A Bittersweet Night in La la land

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers.  A quick review and some thoughts I had in mind while driving under the “city of stars”. lol. 😛

Love does not always win. Fast forward to 5 years after Mia (Emma Stone) & Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) where both of them achieved their goals while they long for each other. You’ll think that Mia had moved on since she has a kid with his new beau but we all have seen it in the last part of the movie in the bar where Mia and Sebastian gazed to each other with their lonely eyes. Mia chose to walk away and followed her beau. It seems that the two of them chose career over love and it led them to the right way. They’ve both achieved what they wanted in life but not in love. To be fair, they showed the “what could’ve been” parts if ever Mia and Seb got together. The future for them is good as well but it’s not the same with Seb. He seemed happy for Mia’s success. They had their own family but the movie did not show us that he achieved his dream. You can see in Seb’s eyes a bit of loneliness while she is smiling for Mia’s success. It had left me in a bittersweet swoon over the happy endings I long for. It made me realize that love does not always win, but that’s okay.

Having something in common, no matter how powerful that connection is, does not equal to a happily ever after. In every song and dance number, they made the viewers suddenly feel dreamy, and in love. They seemed perfect for each other but not when the music is gone and there is no use of their tap dances, not when they do much else. They are good with their similarities but bad with their differences. They became selfish (which is neither bad nor good) and chose their own separate journeys in the end. I can’t say if this is a positive or negative concept because they were just being honest with their feelings when they chose to accept their diverging paths.

“Success comes in cans, failure comes in can’ts”. This movie is not just about a dreamy whirlwind romance but as well as the price of pursuing your goals and dreams. The journey of the characters in pursuing their goals made the movie more realistic and believable (excluding the part where the couple literally flew during their “revelation of love” in Griffith Observatory.) Mia had been rejected many times with her auditions and Seb consistently failed saving money for his own jazz bar but they surely made it to the top because they never stopped.

The movie surely had an unconventional ending unlike with typical musicals. Over all, La La Land really do deserve Oscar wins, although the conclusion seemed sad. 😦 But C’est la vie.

Thank you for reading my brief review of the movie La la land and my thoughts about it. Now it’s time for me to listen to yours 😉

Much love, J