"La La Land," directed by Damien Chazelle, is the latest musical starring the dynamic duo, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. Since the release into movie theaters, the movie has been in the limelight, drawing a lot of attention leading to seven nominations in the Golden Globes. Not only did the movie win in all of the seven categories, it set a record for the most Golden Globes won by a single film. The storyline takes place in Los Angeles and centers around a budding relationship between aspiring actress Mia and aspiring jazz pianist Sebastian. I love musicals, so the minute I heard about the film, I rushed to the theater to see it. I highly encourage everyone to go watch this film; however, originally when I left the theater, I did not like the ending at all. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but let’s just say the ending is imperfect. It is not the picture perfect happy ending, but rather realistic.

My disappointment turned into a lesson. Life is the same way. We oftentimes place this picture-perfect ending as the deciding factor about whether to reflect on an event with a happy or sad attitude. We are all addicted to this fairytale ending, causing us to forget sometimes that imperfection is perfection. Happiness is in our hands. Crushing it because an event didn't meet our expectations is counterproductive to the pursuit of happiness. The stem of this problem comes from our upbringing. Think about it: how many books, movies or stories did you know as a child that had an unhappy ending? The ending was always perfect, so our lives became a component of the story striving towards this perfection.

Another theme of this movie is achieving dreams, something that we all can relate to. Ryan Gosling’s character, Sebastian, says the famous line: “It’s conflict and compromise.” He states this line when talking about the dying art of jazz, but this can also apply to the theme of dreams. When you have a dream, you have to go for it, as the characters do by continuing to work towards becoming an actress and jazz pianist. Dreams aren’t mutually exclusive, you can accomplish both; however, there will be conflict and sometimes you have to compromise to continue in your journey. This once again creates an imperfect-perfect ending, perhaps letting go of one dream to accomplish another, but focus on the positive rather than the negative.

So this week, challenge yourself. Change the game. Don’t surround yourself with the expectation of a perfect ending. Remove the expectation so you are only are left with feeling accomplished. When conflict comes up, realize sometimes you have to compromise. It is the only option and creates an imperfect-perfect ending. "La La Land" explores all these themes. I think because of Damien Chazelle’s plot twist ending, the movie is receiving a lot of attention. The attention comes from the eye-opening lesson of accepting imperfection and stepping away from the idealistic la la land.