La La Land is the second studio film from Director Damien Chazelle, and is my fourth favorite movie of all time, for now at least. If you want to see my the other top three check out of Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/jackson0217/ . Anyways, this movie follows two artists, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, as they navigate adult life and seek success as artists in the city of Los Angeles. There are so many things that I love about this movie, so it will be hard to make this a coherent post, but I will do my best.
If you haven’t seen a Damien Chazelle movie, well, firstly, please, go watch one, but secondly, you must know that they heavily rely on music. Chazelle grew up playing in competitive jazz ensembles as a drummer, and clearly has a love for jazz. If you watch his first film Whiplash, based on the director’s personal experiences in the unknown hypercompetitive and even abusive world of music, you will learn that it is also a love-hate relationship.
That said, La La Land is a musical. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be interested in a musical movie, and you may be disinterested after reading it is one, but give it a chance. The musical performances can only be described as grand. Chazelle uses hundreds of extras in wide cityscapes that build a larger than life atmosphere and utterly mesmerize the viewer. Chazelle also uses coloring to accompany these performances that make the screen turn into an image of dancing colors, the likes of which I had never seen before. For an example of this wonder, take a look at this scene wherein Emma Stone goes to a party with her friends:
Moving on from the sight and sound of the movie, the story itself is incredible. La La Land is a realistic love story. Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the movie, but it has a bitter-sweet ending. In fact, every time I watch this movie I cry at the end. Maybe that says something about me, but I just think it goes to show that this is a really good movie. I won’t say any more on that front, because I do really want whoever is reading this blog post to go and watch this movie if they haven’t already.
La La Land is Chazelles most genre bending movie. If I were to tell you that there is an incredible musical-romance you should watch, I would probably lose a lot of people’s interest. However, this movie is not like, for example, Grease. Nothing against Grease, but La La Land is different. Chazelle takes the luxury and amazement afforded by this genre, and bases it in a story that could not be truer to real life. He looks at love and ambition in an objective way that Hollywood won’t show you. This movie, does not discourage the viewer from pursuing their dream, rather, it shows them that, sure, your dreams can come true, but nothing is ever perfect.
I cannot do this movie justice in describing it, so you’re going to just have to watch it. If you’ve read any of my other blog posts you’ve probably noticed that I say something along those lines at the end of every post, but that’s only because I write about the movies I care about most. I really do mean it. This movie is very very good.