Love La La Land? Seek out Guy and Made­line on a Park Bench

Music plays a com­plex role in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land. It is the bond that ini­tial­ly unites Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebas­t­ian (Ryan Gosling), and the riff that ulti­mate­ly breaks them. In the film’s final scene, the pair reunite after sev­er­al years apart. Noth­ing is said, as they remain sep­a­rat­ed by sta­tus and a soused crowd, but Sebas­t­ian takes to the piano to play a song – their song (fit­ting­ly titled ​‘Mia and Sebastian’s Theme’). The accom­pa­ny­ing mon­tage shows what their lives might have been like had they cho­sen dif­fer­ent­ly, made com­pro­mis­es, and stayed togeth­er. For a brief moment, they’re in love all over again. But the mag­ic only lasts as long as the music, and when the final note is played, real­i­ty comes rush­ing back in.

It’s cin­e­ma designed to evoke the finest jazz: reflec­tive, pow­er­ful, tech­ni­cal­ly vir­tu­osic. Chazelle under­stands the way music manip­u­lates our emo­tions, the way it pre­serves the past, and roman­ti­cis­es what could have been. It’s an obses­sion he bears, as both a sto­ry­teller and a for­mer musi­cian, and it’s pre­cise­ly why the film has struck a chord with audi­ences. Each of us has a per­son­al song that takes us back to a spe­cial time and place. But La La Land isn’t Chazelle’s first attempt at play­ing these emo­tion­al strings. That dis­tinc­tion goes to his debut fea­ture from 2009, the low-bud­get musi­cal Guy and Made­line on a Park Bench.

The film revolves around two Boston twen­tysome­things, jazz trum­peter Guy (Jason Palmer) and grad­u­ate stu­dent Made­line (Desiree Gar­cia). Their rela­tion­ship is both lov­ing and brief, as we see them join, grow unhap­py and part ways (on a park bench) in the span of the film’s open­ing mon­tage – no dis­cernible dia­logue, no expla­na­tion. It is Chazelle’s ear­li­est attempt at telling a sto­ry through music, and it’s clear that even at 24 years old, his vision is one of star­tling ambi­tion. From this open­er one can glean the cre­ative spark for La La Land’s daz­zling ​‘City of Stars’ sequence. The rest of the film fol­lows Guy as he dates anoth­er woman, and Made­line, as she wan­ders through a series of mean­ing­less encounters.

Fans of La La Land will find plen­ty that’s famil­iar: the ten­der rela­tion­ship gone wrong, the big city iso­la­tion, and the com­pro­mise of the jazz lifestyle. In both cas­es, Chazelle presents musi­cians too stub­born to change their tra­di­tion­al val­ues. When Guy stops to chat out­side of a club, he com­plains that ​“you nev­er hear any­body blast Coltrane, or Char­lie Park­er, or Bil­lie Hol­l­i­day,” on their stereo – a remark that’ll even­tu­al­ly snow­ball into the ​“jazz is dying” schtick put forth by Sebas­t­ian. These men place the roman­tic idea of their music above actu­al romance, only to get hung up on whether they made the right deci­sion in the long run.

This con­flict is inten­tion­al on Chazelle’s part, as he attempts to fuse the tropes of the musi­cal genre to a world ​“where things don’t always exact­ly work out.” And though the film offers accu­rate­ly grit­ty imagery for the most part, a few sophis­ti­cat­ed bursts can’t help but pre­dict the eupho­ria of La La Land, from Madeline’s musi­cal num­ber in the park (penned by com­pos­er Justin Hur­witz) to the din­er song-and-dance, where Chazelle begins to hone the Vin­cente Min­nel­li-style chore­og­ra­phy and glam­our that would define his future work.

Still, the most impor­tant prece­dent that Guy and Made­line sets is the allure of an ambigu­ous res­o­lu­tion. Chazelle has his char­ac­ters cross paths once more, and Guy, unsure of what to say, chan­nels his unspo­ken long­ing into song. It’s a scene that visu­al­ly revers­es La La Land’s grand finale, cap­tured here in extreme close­up and savour­ing the pained breaths in between each phrase. Yet in terms of tone, and the mesh­ing of music with emo­tion­al expres­sion, it’s a direct pre­cur­sor. Like Mia and Sebas­t­ian, the cou­ple remains silent after the song is over. Chazelle is unclear whether they will reunite or sep­a­rate for good, and instead we see them smil­ing, unsure of the future them­selves. They take solace in the fact their bond will live on, if nowhere else, in that final, bit­ter­sweet note.

Guy and Made­line on a Park Bench has its flaws. The act­ing feels ama­teur at times (tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, it is), as does some of the con­stant­ly mov­ing cam­er­a­work. Where Chazelle usurps these tech­ni­cal issues, how­ev­er, is in the stir­ring pow­er he cre­ates between char­ac­ter and music. It’s the melody that ties his films togeth­er, and giv­en La La Land’s record-equalling 14 Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions, one that movie­go­ers will be hum­ming for years to come. In the mean­time, give this spir­it­ed debut fea­ture a look. Its virtues are com­pa­ra­ble to the demo ver­sion of a clas­sic tune; the sur­face may be rough, but the raw beau­ty is undeniable.