La La Land: What is success?

Spontaneous trips to the cinema are my thing. My other half and I have cinema memberships, which allow us to go and see an unlimited number of films for "free" (it's free when we see them, but it does cost us a £20 membership fee, mind). So cinema trips and I are quite a couple; we're romantic, we're nostalgic, we treat each other right. I treasure trips to the big screen, watching my favourite actors and being inspired.


Last night I went to see La La Land. It tells the tale of two aspiring, down on their luck artists in LA. It has every cliché in the book, but God do I love a cliché.


Emma Stone -- enchanting and engaging as ever -- plays Mia, an aspiring actress hoping to get her shot in Tinseltown. Give me all the down-on-her-arse-actresses-working-as-a-barista cliché's, I live for them (I once did a two-day stint in the local Cosmo, I think that fulfils my cliché-requirement of waitress turned actor, surely?). Ryan Gosling is a jazz musician, forced into playing Christmas carols in restaurants to make ends meat (and damn, that nose of his).


There is no better formula for romance.


I loved La La Land. Not just because I'm a sucker for old-school Hollywood movies (there are nods to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Casablanca, and true Hollywood tropes), but I'm a real sucker for Romance, which a capital R. Gosling and Stone are truly wonderful to watch, the giddiness of their relationship almost elative.


But what truly struck a chord in me -- and left me sobbing, speechless, for the last forty-five minutes of the film -- was Mia's struggle through the film. As Gosling's character was propelled into success, Mia's character was left desperately behind. She gives a heart-broken, gut-wrenching speech about not having it in her to try anymore. She's tired of the rejection, tired of the empty audiences, and deep down, she's really just terrified that she isn't good enough to make it.


Every actor must know that feeling. The film manages to capture that feeling of utter despondency so perfectly. I'm on the tail-end of four years of constant rejection; I fear, more than anything, that it's not about the timing being off, or "it's just not my year". I fear that it's just me. Every writer, poet, artist, and actor has had that same feeling of crippling self-doubt. 

The film ends not at all like it's Hollywood advertising makes you believe -- there is no starry, rose-tinted ending here. There are tears even after all their dreams are realised, and their successes achieved.


Which makes you wonder, what is success?


In this industry, where creativity doesn't often pay, success is relative. "Success" in most jobs is a one-way trip up the payroll ladder. In the arts, is success defined by the number of Instagram followers you have? By the little blue tick next to your Twitter name? Or do we define it by how many movies are on our IMDB profile, or the accolades we've won?


There are countless, fantastic actors who have never won an Oscar (like Will Smith, Glenn Close, Amy Adams), and yet we still think they are "successful". Is it because they're a big name in film?


Then what about the theatre actors, like Carrie Hope Fletcher or Jeremy Jordan? Not house-hold names, but "successful" in their fields?


I think we define our own success. Success in my field is all relative -- when my Dad sees me in something on stage, or in a small role on TV, I know he'll be chuffed to bits. That, to me, is a success. When I land a role I worked my ass off for in an audition -- that, to me, is a success.


La La Land struck somewhat too close to home, but it also dazzled me; it reminded me what I had forgotten, on the long hard slog of this audition season.


This is a industry of dreamers, and I have a dream to chase.