What I found most interesting about this movie is how starkly it showed that we all live in different worlds. I loved the movie, the way it was structured, what it focused on. But at the end of the day, the director's LA is not my LA (starting from trivial things like his assertion that the term LA is an insult).
For example: his LA says nothing about trees, whereas one of the things I try to point out to visitors is how many trees we have, all over the city, vastly more than you'd expect, of great variety. My LA extends eastward almost to Palmdale, his runs from the coast to about highway 110. My LA is fascinated by man's accomplishments, from the cluster of antennas (and the observatory) on Mount Wilson, to the traps in the San Gabriel mountains preventing landslides, to the fact that the freeways work as well as they do, to the massive water projects keeping us all going. His LA is uninterested in the control of nature. My LA loves the fact that material items are so cheap, whether you're looking at any of the masses of malls, or buying second hand in any of the masses of Goodwill stores. He doesn't see the cheap material items, rather the expensive no-materials (rent, medical, education, etc). My LA is interested in how many educational establishments we have, of such variety; his LA does not even mention these institutions.
This is not to criticize him or the movie --- the world is huge and none of us can know more than a tiny part of it. It is simply to point out that LA is likewise huge, and the perspectives he gives, while part of the story are far from the whole story, from the whole undiscussed issue of teenager movies and the portrayal of LA high schools, to the complete lack of reference to the LA Arboretum or Huntington Gardens (both locations used in so many movies).
(Yeah yeah, you can argue that he is talking about Los Angeles city, not LA metro, but come on. That's like snobbish New Yorkers insisting that Manhattan is the whole of NYC. It's a blinkered, empty way to live your life.)
If you're not a local, come visit and see for yourself. The good things he says about it are true --- there is so much beauty in the whole metro --- and many of the bad things from police to racism have (touch wood) been resolved or at least improved and are improving.
For example: his LA says nothing about trees, whereas one of the things I try to point out to visitors is how many trees we have, all over the city, vastly more than you'd expect, of great variety. My LA extends eastward almost to Palmdale, his runs from the coast to about highway 110. My LA is fascinated by man's accomplishments, from the cluster of antennas (and the observatory) on Mount Wilson, to the traps in the San Gabriel mountains preventing landslides, to the fact that the freeways work as well as they do, to the massive water projects keeping us all going. His LA is uninterested in the control of nature. My LA loves the fact that material items are so cheap, whether you're looking at any of the masses of malls, or buying second hand in any of the masses of Goodwill stores. He doesn't see the cheap material items, rather the expensive no-materials (rent, medical, education, etc). My LA is interested in how many educational establishments we have, of such variety; his LA does not even mention these institutions.
This is not to criticize him or the movie --- the world is huge and none of us can know more than a tiny part of it. It is simply to point out that LA is likewise huge, and the perspectives he gives, while part of the story are far from the whole story, from the whole undiscussed issue of teenager movies and the portrayal of LA high schools, to the complete lack of reference to the LA Arboretum or Huntington Gardens (both locations used in so many movies).
(Yeah yeah, you can argue that he is talking about Los Angeles city, not LA metro, but come on. That's like snobbish New Yorkers insisting that Manhattan is the whole of NYC. It's a blinkered, empty way to live your life.)
If you're not a local, come visit and see for yourself. The good things he says about it are true --- there is so much beauty in the whole metro --- and many of the bad things from police to racism have (touch wood) been resolved or at least improved and are improving.