Samba restaurant vine and hollywood movie#

The film clearly pines for a lost past, wistfully remembering a world that no longer exists. However, these criticisms miss one of the more compelling and nuanced aspects of La La Land‘s nostalgia. This is the way that things work the same accusations were leveled at films like The Artist and Argo, to pick two recent examples. This sense of nostalgia has become an obvious line of attack against La La Land, particularly once it emerged as a Best Picture frontrunner. When she finishes a rendition of her one-woman show, she asks Sebastian, “Is it too nostalgic?” Her room is decorated with classic Hollywood memorabilia.

However, Mia is implied to be just as nostalgic. “It’s withering on the vine.” Sebastian laments the conversion of a cultural landmark into a “samba and tapas” restaurant. This is most obvious with Sebastian, a jazz nerd who desperately wants to construct a loving shrine to the artform as he loves it. In this day and age, producing any big budget musical would feel like an act of nostalgia, but La La Land is a love letter to a genre that has fallen even further to the wayside than the western.Įven the characters inhabiting the film’s world are defined by nostalgia.

Samba restaurant vine and hollywood movie#

The opening scene proudly declares that the movie has been filmed in “Cinemascope”, with the landscape heavily saturated with bright colours that evoke classic Hollywood musicals even before a final showstopping number that evokes everything from An American in Paris to 7th Heaven.

This is true of both the film and its characters. One of the enduring criticisms of La La Land is the extent to which it indulges in nostalgia.