La La Land
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I watched La La Land in my mid-twenties -- the time in my life when I was simultaneously dating casually while also sort of on the lookout for ‘the one’.
My boyfriend of about two years and I were on the verge of breaking up. I loved him. We were always laughing, got along really well, had similar backgrounds etc. — but ultimately I didn’t see him as the man I wanted to marry.
It was all so confusing at the time. If I loved him, shouldn’t that mean that I want to marry him? Did it mean that maybe… I didn’t actually love him?
I think that’s why this movie hit me so hard. It spends so much of its time showing us the beautiful experience of truly falling in love, learning to deeply care for another person — yet, despite all of that, whether due to life's circumstances or something else, showing us that sometimes things just don’t work out in the end.
This movie gave me the space to acknowledge my love for this person, while accepting that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with him, and helped me process the sadness and grief of losing my relationship to this person.
I still remember sobbing to ‘Epilogue’ in my car, in the parking lot of my ex’s apartment (lol so dramatic I know…). While the music was playing, I could see each ‘chapter’ of the epilogue scene so clearly in my head. The 7:36 min journey from happy, energetic → hopeful → blissful → reflective → expansive, to the falling → sadness → and acceptance. A journey I was currently on.
Now in my early 30s, (a bit wiser and happily married) -- the phrase “it’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all” feels like a such trope, but I’ll never forget the time in my life when it was one of the most powerful lessons I was learning. That we (and life), all can, and will move on.
