La La Land

La La Land is a 2016 American musical romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a struggling jazz pianist and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. The supporting cast includes John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, and J. K. Simmons.

Having been fond of musicals during his time as a drummer, Chazelle first conceptualized the film alongside Justin Hurwitz while attending Harvard University together. After moving to Los Angeles in 2010, Chazelle penned the script but did not find a studio willing to finance the production without changes to his design. After the success of his film Whiplash (2014), the project was picked up by Summit Entertainment. Miles Teller and Emma Watson were originally in talks to star, but after both dropped out, Gosling and Stone were cast. Filming took place in Los Angeles between August and September 2015, with the film's score composed by Hurwitz, who also wrote the film's songs with lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul and the dance choreography by Mandy Moore.

La La Land premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2016, and was released theatrically in the United States on December 9, by Lionsgate. The film emerged as a major commercial success, grossing $447 million worldwide during its initial run, and received widespread acclaim from critics, particularly for Chazelle's direction and screenplay, the performances of Gosling and Stone, the score, musical numbers, cinematography, visual style, costumes and production design. It went on to receive numerous accolades, including winning a record seven awards at the 74th Golden Globe Awards and received eleven nominations at the 70th British Academy Film Awards, winning five, including Best Film. The film also received a record-tying fourteen nominations at the 89th Academy Awards, winning in six categories including Best Director and Best Actress (Stone). Its loss in the Best Picture category (to Moonlight) made it the most-nominated film at the Oscars to lose Best Picture. At age 32, Chazelle became the youngest winner of Best Director. It has since been regarded as one of the best films of the 2010s and the 21st century, and as one of the best musical films of all time. As of February 2023, a stage musical adaptation is in the works.

Plot

While stuck in Los Angeles traffic ("Another Day of Sun"), Sebastian "Seb" Wilder has a moment of road rage directed at aspiring actress Mia Dolan. After a hard day at work, Mia's next audition goes awry because the casting director takes a phone call during an emotional scene. That night, her roommates take her to a lavish party in the Hollywood Hills, promising her that it could jump-start her career ("Someone in the Crowd"). After her car is towed, she walks home in disappointment.

During a gig at a restaurant, Seb slips into jazz improvisation ("Mia & Sebastian's Theme") despite the owner's warning to only play traditional Christmas pieces. Mia hears him playing as she passes by. Moved, she enters the restaurant and observes Seb being fired for his disobedience. Mia attempts to compliment him as he storms out, but he brushes by her. Months later, she runs into Seb at a party where he plays in a 1980s pop cover band. Mia requests that Seb play "I Ran" for her. After the gig, they walk to their cars and – despite an obvious chemistry – lament wasting the night on each other ("A Lovely Night").

Seb arrives at Mia's workplace, and she shows him around the Warner Bros. backlot, where she works as a barista, while expressing her passion for acting. He takes her to a jazz club, describing his passion for jazz and his desire to open his own club. Seb invites Mia to a screening of Rebel Without a Cause and she accepts, forgetting a date with her boyfriend. Bored with the latter date, she rushes to the theater and finds Seb as the film begins. When the screening is interrupted by a projector malfunction, Seb and Mia spend the rest of the evening together with a romantic visit to the Griffith Observatory.

After more failed auditions, Mia decides, with Seb's encouragement, to write a one-woman play. Seb begins to perform regularly at a jazz club, and the two of them eventually move in together ("City of Stars"). A former bandmate of Seb invites him to be the keyboardist in a new jazz fusion band, which will give him a steady income. Although dismayed by the band's pop style, Seb signs on after hearing Mia trying to convince her mother that he is working on his career. The band finds success, but Mia knows their music is not the type of music Seb wants to perform ("Start a Fire").

During the band's first tour, Seb and Mia argue: she accuses him of abandoning his dreams, while he claims that she liked him more when he was unsuccessful because it made her feel better about herself. Two weeks later, Seb misses Mia's play because of a photoshoot he had forgotten about. The play fails, very few people attend, and Mia overhears dismissive comments about her performance. Unable to forgive him for missing her play and their previous argument, Mia returns to her hometown of Boulder City, Nevada.

Seb receives a call from a prominent casting director who attended Mia's play, inviting her to audition for an upcoming film. Knowing that this could be her big break, he drives in a hurry to Boulder City and finds her house since he remembered that she lived across the street from the library, where she fell in love with acting. Seb persuades her to attend, and she reluctantly agrees to go.

During the audition the next day, Mia is asked to tell a story. In response, she sings about how her aunt, a one-time stage actress who eventually died from alcoholism, inspired her to chase her dreams ("Audition (The Fools Who Dream)"). Confident the audition was a success, Seb encourages Mia to devote herself to acting. The two then recognize that they will always love each other despite what may come for their relationship.

Five years later, Mia is living a happy life as a successful actress and married to a different man, with whom she has a daughter. That night, the couple stumble upon a jazz bar. Recognizing the logo she had once designed, Mia realizes that Seb has opened his own jazz club. Seb notices Mia in the crowd and begins to play their love theme on the piano. The two imagine what their happy life together would have been ("Epilogue") had their relationship thrived along with their careers, then acknowledge each other with a silent exchange of smiles and go their separate ways.

Cast

Production

Pre-production

As a drummer, Chazelle has a predilection for musical films. He wrote the screenplay for La La Land in 2010, when the film industry seemed out of reach for him. His idea was "to take the old musical but ground it in real life where things don't always exactly work out," and to salute creative people who move to Los Angeles to chase their dreams. He conceived the film when he was a student at Harvard University with his classmate Justin Hurwitz. The two explored the concept in their senior thesis through a low-budget musical about a Boston jazz musician, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. Chazelle was moved by the tradition of 1920s "city symphony" films, such as Manhatta (1921) and Man with a Movie Camera (1929), that paid tribute to cities. After graduating, both moved to Los Angeles in 2010 and continued writing the script, but made a few modifications, such as altering the location to Los Angeles instead of Boston.

Rather than trying to match L.A. to the charms of Paris or San Francisco, he focused on the qualities that make the city distinctive: the traffic, the sprawl, and the skylines. The style and tone of the film were inspired by Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, especially the latter, which was more dance and jazz-oriented. The film also makes visual allusions to Hollywood classics such as Broadway Melody of 1940, Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. About An American in Paris, Chazelle commented: "That's a movie that we just pillaged. It's an awesome example of how daring some of those old musicals really were." It shares some character development and themes with Chazelle's previous musical work, Whiplash; Chazelle said:

"They're both about the struggle of being an artist and reconciling your dreams with the need to be human. La La Land is just much less angry about it."

He said that both films reflect his own experiences as a filmmaker working his way up the Hollywood ladder. La La Land in particular is inspired by his experience of moving from the East Coast with preconceived notions of what L.A. would be like, "that it was all just strip malls and freeways".