Introduction
This paper considers the film La La Land, the scene of a quarrel between the main characters, Mia and Sebastian, at dinner. The subject of the dispute of this couple is first the amount of time they can devote to each other, and then the more sublime question of the dream, whether it is really the motive of Sebastian’s activities (Chazelle, 2016). Unlike Mia, disappointment befalls the character at the moment of the conversation, which does not prevent him from actively listening and perceiving his partner.
Discussion
At first, the characters listen attentively to each other and let them complete the sentences to the end; then, their words more and more often sound simultaneous. At the same time, for Mia, the selection stage of perception is focused only on the question of actual activity for the soul of Sebastian, which became completely different in her eyes after gaining fame instead of a dream (Floyd, 2020). Assessing the situation from the side of the protagonist, he carefully follows Mia’s every word, eventually catching on to her intonation and mood: Sebastian returns to the same close attention only at the end of the conversation (Chazelle, 2016). Despite the significant disagreements revealed in the conversation and the surge of emotions in the process, the characters listen to each other quite carefully.
It is in terms of understanding each other in this scene that there are problems. Mind prompts Sebastian that he did everything right since Mia wanted a permanent and profitable job with him. The character’s consciousness also sees no contradictions: the hero is engaged in music, as he dreamed about it before. Finally, thinking is formed within the framework of this paradigm, where there is no place for the club from Sebastian’s dream, which hurts Mia very much. This behavior of the musician can be explained by the principles of growing egocentrism with a share of stereotyping such a life: at the end of a quarrel, he exclaims that Mia is an actress and should understand what he is talking about (Chazelle, 2016; Floyd, 2020). The dizzying success replaces the values and goals that were initially in Sebastian; he now really convinces himself that people like himself and not his creations – this was his main task. Against the background of this transformation, Sebastian loses contact with Mia and no longer seems to remember that they were initially different people.
Contradictions could go far enough, but the characters behaved politely to each other without violating personal space. At the same time, Mia remained true to herself in conscience and did not take her eyes off Sebastian, whose gaze constantly ran from side to side or fell down (Chazelle, 2016). The protagonist’s actions are limited to languid sighs and neat gestures with a napkin, which represent the noble manners of a successful person – earlier in the film, he was deprived of them. Non-verbal elements were mainly the facial expressions of the main characters: Miya began to move her head a little on the verge of tears and smirks that betrayed a stormy nervous sweat of emotions hidden behind external calmness (Chazelle, 2016).
Conclusion
The whole conversation took place at the table: the characters did not even get up from their chairs, and the culmination was reached during the conversation and remained in the air and silence. The result was that the conflict was not resolved, the ambitions of the heroes no longer followed the same path, and it was time to make more tough decisions in this regard.
References
Chazelle, D. (2016). La La Land. Lionsgate. Web.
Floyd, K. (2020). Interpersonal communication (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.