Love through music

Rating: 10/10 (27 January 2017)

La la land is a 2016 musical by the ascending director Damien Chazelle, mostly known for 2014's Whiplash. It tells the story of the romance between Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz lover musician. It has Los Angeles City as background.
Hollywood's musical golden era is marked by movies like 1939's Wizard of Oz and 1952's Singin' In The Rain. Seeing a musical on the big screen in plain 21st century is a bit hard to chew, and I felt this right at the start. In a L.A. traffic jam, people get out of their cars while singing and the first musical act of the movie begins. This reminded me of my childhood fantasies where I'd be in a car and imagined people just stop driving and starting dancing on the roads, so I couldn't help feeling this scene a bit cheesy and tacky. But it was no doubt well executed, with each of the many actors singing different parts in the song and making perfectly executed dance moves up and around the cars.
As more musical acts passed, I felt less like treating the movie as just a corny musical and more as a merit deserving film. In the second act, Emma Stone shows up dancing with her housemates, first wearing sweatpants and then changing to a beautiful blue dress. She is the heart of this movie, with the good acting making you relate to her in happy or sad scenes and understanding the eagerness that the character has for becoming an actress.
Then we're presented to Ryan Gosling's character, who describes himself as a serious musician but ends up having to sacrifice his principles for the sake of being successful. I felt that Mia's scenes outshine Seb's, because her aspirations seem stronger than his. She struggles in auditions where people never give her credit and has to work as a barista to get life going. However, Seb has a really strong point: his love for jazz. Even when he makes speeches about musician I never heard about, the meaning that the music has to him always feels genuine.
The couple goes through the cliché of first disliking each other and then falling in love. There are a lot of scenes for the development of their relationship where they just talk to each other, and one of my only problems with this movie is that some of these talking parts feel a bit dragged. I feel that their love is much better transpired through the singing and dancing. Mia has a different colored dress for each season, and this marks each of the music acts. Also, the lighting is always beautiful, weather it is the stars shining on the couple as they dance, the L.A's beautiful sunset, the movie screen lightning their faces, or the purple and red toned lights in closed spaces like restaurants and bars. The music and the dance moves are very light. All of these elements make very emotional scenes, especially the one where they float through stars in the planetary.
La la land plays a lot of homage to the classic old movies, for Mia's love for acting comes from watching them. 1955's Rebel Without a Cause is the most referenced, but 1942's Casablanca is the most important. In this last one, the romance of the starring couple is represented by the song As Time Goes By, which is played a lot during the run time. The same thing happens with La La Land's main song: City of Stars. In the beginning it represents the happiness in Mia and Seb being together and in the end, the sadness in them being apart. This might not be the best movie in the world, but it's emotional tone is enough for it to deserve a lot of merit.
A very interest plot point is when Mia continues in the struggle, this time creating her own "one woman show" play, and Seb starts making success with his new band. This gets her inevitably jealous. They have an argument and then go apart. Although our lives have the big goal to find love, the ambitions for money and success always end up getting in the way. This makes us less likely to trust people and drives us away from our important ones.
Mia's play is a disaster. However, Seb gets a call from a producer who took interest in her. He runs to the disappointed girl and convinces her to make an audition. In the end, they both get what they want: Seb opens a music bar where he can live only for his love of jazz, and Mia goes to Paris and becomes a famous actress. But they are forever separated. The love and happiness of the classical musicals have no place in here. Even if Mia fantasizes with her love for Seb and her aspirations being in perfect balance, she realizes (while City of Stars plays in the background) that her goals couldn't be achieved had they invested in their relationship. The ending shows the crudeness of real life winning over the fantasy happily ever after, making this musical definitely a remarkable one.