Everyone, just look at how great we are. Riotous back-slapping excess with a real message under its face paint. Granted, it's maybe not a message that we needed to hear, as it is already blindingly obvious, but nonetheless, shouting above the hubbub in order to be heard is cathartic.
The fact that its heart and soul is the simple pursuit for meaning in an industry that has a very short memory is selfish and often unpalatable. Being remembered is what is most valuable, it would appear, to these people who want to be adored more than understood.
In these times, we view this industry with a more realistic bent. Gone are the days of real icons. Infamy is a word that rarely fits anymore, but is, in the darkest corners, still pursued. In vain, all told. Technology and advertising, junkets and trailers deny us the wonder we may previously have literally been overcome by. Yet there is something to be said for those that yearn for immortality, albeit by fair means or foul, for good reason or bad.
I have read many comments suggesting how this movie resonated with some of my peers, how they were moved to their core. I would like to say I agreed with them and this did leave me breathless but more than a little dislocated by just how very glad I was to be very alien from what was being portrayed. We all like to feel that we have mattered, that our lives have meant something, of course, but the scale of the appreciation required from others is exponential here, where idolatry is the goal. As such, what comes across is rather ugly and narcissistic, regardless of how chaotically, or otherwise, you try to dress it up.
Theologically bereft and philosophically egregious, Chazelle makes no excuse for his balls-out hedonism here, which is to be admired, taking no quarter. It is completely engaging and gluttony for the senses, a bit like taking the Pope to a strip club. You know it's wrong, but it still feels great.