Review of La La Land (2016) by Tasfia A — 22 Feb 2017

After watching the movie, I was walking home and just turning over the movie in my mind. I felt as though there was something missing. But what was it? What brought the movie down? And all this thinking made me realise something.

Damien Chazelle is an artist. No ordinary artist, he's categorised into the ever-lasting genius section. The movie kept me captivated all throughout, so there was no time to check my phone. To be honest, I didn't even realise that I needed to urgently pee until after the movie.

The whole choreography of the movie had me utterly speechless. Chazelle's use of one-takes (long shots) are impeccable. You see, long shots are usually boring (for example, watch Birdman, the movie that's infamously known to have no jump cuts), but in every scene there was just something interesting happening, whether it be in the background, or just the facial expressions of the extremely talented Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

I applaud both the stars on their dedication to learn such difficult parts and making the characters simply flow on screen. Gosling had to learn piano and the style of waltz while Stone's on screen appearance makes any movie worth the watch.

The musical numbers were beautiful and unique, each too beautiful to forget. I'm humming the songs as I'm writing this! Hats off to Justin Hurwitz for the wondrous soundtrack. For me, however, what makes a movie is the way the story is told, and La La Land is like no other when it comes to this.

If you strip the whole movie down, it's a simple boy-meets-girl love story. But once you add the lighting, music, dancing, special effects etc. you're caught up in this world of make-believe that you, oh so wish was real.

It leaves you with a goofy feeling in your heart that maybe everything will be okay one day. You start singing like Mia (Emma Stone), and dancing like Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), which made me mad, of course, as I'm good at neither.

And so, zooming in to me as I'm walking home, I realised that there was nothing missing from this movie. It left me mesmerised, yet mad. How can a movie be so great? It can be, and La La Land is.