Five bags of popcorn

Rating: 10/10 (21 December 2016)

Powerful musicals make me feel like it's a crime to put words to them. After seeing La La Land, it was clear to me that the film was one of the best theatre experiences I will ever have.
I worship the beauty of La La Land. It's all so big and beautiful. And Emma Stone is brilliant. She does the best thing an actress can do: to find a way to be the most compelling woman in the room without having to be the loudest. She conveys the most power through her subtleties, and this is partly due to her wonderful chemistry with Gosling.
The humanistic wonder expressed through Gosling and Stone's eyes when they look at each other is enough to carry any movie. The music is the spirit of their romance. This is especially prevalent in their intense moments with one another, like in the Planetarium sequence. It's just as much about their faces while they dance as it is the dancing.
La La Land portrays extremely vital parts of human existence that are easily forgotten about, and given towards normality, or daily life. Stone sings that "a little bit of madness is key" in an ode to "the ones who dream". This particular song makes cements the already prevalent attitude of the film, that vision, imagination, hope, endurance and love make the impossible a reality.
Brutal realism, in film and real life, complements the hazy dynamics of love, making the emotion so much more powerful within the human being. The dynamic screenplay adds to the film's realism, contributing to its overall power.
For example, when you see the scenes like her at his concert, like him missing her play, it's clear how much they love each other but how in order to fulfill themselves and become who they are, they need to do it separately. Then their lives took them away from each other, and she met someone else and had kids
It all becomes clear at Seb's at the end. They still love each other but almost too much. their circumstances make it so they couldn't be together, they're too invested in each other and have to be near each other, and in their two journeys do not collide well enough to be sustainable.
La La Land is a movie about love and passion, the intersection and division of both within the creative life.