You know, sometimes you just want to make something great. Something from the heart. Real.It's been such a long time since I've connected with a movie so profoundly. Lost Angeles is a lovely, beautiful exploration of deep human connection, how soulmates are destined to find each other, and how making art saves the soul.
My heart needed to see this. My spirits soared. I smiled so hard while watching and teared up a few times. I was awestruck by the imagery, invested in the endearing characters, and swept away by the struggle of being an artist, as well as the celebration of artistry. Everything connects, in the end.
Watching Lost Angeles happened because the other night, I was just doom scrolling after dinner.
I had entirely different plans, of course. I was eager to continue working on music and lyrics. I had already set an acoustic guitar on the stand right beside my desk, and taken out one of my lyric journals, pen tucked along the spine between the pages. I was ready to pour my heart out.
All through dinner, I was absently picking at my chicken stir fry, letting my thoughts scatter. Going over various chord combinations. Second guessing my guitar choice, wondering what a better alternative would be in terms of tonewoods. I kept getting hung up on what exactly I would write about. I chewed without savouring, just trying to finish eating quickly as if that would bring about an epiphany.
After dinner, I went back to my guitar and stared blankly at it. I thumbed through my lyric journal. Half finished thoughts, rhymes that, probably for the best, will never see the light of day, and blank pages stared back at me. It was the blank pages that made me tremble. I knew there was a lot on my mind that I wanted to express. But picking up that pen and actually writing seemed like way too much effort.
So I grabbed my phone instead, conveniently ignoring all the lyrics already on the go in my notes app, and promptly opened Reddit. I scrolled and scrolled. Hours passed. I was trying to distract myself. I was trying to fill the void. It was working, for a while.
In the back of my mind, I was thinking of old loves. Not one woman in particular, yet all of them at once.
I was feeling a sort of forlorn fondness. Eventually, I stopped scrolling and checked my emails before intending to go to sleep.
Filling The Void
I've been following the creative collective ARTandVOID for about a year. Founded by acclaimed writer, musician, and filmmaker Jesse Dvorak (BLOOD NEBRASKA), Art and Void envisions art and writing as “a healing ritual” and provides “a refuge for the spiritual artists, midnight poets, and romantic rebels.”
I’ve been signed up to the Art and Void newsletter, so when that email about Lost Angeles lit up my inbox like a neon sign, I was immediately intrigued. Jesse wrote and directed the film, filled with fantastic acting, cinematography, music, and symbolism.
In addition to the stunning film stills shared in the email, the story was what made me decide to watch right away:
“Two young women meet on an unusual phone call. Their lives take an unexpected twist when they enter a shared dream where they are visited by the ghosts of Hollywood past and present.”
The heartfelt intent behind Lost Angeles is just as important to point out:
“This is a cinematic poem set inside a liminal, nigh apocalyptic vision of Los Angeles rarely shown, but often felt. The spaces artists often find themselves wandering alone.
Made on a micro, shoe-string budget with a skeleton crew and an uncompromising vision, Lost Angeles moves slowly and intentionally.
Characters appear and disappear like thoughts. Meaning drifts rather than announces itself.
The decision was made to release the film freely on YouTube. No monetization. No gatekeeping. No transaction.
This film is offered as a gift, especially to other artists, those walking their own uncertain paths, those who feel unseen, those who continue anyway.”
Lost Angeles ended up reflecting everything I believe in about life, love, and art. All that I had been trying to put onto blank pages in my lyric journal suddenly leapt out from the screen. Lost Angeles inspired me to start working a new song as soon as I finished watching!
And when I started watching, I was hooked me within five minutes because the struggle of being an artist was perfectly laid out with simple honesty and emotion. No pretentiousness, just truth, experienced from the perspectives of both Marina and Elise.
The film starts with the sounds and sights of the vast ocean before we’re immediately introduced to Marina. She is scowling while smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk in the afternoon sunlight while the gritty city overlooks her. She has just submitted her art to an agency, only to be told that the curator doesn’t have time to see her and being coldly dismissed by the receptionist. Immediately, she is dehumanized and her art is devalued.
And yet, Marina sees a vibrant purple flowing growing tall through a crack in the concrete.
There are no words. Just her resolute expression, and the film takes off.
Marina’s soulmate Elise is an illustrator. She presents a tough exterior with her leather jacket and tattoos, along with the confident way she carries herself. She’s shown to be going down the same street Marina is, somewhere near a payphone. Their paths don’t cross this early on, but they’re already in each other’s orbit.
Their coming together is tender and full of meaning. Marina gets invited to a party and goes alone, whereas Elise is wandering around the area, near the earlier payphone. Marina drifts away from the other party goers and finds herself in a room filled with memorabilia. There’s a striking use of colour throughout Lost Angeles, especially the contrasts between red and blue, and at the moment, Marina is blue.
She picks up an old rotary telephone and dials.
Instead of silence, the payphone beside Elise rings.
She answers.
They talk.
They understand each other immediately.
Marina rushes out of the party to find Elise, pulled by echoes of her presence, by touch, and by the feeling in her heart.
Two artists, wandering distinct yet equally uncertain paths, each trying to be their own person and make something true and emotional in a place where dreams get broken all the time.
Two artists, trying to fill the void.
Artistry and Truth
As artists, it’s often difficult for us to have faith: in ourselves, our art, and the uncertain but fulfilling path we’re trying to make.
As Lost Angeles unravels, Marina and Elise are drawn together by their muse and literal guiding light, represented as the Woman In White. This legend appears across all cultures, but the urban legend specific to the city of Los Angeles goes like this:
The woman in white was an actress looking for her big break. In the middle of dealing with hardship and personal problems, she was offered a starring role only to be denied when she showed up on set. Devastated, the woman hurls herself from the heights of the Hollywood sign. A week later, her big break actually does arrive in the form of another role, detailed in an official offer letter. Locals swear that the Woman In White haunts the hills and valleys around Elysian Park to this day.
Elise recounts all this to Marina as they’re swimming together in a pool. It’s one of Lost Angeles' many surreal and gorgeous scenes, all glowing colours and intimate murmurings, an ephemeral moment captured in the most moving way. Marina and Elise swim around, and up to, each other. Delighted and carefree, splashing each other and talking about life.
Marina wonders if there’s any truth to the Woman In White urban legend.
Elise challenges her to think about truth as not only something that really happened and was experienced by someone, but something that can also be felt in the heart and seen in the mind’s eye. Something that requires faith and empathy just as much as artistry. She has Marina imagine a person, man or woman, and describe them in exact detail.
Marina does, painting the picture of one of the other pivotal characters: a priest that delivers a scorching sermon about what it means to be an artist and to have faith. He is a rugged man with greying hair and sharp eyes that weaves in and out of the story as a sort of force of nature, not quite threatening but deliberately unhelpful at times.
His best piece of advice to Marina is always to “reach out!” He is also imploring artists to connect with the world around them and each other as much as possible. Marina constantly does exactly this, reaching out for Elise at all times until they’re brought together.
The priest addresses an empty congregation, but his words ring true just the same:
Sometimes people like to use the words hope and faith interchangeably. ‘Believe in God and in yourself’ is what so many will say these days.
Faith.
Faith that the good which you desire to see will be made manifest because it is God’s will. But there is another side of faith.
Doubt.
And even deeper than doubt, fear.
You feel it. Inside. A poisonous spider, weaving a web that crawls up your throat. You do understand what I’m talking about. The notion that you will fail. That you’re not good enough. That you are misguided in your endeavors. Not only is the track you’re on facing in the wrong direction, but you’re on the wrong train entirely.
I think fear is embedded in each of us more deeply even than the hope.We have to try to attain hope.
Why do you think we sing so many songs imploring God and ourselves to hold onto it? It is written in the Psalms. Oh, it would be nice if we awoke full of hopeful abundance. Assurance. The reality is so very different, isn’t it?
The alarm strikes and we are gripped with fear immediately. The success we’ve obtained feels fraudulent, because inside, deep, deep down inside, you hear the voice. The voice tells you you’re an imposter.
So what is your true nature?
Are you the hope you try so hard to believe in?
Or are you the doubt that comes so easily?
If expressing ourselves through art is one of the truest things we can ever do, if it connects us and heals us, then it is definitely something we should all have faith in.
All the characters in Lost Angeles understand this. A chain-smoking older actor recounting his glory days to a friend in a dimly lit parking lot remarks, “You know, sometimes you just want to make something great. Something from the heart. Real.”
Lost Angeles is a movie that comes from the heart. It demands in equally fierce and tenderly supportive ways that we all follow our hearts, so that we can connect to one another for real. The film suggests earnestly that artistry and truth are inextricable and intertwined, requiring a terrifying amount of faith to make our dreams come true.
To bring this back to the pool scene, Elise triumphantly thinks she’s convinced Marina about the nature of truth. All art is true, whether it is drawn from personal experience or not. Marina agrees, but also points out that this doesn’t exactly answer her question about what’s reliably true or not. Elise laughs this off and they get out of the water to catch their breaths poolside.
Marina gently lays her head in Elise’s lap. “What time is it?”
Elise strokes her hair and replies, “There is only now.”
Destiny and Soulmates
Following a sordid past few hours that Marina may or may not have actually experienced, she wakes up in an empty kitchen all alone.
There’s a pool of black water beside her and Elise’s sketchbook with its pages soaked through and torn out.
Marina breaks down sobbing, faithless and alone.
Then she picks herself up, more determined than ever to find Elise.
Marina and Elise literally crash into one another exactly halfway through the movie. They’re both following the Woman In White through the streets of LA. Once these two women are brought together, they explore places they’ve already both been to on their own, now hand in hand.
“Sometimes things look different when you’re with someone,” Elise softly tells Marina as they’re at another party together.
They drift from rooms that were earlier drenched in blue, to rooms that are presently alive with vivid colours, music, laughter, and the rush of love that’s meant to be. They find a quiet spot together, a room tucked away from everyone else. They talk. They embrace. They make shadow puppets and laugh in between drinks. They are two artists, lost in their own world, sharing a profound moment of truth.
Near the end of the movie, in the middle of overcoming a literal and symbolic crisis of faith, Marina reaches out across time and space to Elise.
Elise is also reaching out, all alone in her dark living room, trying to feel Marina through the static hum of the void. She’s touching a television screen looping noise, somehow feeling Marina’s struggle across the city.
Their connection is so intense that Elise’s fingers come away stained with blood that she lovingly smears across her face. We feel this ritualistic and passionately affectionate moment with her, as the music swells and we’re shown that Marina and Elise are now in each other’s arms for good.
The crisis is over. The fear and doubt are gone, washed away by victorious tides.
Lost Angeles symbolizes destiny as an ocean that will sweep us away wherever we’re eventually meant to be. Whether we find refuge in our soulmate’s arms or simply in the next piece of art we create that brings us ever closer to the truth, we should have faith that this truth will always set us free.
I know I will keep this wonderful movie in my heart, and I hope you will too!
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