This week, I was lucky enough to see the movie La La Land, which is directed by Damien Chazelle. I have been dying to see this movie since the trailer was released several months ago, but I live in a small town where apparently they DON'T CARE ABOUT SHOWING GOLDEN-GLOBE-WINNING AND OSCAR-NOMINATED MOVIES. But whatever. It's fine. Show Trolls for two months.
Disclaimer: I'm an arts kid. I love musicals and showtunes, and if the movie had been a classic musical film like Mamma Mia or Hairspray, I probably would have liked it.
But it wasn't.
It had beautiful songs and larger-than-life moments, but these were alternated with extremely genuine and honest moments displayed in the relationship between Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and in their experiences in entertainment. In one scene, it reminded me why I wanted to go into the arts, and in the next scene, it made me think, "Wait...what am I doing?"
La La Land captures the magical quality of theater and music while simultaneously portraying the entertainment business as it is: a highly competitive and critical environment that only a few are lucky enough and talented enough to make it through.
Speaking of talent, the film makes a huge statement about how talent and luck play different roles in the success of an artist. Mia and Sebastian are undoubtedly talented in their own fields, but their dreams remain unfulfilled. As an arts student, you can put all your effort into what you do. You can practice for hours, you can take voice lessons and acting lessons and instrumental lessons. You can get a degree. But when it comes down to an audition or a submission of your work, all that matters is that your judges like what you have to offer. Everything else is secondary.
Now, I'm a college student who has never been anywhere near a professional career in the arts, so you can take what I say with a grain of salt. But as someone who aspires to work in the field of entertainment, I found La la Land to be one of the most compelling and inspiring films I've ever seen, right alongside Whiplash, which was also directed by Damien Chazelle (GO CHECK IT OUT IF YOU HAVEN'T. IT'S AMAZING). At the end of the movie, I thought, "This is why I want to do this. Because it's special." There is merit in franchise films; I'm as big a fan of Spiderman and Hunger Games as anyone else. But this film reached out to me in a way that no other film has. It was stunning and exciting and emotional in a way that I was not prepared for.
If you're a dreamer hoping to make it in a field that everyone says is impossible to make it in, this film is for you. It's not going to tell you to do it. It's going to tell you if you want to do it, and it is going to tell you that if you want to do it, you must be prepared to work hard and fight for it and never give up.
