Review of La La Land

Rating: 10/10 (27 September 2017)

Damien Chavelles " La La Land" is a movie which has rightfully won many awards for its cinematography, acting and music. It feels as though each note, thread, and camera angle were delicately and thoughtfully chosen to bring together a story about two people fighting to make their dreams come true as well as fighting to be together. Mia, an aspiring actress from Boulder City, soon falls in love with a snappy jazz pianist, Sebastian, who tries to revive the art of jazz.
There are many scenes in which lighting plays an important role in adding to the mood of each scene as well as creating a beautiful visual composition. When Sebastian plays the piano and Mia hears him for the first time, the moment is intensified with a spotlight. With the use of a spotlight, nothing else mattered except the two of them in the moment. The lighting also ties in with the use of colors used and how the colors would mix to add to a scene. The lighting is used in order to make certain scenes stand out from others such as when Sebastian and Mia have their fight or when they sit down to sing a song together at the piano. The same lighting is used after Mia does her solo performance. Some scenes were filmed with only natural light to give it a more realistic feeling. Although most of the film had a formalist feel, it did indeed had realistic elements.
Primary colors were used throughout this movie to convey a certain emotion for a particular scene. Blue was used to express success and control such as when she decides to go to the party with her roommates. Although the other girls are wearing bright primary colors, they still fade into the background of the party whereas Mia stands out foreshadowing that she has more potential and will stand out. Yellow was used to signify that there would be some sort of change to follow such as the dance that Sebastian and Mia share after the pool party or Keith bumping into the couple at the jazz club. The absence of color also plays an important role in the building of the story such as the scene where Mia botches her solo performance and after Sebastian goes through a humiliating photo shoot. The two of them are wearing black and white when they individually hit "rock bottom".
The music and dance numbers were used to allude to classic musicals as well as tie the entire story together. Sebastian theme shows up a number of times throughout the film as a way to ground the characters or make them reminisce about how things were by the end of the film when Mia and her husband happen to go to Sebastian's Jazz Club. The audience gets somewhat sucked into the idea of exclusionary musical art, being trained throughout the movie that jazz and classical is better than modern pop. At the pool party, the audience is able to feel Sebastian's embarrassment when he's asked to play "I Ran". They are also able to feel a shock and almost disgust when Sebastian first starts to play with Keith's Band.
The cinematography used in this film was used for the specific purpose of making it feel like Old Hollywood by using CinemaScope. Most of the dancing scenes were filmed as if the camera was moving with the music like an instrument, spinning and moving in and out. The camera moves in an almost emotional way and goes along with the feelings of the scene.
Altogether, the film was very well thought out and with that it was able to grab the attention of a larger audience with a good outcome.