gay, which can only be possible in a musical. The contrast between the setting of the story in tinsel world and the purposefully frothy spirit of its characters heightens the surreality (a la the darker, dream-like and sinister world of "Mulholland Drive", again a juxtaposition of the acting world of LA and the real world), in the same vein as the other musical "Grease", a look at high school life of heart break and disappointment in high spirited song and dance. Unlike "Whiplash" which is an unvarnished look at high performance music schools, "LA LA LAND" takes a more merciful route, where dreams are realized and hopes fulfilled, except they come with a twist of reality as though warning that the altar of art demands a personal sacrifice of some kind, be it love, hope or those brief romantic moments that ultimately come to define life. Dance, they may, sing, they can, but when the number comes to an end, and the needle on the gramophone comes to the very end, the record spins and spins on the spindle in silence with the ocassional static of the dust particle breaking the monotone over the speaker, much like the routine of real life rudely interrupting dance of romance. A fine effort with superlatives performances, this.

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