Comparison of the “Factory Girl” by George Hickenlooper and “La La Land” by Damien Chazelle.

To begin with, “Factory Girl” is about a beautiful, wealthy young party girl who drops out of Radcliffe in 1965 and heads to New York to become famous. When she meets the artist Andy Warhol, he promises to make her the star she always wanted to be. On the other hand, in “La La Land”, both upcoming artists, while navigating their careers in Los Angeles, a pianist and an actress fall in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future. Aspiring actress serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and jazz musician Sebastian scrapes by playing cocktail-party gigs in dingy bars. In my opinion, those films are significantly similar yet present completely different perspectives. When it comes to, location, one takes place in New York, the other in California.

Moving on, clearly, one of the biggest differences is the style of both films.“Factory Girl” is presented in a more pessimistic at the same time dirty style, showing the bad sides of the art industry in New York in the 60s, on the other hand, “La La Land” is more romantic, and presenting American dream as it supposes to be done in the XXI century.

In both films we got the upcoming female artists, one wants to become a fashion model or an actress, and the real one, Edie Sedgwick, played by Sienna Miller, on the other hand, we got the upcoming actress, a fictional one, played by Emma Stone. In the case of the lead male, they differ, in the first one, Andy Warhol is already a star, having his place - his factory, where he is shooting his films and made art. On the other hand, Ryan Gosling dreams about a similar thing, he wants to have his place, a club, where he could play Jazz. But they are in different stages of their careers.

What I like the most about “Factory Girl” is that each of the characters has its good sides and bad sides. In my opinion, it turns out that of the main characters the one played by Anakin Skywalker/Hayden Christensen is the positive one yet he says a few bad things like - “You think you are an artist yet you are empty”. Damien Chazelle tries to make them a little bit more ambiguous, it works, but not to the extent of Andy Warhol or Edie Sedgwick.

The motif of “love” is treated differently in both films. In “Factory Girl”, its abstract, and in the end nonexistent, whereas in “La La Land” is unrequited and exists despite the separation of the main protagonists.

To sum up, George Hickenlooper approaches the topic from the bad sides of dreaming about being famous, and how certain people change, that in the end, they are unable to recognize themselves from the beginning of the road. Whereas Damien Chazelle presents the romantic story of two on the first view, perfect characters, dreamers, that lead to the very bittersweet ending.