La la land: to the ones who dream
Ever since it premiered in theaters, La la land has inspired people everywhere to follow their dreams with hope and determination.
The film, directed by Damian Chazelle, follows two passionate individuals: Mia, an aspiring actress searching for her big break, and Sebastian, a jazz musician ready to give everything for the genre he loves.
Set against the backdrop of Los Angeles, the city serves as both a land of opportunity, and a place of relentlessness competition and adversity. Throughout the movie, LA itself becomes a character, with its landscapes and iconic locations as La la land beautifully portrays the highs and lows of chasing one’s dreams in the city of stars.
One of the central themes of the movie, the most dominant, is the reality of chasing dreams.
Mia, played by Emma stone, takes us on her journey of struggling with rejection and after rejection, while working as a barista on the Warner brothers lot, which is the place that fuels her passion every day. She is so close to where she wants to be and yet if feels so far away. While Sebastian, played by Ryan gosling, is a jazz purist that dreams about opening its own club as he refuse the fact that what he is so deeply in love with is slowly going away, and people around him seem so clueless about it. We see it as we follow him to have his morning coffey miles away from his house just so he can be close to the van break, a legendary jazz club, now transformed into a samba tapas place.
The film smoothly intertwines their story’s together, their strive for success and the love they feel for each other, exploring the fragile balance between their relationship and aspirations.
One thing that absolutely strikes the eyes is the cinematography and the visual style of the film.
Cinematographer Linus Sandgren brilliantly uses different camera techniques and a carefully crafted color palette to give the film the feel of a dreamy and engaging old Hollywood musical.
The camera movements are often synchronized with the musical beats and the use of long takes makes the viewers feel part of the sequences. For instance, the single continuous shot in the opening sequence, “Another day of sun”, help to immerse the audience into the film from the get go, capturing the atmosphere of a traffic day in Los Angeles and then bringing us into the action as the performers dance and sing a song that perfectly matches the theme of not giving up on your dreams. While the continuous shot at the Griffith observatory helps to capture the wonderful location and the magic around Mia and Sebastian as they dance among the stars.
Along with the long takes, lighting also helps to achieve intimate looks when the two characters show their love and passion for their craft and plays a big role into creating emotional depth, as in the continuous take when Mia sings the powerful song “Audition (the fools who dream)”, the lights dim all around and only focus on her as she pours her heart out into a raw performance that will eventually allow her to realize her dream. Or when she sees Sebastian playing their theme song for the first time, as we see him through her eyes, with a spotlight lighting him up from above, obscuring everything around, as if it was just him and the piano.
The color palette in la la land is another thing that contributes significantly to the aesthetic of the film and lets us understand the characters emotions along with different situations.
Red is primarily used in the film to show Mia’s ambition and love for acting, is reflected in the red color of the walls in her house, as we see during the “someone in the crowd” scene, and the burning passion Sebastian has for jazz, as we can notice at at the restaurant where he plays and in his own jazz club, both surrounded by a warm red tone that invites us into his world.
Yellow is another prominent color in the film. It symbolizes hope and optimism, or “another day of sun”. A pastel yellow is use in various scenes throughout the feature to create a whimsical, dreamy atmosphere, like the stars the two characters dance among at the planetarium of the light that surrounds parts of the ending sequence.
The color blue is instead use mainly for Sebastian, to express a sense of doubt and loneliness, as in the scene where he sings “city of stars” alone on a pier, the silvery sky is surrounded by the infinite blue of the ocean, while cold lampposts lights illuminate his performance as he wonders if what’s he feeling is the start of something wonderful or just another dream.
The contrast between red and blue is very prominent throughout the film to also show the change of the mood in the characters lives. When we enter Sebastian living room for the first time, we see it as a cold, bluish, empty space, while it all changes the moment Mia moves in, transforming it into a warm and cozy house.
In the last scene of the movie, we also can see this contrast between the two colors, but this time is the opposite, Sebastian is wrapped in a warm red tone that signifies his dedication to the jazz club, while Mia’s face is illuminated by the blue neon sign of the club, that signifies the bittersweet ending and a sense of nostalgia thinking about what could have been.