Tittle: La La Land

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 25 December 2016 (USA)

Runtime: 128 min

Director: Damien Chazelle

Writer: Damien Chazelle

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Rosemarie DeWitt

 

La La Land is a 2016 American romantic musical comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle and starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend and Rosemarie DeWitt. The plot follows a musician and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love in Los Angeles. The film’s title refers both to the city of Los Angeles and to the idiom for being out of touch with reality.

La La Land received critical acclaim upon its release, and was regarded as one of the best films of 2016. At the 74th Golden Globe Awards, the film set a record for the most awards won by a single film, winning seven awards: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Director, Best Actor (for Gosling), Best Actress (for Stone), Best Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“City of Stars”).

Storyline:

Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.

Review

A modern love story, not like Romeo and Juliet, but something greater and more profound encapsulated in the power of the dream. Everything that makes us who we are, our essence, our souls our spirits. A purity of search, a curiosity, a reflection of the attributes which God has manifested deep within our souls.

Some are timid, shy, reserved, their quietness in no way reflecting the richness of their spirit. While others are more vocal, expressing themselves from the highest mountains. Neither is better than the other, but both equally reflect what God has endowed the human condition with, love.

La La Land holds such sway over those who watch it for it reflects the very love story so many of the free spirited souls endure. The trajectory is not linear; these citizens have broken away from the norm. The traffic jam will not hold them back, the cycle of life, through its seasons will not retain a degree of conformity. They seek something more. Not a challenge, not an obstacle, not a rejection, but harmony. A music, a song, a story.

We are taught in Islam to always seek, not just God, but our potential, beyond the norm. Islam teaches us to excel. This is why God defines love as companionship where the husband and wife are covers for one another; equal partners. They hear, they listen to, they endorse, encourage and motivate one another’s spirit. They communicate. When one is down, the other lifts them, and vice versa. This partnership is something special, profound, and unique.

This was the love Prophet Muhammad had for his wife Khadijah, for so many years. Her support of him was such that he said, ‘She believed in me when others did not.’ This ‘amour’ is so much more than the crass pre-Islamic attitude of ownership and control Prophet Muhammad spent his life combating.

In his own life, Prophet Muhammad understood love in a better more meaningful way than so many of the Arabs, their tribes and their customs. He spent his whole life struggling against misogyny, empowering women. Just as so many men today would not recognize his attitude to women’s liberty, men then, so many men, continued to mistreat women. Prophet Muhammad wasn’t just a reformer, he was a man with a dream. A mercy to humankind.

So it is with La La Land, a story of dreams. Those who support us when we dream. Those who remind us of the purity of our dreams. Those who encourage us to never give up on our dreams. No matter how great our dreams, we must understand that a dream is simply God Almighty showing us what we can achieve.

The good of our dreams is God’s love, the bad from our dreams is our soul’s weakness towards us. This is how we harm ourselves, though doubt and insecurities. Yes, we make mistakes, sometimes, and this is why we always do our best while putting our trust in the Creator.

There are times when we do our best, but fail. We do it again, but fail again. Then we do it again, and we keep on doing it till we achieve. Not all of us make it to our dreams; this is perhaps why there is so much sadness in this world. We do live, we do experience joy, we discover a different happiness, but the essence of our dreams is what allows us as individuals and a common humanity to grow, to be beautiful.

Spoiler alert: She didn’t like jazz. He showed her its beauty. She began to appreciate it. He paused with his dreams seeking security. She told him off. Her message, you are living but you are not alive. Eventually they parted, in love. He went his way, she went her way. Later, his life-long dream was realized, hers too.

When their paths crossed, it was the sound of a song from a piano that spun them both into a world of ‘what if.’ An alternative life, what could have been? As the parallel came to an end, they again parted on their ways; He with his dream, she with her dream. There was love. There will always be love, but now there is a newer, other love.

This is the story of love. This is La La Land.

Be careful of what you seek from a dream. Be careful of limiting what you ask from God in a narrow way, for God may indeed grant you your wish. Instead, have your dreams but ask God to direct your heart towards the best from whatever it is that you dream of. And then pray that God blesses you with the wisdom to reach out and grab it when it is there. For what may not have been part of your dream, may be even greater than your dreams. And what greater tragedy befalls any soul than to not take advantage of God’s mercy towards us.

Thank you La La Land. Bismillah, it is time to seek your dreams.