There is an obscure little movie with a small, probably passionate fan base and loads of low ratings and bad reviews all over the Internet. It was directed by Alan Rudolph, a mostly forgotten director who has done some pretty unique movies in the seventies and eighties. Most of those movies could easily be dismissed as pointless and boring by the contemporary audience, but one can at least feel something distinct and recognizable in the atmosphere of Alan Rudolph's best work, which cannot be said for much of the highly rated contemporary crap I saw in the last few years.
The movie I'm talking about is the 1976 Welcome to L.A.
I saw it first time as a kid in the mid-eighties, late in the night on Italian TV. I wasn't into drama movies back then, that's for sure. My favorites were all in Horror, Science Fiction, Western, and Action/Adventure genres, but occasionally, different, slower movies focused on love, romance, and all kinds of mundane relationships, somehow ended up catching my attention.
Welcome to L.A. was one of those.
The theme of this Cine TV contest is " A favorite relaxing movie." And, after a bit of thinking and searching through the movie archives in my mind, I concluded that this is probably my favorite of that kind, my favorite relaxing movie. Its pacing, its cinematography, the music, and the sound design of the movie make an ideal cocktail for me to consume while slowly sliding into sleep.
Now, this may sound like the movie gets me bored into unconsciousness, but that's not the case. I saw it from the beginning to the end more than once, and I genuinely enjoyed the plot, the dialogue, and all that stuff.
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Welcome to L.A. is an ensemble movie with a group of characters elegantly interwoven in a series of situations and interactions that all come together in a fine tapestry that displays melancholy, inspiration, failure, love, fading emotions, loneliness, emptiness, and other mundane stuff that makes life a bittersweet adventure.
To bring those characters alive, there is a group of very good actors who make each one of them memorable.
Retelling the plot of the movie would probably be boring to read, and most certainly devastatingly tedious for me to write, so I won't do that in this post.
I think the plot is OK, despite many reviews on the Internet stating otherwise, but what makes the movie interesting are the small details that reveal bigger, universal stuff if you spot them.
When I first watched the movie, as a kid, I really couldn't explain to myself why I was watching it. There was something hypnotic in the atmosphere, the warm colors of the cinematography, and the calm, slow way in which things were happening.
I love the cinematography in this movie. There's nothing spectacular on display; things happen mostly in interiors, while in exteriors, the distance is often out of focus, but ordinary things feel unique and sometimes abstract inside the movie's universe.
In some scenes, mirrors make ordinary rooms look much more interesting than they probably deserve.
Music has a prominent role in the movie, both in the atmosphere and in the narrative, and that music is quite relaxing.
This is the opening song. I mean this link should lead you to a YouTube video that plays the song.
The movie was produced by Robert Altman, with whom Alan Rudolph worked as an assistant director in The Long Goodbye from 1973, and Nashville from 1975, so Welcome to L.A. can look a lot like an Altman movie in certain regards, or at first sight, but if you have seen any other Alan Rudolph's movie, you'll soon recognize his signature themes and style. There is a certain oddness, specific to the work of this somewhat obscure director, that I appreciate a lot.
Welcome to L.A. is often seen as a part of an unofficial Rudolph's trilogy that includes the movie Remember My Name from 1978 and Choose Me from 1984.
Unlike Welcome to L.A., those two movies are generally highly rated and regarded, with Choose Me reaching a 95 % on Tomatometer. I like them a lot, but the dismissed, underrated underdog, Welcome to L.A., is my relaxing favorite.
Before ending the post, I must say a few words about a weird thing I noticed in many reviews of the movie. The reviewers, quite stupidly, rant about the lack of likable characters. I mean, what the fuck? That's the point of the movie. It's a gallery of the lost and lonely (and quite wealthy too) who are lost and lonely mostly becouse of their self-absorption, ambition, shallowness, but they aren't just that and there is something hypnotic in watching those people searching for love and connection in a wide variaty of wrong and weird ways.
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And that's it. The post ends here. The pictures you just saw are screenshots I took last night while watching the movie on YouTube. Hope that's not against the rules of the community.
Oh, I almost forgot. Here is the link to the Cine TV Contest #141 - Favorite Movie That is Relaxing post that invites you to join the contest.
@cinetv/cine-tv-contest-141-favorite-movie-that-is-relaxing