Could have been better

Rating: 5/10 (28 September 2017)

La La Land starts with a beautiful number, a single shot with a wide depth of field perfectly choreographed scene that includes dance, song, and capturing the life, color and excitement that Hollywood inspires. We then follow Mia into her world of being an aspiring actress, going through lines with her, a failed audition and everything that follows with that disappointment. Her friends encourage her to go out and try to find someone in the crowd to help her make it big in the famous world, but it does not happen yet. She meets Sebastian when walking home from a party that she doesn't feel that she belongs. We find that Sebastian is a jazz piano player who wants to open his own jazz club and preserve real jazz. When he's in the middle of a song, Mia is drawn to him as if it was the song that speaks to who they are and how their life will change. Throughout the movie, as she continues to audition you can see that every time she changes and moves into a deeper sadness which she feels that she will never be able to become famous. He finds that no one is interested in pure jazz anymore and has to change himself and his dreams in order to survive in this harsh Hollywood world. An over encompassing explanation of this movie is it's about two people who discover themselves and their fame while being together but ultimately live different lives away from each other.
The introducing scene is a very tonal with high contrast block colored costuming which allows the characters to stand out on the busy highway. The music, however, the instrumental overpowered and was mixed higher the vocal. This diminished the quality of the song, making it forgettable. As the music progresses the plot of the musical it distracted from the main goal. The musical has formalistic traditions due to some impossibilities of the scenes, for example, when Mia and Sebastian dance in space during the planetarium scene and the epilogue. There are many realistic styles that are within the movie but it heavily relies on formalism. As realism tries to preserve a fact of an un-manipulated film, while musicals do not follow the ideas of preserving the reality of it due to song and dance. In formalism, the subject matter is very important to the plot and self- expression, which is portrayed using song, dance, and color. This stylized reality makes a magical, enchantment that is far from real life problems and expresses it through song, dance, color and lighting. Through lighting many concepts are portrayed, many scenes within the movie include a deep focus, high contrast dark out focusing on Mia during intimate moments showing her true passion. This use of high lighting shows a deep contrast between the world and her. Many times lighting is used to illuminate the faces of the characters to portray feelings, thoughts, emotions, and actions. For example, during the fight scene between Mia and Sebastian, their faces are illuminated by a yellow light but there is a dark green background behind them, these colors are fighting each other using contemporary colors and this tells the viewers how they should feel in this moment. Another example is when Mia first hears Sebastian playing their song, he's in the building she's outside listening in and a red light illuminates her face showing the romantic side of the movie and their relationship that is soon to come. There was a large use of lighting and darkening during the movie, mainly the use of silhouettes during the epilogue. Color such as blue, yellow, green and red was very important in the film using the bright colors to bring out the characters, the colors bring out the expressive, emotional and atmosphere parts of the movie. During Mia's audition song, blue hues are displayed to show a relaxed, calm and natural feeling set on the characters and the viewers. While warm colors such as red, yellow and orange express aggression, violence, and romance, shown during fights and loving times between Mia and Sebastian.
Overall, although the movie had strong characters, a put together plot and music, which is my favorite thing, the movie didn't meet to the potential or the expectations that everyone made it be. The songs weren't memorable which in a musical is a huge drawback of the principle of a musical. Personally, I believe that the movie was good in the moment and as you're watching it, it brought entertainment and joy, but only in the moment. The movie didn't make people think, didn't have people singing the songs after the movie ended, it didn't have anyone talking about it. Although many of the characters had beautiful voices, I believe the actors were chosen due to their fame rather than the talents they possessed, Emma Stone has a beautiful lower register but most of the songs she sung were in a higher register causing her voice to weaken, sound breathy, and made her seem not confident. Ryan Gosling has exceptional dancing skills as he has danced his entire life, however, his singing skills needed improvement with tone, phrasing and breath support. There was so much hype that two actors were brought back together again (Crazy, Stupid Love) in a pairing that many people enjoy, that it overshadowed any other chance to have two other stars who had the vocal, lyrical and acting perfect for this musical. This movie had various good pieces to it, but the pieces that needed improvement overweight the good pieces creating a film, in my eyes, needed many changes.