REVIEW: Los Angeles Plays Itself
screened at This is Not a Fiction 2024the definitive film about Los Angeles. in the tradition of Mike Davis, Thom Andersen’s video essay starts from simple observation into a sprawling, almost oppressive diatribe on how Los Angeles is portrayed in film and what Los Angeles really is in real life. it’s designed to provoke reaction, in between Andersen’s jabs against Woody Allen and New Yorkers (“the cinematic chronicler of New York’s middle-brow middle class, the people who believe what they read in the New York Times”) and the real historical context he provides to give lifelong residents pause about their own city. its sprawling construction mirrors the city itself, rewarding those who give it a chance and stirring apathy in the skeptical.
its limitation is the shallow focus as a film about films. mostly preoccupied with the appearance of Los Angeles for most of its runtime, it relegates its real and disheartening portrayal of the city to its latter half and as punctuation to its chapters. Andersen’s analysis of Chinatown ends with the brief mention that in real life, the public voted to approve the Aqueduct’s bond measure themselves, despite a local paper exposing the inside dealings between wealthy businessmen two weeks before the vote. it’s just as abrupt with the context provided for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with an offhand debunking that automobile companies were the sole death knell of public transportation—the public had complained of “overcrowding, slowness, discriminatory pricing, and poor service” for decades already. the film then ends up running credits in the same vein, unceremoniously, after a blunt coda contextualizing independent Black filmmaking in the ‘70s.
Andersen refuses to linger on the realities of our city—he recognizes the inherent original sin of Los Angeles, as did Mike Davis, that we are a city that shouldn’t exist, built on desert land and swiping water from elsewhere; and yet, we’re the ones that continue to forget our history just as fast as we make it. we’re the ones who frequently vote on the side of power, disregarding the water wars and corruption of yesteryear. we’re the ones who complain about the unhoused on buses and trains, until board members who drive to work vote to cut service and raise fares. we’re the ones who allow the world to see us as another city entirely, in minds or on screens. take these as a given and the question isn’t of complicity anymore—the city’s here and we live in it. what will we make of it?