La La Land (2016)

How you receive this film’s ending completely determines your assessment of La La Land. If it had ended happily, it would have been merely a pretty musical. But Chazelle chose a different path. Two people who achieved their dreams but lost each other exchanging a wordless conversation with their eyes in the final moments — that is what makes this film worth remembering. My rating is ★4.5. A film that is exhilarating while you’re watching it and quietly melancholy once it’s over.

What it’s about — Two Dream-Chasers Meet

Aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) meet in Los Angeles. They fall in love while cheering each other’s dreams, but the more each dream grows, the more the relationship gradually pulls apart. The musical format is borrowed, but songs and dances function as a tool for delivering emotion directly rather than merely decorating the story. The film won the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion in 2016 and received six Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Actress.

Direction — Colour as the Fantasy Fades

Damien Chazelle reinterprets classic Hollywood musicals through a contemporary sensibility. The Los Angeles cityscape, sunsets, the Griffith Observatory, jazz clubs — the space of the city functions as both the backdrop for dreams and as symbol. The freeway dance sequence at the opening looks like a declaration about the musical genre, and then the scale of songs and dances shrinks steadily as the weight of reality accumulates. This design is intentional. The more dreams meet reality, the more the fantasy is stripped away.

Cinematographer Linus Sandgren’s imagery is vivid and beautiful in colour. Golden sunsets and blue night skies form contrasts, and the costumes the two protagonists wear are linked to the story’s trajectory. The final seven-minute fantasy sequence is structured to condense and explode the film’s entire emotional register — for a prepared audience, the emotional impact is considerable.

Performance — Emma Stone in the Audition Scene

Emma Stone delivers the most complete performance of her career in this film. The vulnerability and determination of Mia — who keeps trying despite repeated audition failures — coexist naturally. The solo one-woman audition scene is one of the film’s finest moments. Ryan Gosling conveys Sebastian’s conflict between his obsession with jazz and his love through physical language, and practised the piano himself to play in the performance.

What the film says — The Price of Dream and Love

La La Land asks: when dreams and love cannot coexist, what do you choose? The relationship begins to fracture the moment the two start compromising for each other. The tragedy of this film is that it happens not because anyone is a bad person, but because both were faithful to their own dreams. That is also why the ending is not unhappy. Both achieved their dreams, and each needed the other to get there.

Ratings & reception

IMDb score is a steady 8.0. Rotten Tomatoes freshness is 91%. At the Academy Awards it won six categories including Best Director, Best Actress (Emma Stone), Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Original Song. It also received the Venice Golden Lion. There is an assessment that it revived interest in the musical genre after its release. The external event of the Best Picture announcement error at the ceremony has inevitably become layered into how people remember this film, but that is beyond the film’s control.

What doesn’t work

The songs and dances of the opening sequences don’t quite match the quality of those that appear later — they have a slightly makeshift feeling. There is also a criticism that the treatment of the conflict between jazz’s purity and its commercial accessibility is somewhat surface-level. Some viewers find Ryan Gosling’s singing weak, though this connects somewhat to the character’s own awkwardness.

Verdict

La La Land works for viewers who don’t care about musicals. Because the ending isn’t happy. It is a story about people chasing dreams, and a story that honestly confronts the price of those dreams. Beautiful in colour and music while you’re watching it, quietly lonely once it’s over. That aftertaste endures. ★4.5.

Recommended for

• Those who have had to choose between a dream and a relationship
• Viewers who enjoy beautiful visuals and music
• Both fans of traditional musical films and those who know nothing about musicals