A closer look at the meaning of La La Land's epilogue

Spoilers of course. Skip this paragraph if you've seen the movie, but for some context for those who haven't seen it and for some reason don't intend to: Mia (Stone) and Sebastian (Gosling) meet in Los Angeles, where they are struggling to achieve their lofty dreams. Mia wants to be an actress, and Seb wants to open his own jazz club. Seb is a bit of an eccentric and purist, making him a bit of a stubborn asshole to others. They fall in love, and their careers take interesting turns - Mia focuses on writing and acting in a solo play to get the attention of Hollywood casting folk, Seb takes up an offer from an old frenemy to play in a band that turns out to be wildly successful but is not the pure type of jazz Seb likes. He is constantly away touring, while Mia's play completely bombs with only a few people in attendance. They fight, but eventually make up when Seb is contacted by a casting agency and he forces Mia to go to the audition despite her initially refusing because she is ready to give up and can't go through more heartbreak and rejections. Fast forward, Mia goes to Paris and becomes a famous actress, Seb just opened his jazz club, she stumbles into his club with her husband and he plays their song, prompting a mutual what-if daydream where they stayed together, and in the end they don't have each other but they achieved their dreams so it's OK, right?

It's a bit more nuanced than that. Mia is fine with her outcome, but Seb is clearly not. In fact, the "mutual daydream of what-if" that people took his piece to be, may be something more. Let's start!

The epilogue immediately starts with establishing Mia's happily-ever-after. She steps out of the fancy car, grabs a coffee from her former workplace, where everyone is an adoring fan (of course, mirroring the actress she idolized in the beginning of the film), and goes home to her loving husband and adorable daughter. It's here that we confirm that shit, the loving husband isn't Seb! Let's see how Seb's doing, shall we?

Recall that we first see Seb in the epilogue testing the keys to the piano at his new club. He hits each note on the way up, but stops and tilts his head as he hits the final note. He hits it a couple more times as if it's bothering him. This is the first hint he is not happy with the conclusion of this journey. An enthusiastic man is with him asking him to sign the papers and make Seb's dream official. He exclaims "Not doing too bad, Seb!" to which Seb responds with a tired "Not too bad is great..." Seb goes home, is specifically shown cooking alone while the picture of his sister's happy family sits on the counter. Soon after, he heads to his new club, walking right by a mural of the famous Mia's face and, tellingly, he can't bring himself to look up at it. Instead he keeps his eyes to the floor and keeps walking. Even worse, Seb hasn't smiled a single time in this epilogue up until he is up on stage and has to put on a show for his patrons.

With that out of the way, here's an additional kicker that may be a slight stretch. As Seb plays their song, the two are pictured in an alternate timeline in which they stayed together. The most straightforward interpretation of this is that they are imagining their lives together before they go back to reality. But what if this is Seb's regretful love letter to her?

Earlier in the movie, Seb introduces Mia to jazz and explains to her that jazz came about in a little flophouse in New Orleans where people speaking different languages couldn't communicate with each other until they used music to do so. I'm no jazz history expert and maybe Seb is off on this somewhat romantic origin, but this is the context he provides. Years later, Mia walks into his club with her husband and sits down in the audience, where Seb sees her from the stage. He can't exactly jump into the crowd and tell her how he feels in front of her husband, so instead he communicates it to her with their song. Notice that when this version of Mia and Sebastian's Theme concludes (38 seconds in if the timestamp doesn't work) in the epilogue, Seb merely leaves the song unfinished. He immediately kisses Mia instead of blowing her off, he ignores Keith and doesn't join the band, he attends her play which is a sold out masterpiece, etc. Really, the only things that change are on Seb's part. She still becomes a famous actress and he follows her to Paris. He doesn't open his own club, but he seems happy enough playing piano wherever she is, and raising their child.

This Seb who isn't totally happy with his original dream is such a far cry from the Seb from the beginning of the film, who only cares about his ideas and his goals! If you read this far, I hope you enjoyed my analysis. I love LLL and have put way too much thought into it.

TL;DR: Mia is happy with her ending, Seb is not. They may have shared an intimate what-if in the epilogue, but I interpret it as Seb telling Mia he would've done everything differently to be with her.

Submitted April 30, 2020 at 04:23AM by failbears https://ift.tt/2W7Z0Nm