Review of La La Land (2016) by Hua T — 16 Sep 2017

There are a lot to like about this film. Its realistic plot. Jazz. Musicals. Chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.

However, it's the stories about its production and its director that make me like this film even more.

The director was a drummer and drew from experience and favorite inspiration to direct this movie.

He was persistent. He had the theme and script for this movie since 2010, but because it was about jazz which no distributors / studios liked (the same sentiment toward jazz was also used in the movie), and he wasn't famous, he folded and kept this dream within him while working on other films. Eventually when he had a big success from another movie, *Whiplash*, that's when people started to take him seriously about his idea of *La La Land*, with the theme of paying homage to people who risk it all to have a success in neck-breaking competitive environment in Hollywood, and "*to take the old musical but ground it in real life where things don't always exactly work out*". The bittersweet ending is what makes this movie so great, because that's real life that everybody can relate to, not some perfect love story that you *wish* it'd come true.

I respect the director Damien Chazelle a lot that he didn't compromise to fulfill his dream. Initially, a studio offered to finance his film but they wanted heavy alterations. Jazz. Nah. Change to rock. Bittersweet also had to be dropped. Instead of compromising, Damien moved on until he was presented with a perfect opportunity years later. Persistence in action.

I appreciate the process of recruiting and training the lead actor and actress. Ryan Gosling had no prior experience in piano, neither did Emma Stone in dancing, so both had to learn from scratch just to shoot the film. Both of them drew from the experience to act so realistically in the film too. Emma remembered when she kept getting rejected from so many auditions, and Ryan told the story of him getting interrupted with conversation about lunch while he emoted passionately -- a scene ended up in the movie which Emma acted.

Overall, this is a masterpiece that has great stories both within and behind the scenes. Entertaining and inspiring. Easily 5 stars.