The fools who dream

For those of you who have not seen the film 'La La Land' then shame on you please please please please PLEASE go and watch it now mostly for my sanity but also because I guarantee that you will have an experience watching it. The acting of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are phenomenal, the music is gorgeous and it looks stunning thanks to a reliance on practical sets and effects, not CGI. This film has a fairly significant meaning for me, but there are people who don't like La La Land and don't think it is worth the hype it has got (they're wrong but whatever) yet one thing that all these people do all seem to think in common is that La La Land was something different. Different good, or different bad? Who cares. It's just different. And they're right, it is very different. For starters it doesn't have a straight forward cliche happy ending (oh...spoiler alert) and doesn't focus on love conquering all. No, instead it focuses on a grittier version of Hollywood where the protagonists have to make sacrifices in order to achieve their respective dreams of either acting or owning a jazz club. Pretty glum right? Well I don't think so. In fact I think that this movie had an incredibly powerful message.

The main message of the movie is following your dreams, yes, but that doing this has a cost. In this case the cost was relationship between Seb and Mia. That really speaks volumes I think. More often than not Hollywood presents us with a sugar coated version with reality where the two love birds meet, fall in love, something pulls them apart but then the guy meets the girl at the airport just before she is about to board her plane and at the last second she gets off and they supposedly live happily ever after. I am, of course, paraphrasing the last episode of the Friends sitcom. But, let's face it, Ross and Rachel's relationship could never last. They had promised each other that they would be together at different points throughout the entire season, why should this last episode be anything different. My money is on their relationship ending after 6 months. And that's life. It is never the perfect happy ending because after the happy ending life keeps going. Think of a moment in your life that could have been a happily ever after in a movie. For example, you had fallen out with a friend but then you talk it through and everything turns out ok, you go to the river and the final scene of the movie is you two holding hands and jumping into the freezing water, laughing. On the surface, this is a happy ending. However, how many sacrifices did you make to reach that point? Did you have to make compromises with your friend that you weren't necessarily happy with? Did the happy ending even last? Chances are it didn't. Happy Ever Afters simply do not happen in real life. You might be calling me a pessimist right about now, but actually I think this is a good thing. If we never have the happy ending, then we keep fighting for the happy moments. Our goal throughout life is never an endgame, yes we may be reaching to pass our A Levels and that is a goal but it is not endgame neither is going to Uni, getting a degree, getting a job, having a family or travelling. None of these are endgames we still keep striving for happiness. There is always something beyond. When we pursue our dreams we do lose things a long the way, but why should that mean that we are unhappy. Whilst you may lose a loved one, you could get your dream job and find new happiness in everything else that you do. In life, we lose things. That is a basic truth of our reality. But we mustn't lament these losses, if anything we should celebrate them and move on because they are what push us closer and closer to our dreams.

So yes, be sad about the people you have lost along the way, be nostalgic about the friendships you have lost along the way, but if they contributed to you moving towards your dream, even in an accidental way, then smile and move on because in front of you lies every opportunity you can think of and it is your obligation to seek out the happiness that you deserve.

For a better explained and executed version of what I'm saying, go and see La La Land. I dare you.