La La Land (2016)

Official trailer

La La Land is Damien Chazelle’s 2016 American musical romantic drama depicting the relationship between aspiring actress Mia Dolan and jazz pianist Sebastian Wilder across their parallel pursuit of artistic careers in contemporary Los Angeles.

The film is among the films that extended the American musical genre into contemporary romantic drama context. Emma Stone plays Mia Dolan. Ryan Gosling plays Sebastian Wilder. John Legend plays Keith. Rosemarie DeWitt plays Laura. J.K. Simmons plays Bill. Finn Wittrock plays Greg Earnest. Tom Everett Scott plays David.

Chazelle wrote the screenplay. Justin Hurwitz composed the musical score, with lyrics by Pasek and Paul. Summit Entertainment, Black Label Media, and TIK Films produced the film on a budget of approximately thirty million dollars, and it grossed approximately four hundred forty-seven million worldwide.

I fall for this movie hard. Stone and Gosling make falling in love look easy, the colors are gorgeous, and the closing fantasy montage wrecks me. What holds it at 8 is the stretch where their careers start pulling them apart, which drifts long enough that I catch myself checking the clock.

At the Academy Awards, La La Land earned fourteen nominations and won six, including Best Director for Chazelle, Best Actress for Emma Stone, Best Original Score for Hurwitz, Best Original Song for City of Stars, Best Cinematography and Best Production Design. It was briefly announced as Best Picture before the correct winner, Moonlight (2016), was named, and that mix-up is still a cultural reference point.

Chazelle keeps the old musical conventions working inside a contemporary romance, and I think that balancing act is the most impressive thing he pulls off here.

The Musical Approach

With La La Land, the classic American musical moves into a contemporary romance. The opening highway number, the planetarium dance and the closing fantasy montage all run on the film’s musical logic, and each one needed tight coordination between performance, choreography and music. The planetarium dance is my favorite scene in the film, as unashamedly old Hollywood as anything made this century, and I’m a sucker for it.

The musical approach has aged into a model for contemporary musical productions that engage with traditional genre conventions in modern settings. It shows how genre revival can serve contemporary content when the underlying material justifies the genre engagement. Later productions have engaged with the musical revival approach that La La Land showed.

The Emma Stone Performance

Emma Stone plays Mia with the commitment the role’s ambition demands.

She pairs her singing with a dramatic range that lets audiences follow Mia as an aspiring actress and as a woman working through personal and professional relationships, and she trained her voice for the musical numbers. Mia’s growth across the relationship shapes the film’s emotional arc. Stone is the reason the film works for me. She makes every one of Mia’s disappointments feel like it cost something, and I think that Oscar was deserved.

Stone had been working as a character performer in productions including Easy A (2010), The Help (2011), and Birdman (2014) before La La Land made her an Academy Award-winning leading performer. Her later films including The Favourite (2018), Cruella (2021), and Poor Things (2023, Academy Award) extended her career across multiple notable roles. The La La Land performance represents one of the more notable contemporary musical achievements.

The Academy Awards Moment

An unusual cultural moment came out of La La Land’s Academy Awards experience when the presenters briefly announced the work as Best Picture winner before the correct winner Moonlight (2016) was identified. The moment ranks among the most recognized Academy Awards events in the institution’s history. The production maintained its six Academy Award recognition while the Best Picture went to Moonlight, generating continuing cultural handling of both productions and the documented confusion.

The mix-up has kept both films in conversation in the years since the 2017 ceremony. It’s a pity that so many people remember a film this carefully made for an envelope error, because what’s on the screen deserves the attention far more than what happened on that stage.

Is La La Land worth watching?

For a modern musical, La La Land is a big commercial success, and it deserved every dollar.

The music, Emma Stone’s Oscar-winning performance and Chazelle’s direction add up to a film I’m happy to call a modern classic of the form. It comes in at 8 for me because the middle drifts once the romance starts to fray, and a musical this bold should never make me look at my watch. Watch it for the planetarium, for Stone, and for that closing fantasy montage.

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