It is incredibly rare for any movie to have both visuals and music that are this good. Usually with a film, it's one or the other. Lord of the Rings, for example, sounds better than this. Any of them. Blade Runner 2049 looks better. But the other way around? Lord of the Rings doesn't look better than this. It's close; I actually think LOTR has the better composition and appropriate amount of movement, but the color overflow in La La Land just seals it. And quite frankly, I don't remember much in the way of 2049's soundtrack. These elements aren't so much a home run as they are a grand slam that landed in some dude's Grand Slam in a Denny's on the other side of town. Even other films that do both well don't do it this well. 1917 does both elements extremely well; it was the best-looking film of 2019, with the second best score. But I don't think that film does either visuals or music as well as La La Land.

For the visuals, it comes down to two things that they use consistently, except when they don't: Color and movement. Color is the obvious one. Damian Chazelle (or his DP, don't know who) ordered all the color for this film. Costumes, lighting, VFX, set design, everything. But they don't just look at a scene and say "Make it purple." Nay-nay. They looked at each scene, and decided on a main color for each set, but then they'd ask "What other color will we contrast it with?" For an example, we'll use the poster. It's almost all purple; the sky, the city, everything. But Emma Stone's dress is yellow, as is the street light. And Gosling's shirt is white, and if you look closely, he's wearing a dark blue tie. These small twinges of other colors keep it from looking oppressive, and instead make it look lively. As for movement, that's also simple; for most of the film, there's barely a shot that doesn't have some semblance of movement in it. Whether it's the camera, a character, an object, or some combination of the three. However, when the "cheerful" section of the story starts, a lot of that goes away. The colors become more muted (not gone-gone, just less present) and less movement occurs in each shot. This is intentional. Both Mia and Seb feel as though they have to grow up and leave behind childish things, such as color and liveliness. So they move on.

As for the music, there's three main leitmotifs that permeate the film: The showbiz theme (played in the beginning), City of Stars, and the relationship theme (first played in JK Simmon's restaurant with a particularly moody lighting setup.) All three of these leitmotifs are done just splendidly; not only are they developed appropriately over the course of the story, but they're hummable. I'm able to remember how all three of these themes sound as I'm typing this, despite having seen the film only twice. And I'm not lying when I say the leitmotifs are developed like they are in the story. Before watching it, I thought to myself "Y'know what they should've done in the middle of the story? The bit with no musical numbers? Someone should've tried to start a musical number, or played a leitmotif, and then have it trampled out." Guess what? That's exactly what happens with the relationship theme during Seb's photoshoot. Talk about music reflecting story.

I think Damien Chazelle is this generation's Stanley Kubrick. For one simple, very specific, but critical reason: Both Chazelle and Kubrick are much, much more interested in themes and emotional reactions than they are in characters and people. Now, I haven't watched much in the way of Kubrick's stuff, though I've watched basically everything Chazelle has done. The most interesting character in either of their films are loud, bald men lording their control over their subordinates by screaming their lungs off. Other than that, the only other interesting character is a robot. This is intentional. Now their characters can be interesting. Of course they can. But have either of them made a character as interesting as Tony Stark? Okay maybe that's not a fair comparison. Have either of them made a character as interesting as Salieri in Amadeus? No? I thought not.

Let's take a look at one of Kubrick's films for an example of theme shown well. In Full Metal Jacket, the film is about toxic masculinity and the dehumanizing nature of war. How do we portray this? Well, we hire an actual drill sergeant to berate our main characters for 40 minutes, kill him, and then when they get to Vietnam, kill most everyone else off, and end the film with them singing the Mickey Mouse Club march with the backdrop of a burning building. Notice how little of that was about characters making active choices? So far as I remember, there was one near the end. Ok, what is this film's message? Well, it's about dreams, and how they relate to our everyday lives. How does it show this? Let me explain.

We open the film with a bitchin' musical number sung by some hundred-odd people, none of whom are the main character. Not only is the music awesome, but it becomes very clear that the world we're in is more fantastical than our own; it's something of a fantasy world, but it's still incredibly familiar. We then get introduced to our romantic leads, and how do they first meet? One flips the other off. Okay, first impressions aren't everything, it's how you follow that up that matters. So how do they follow it up? By having Seb be a dick to Mia after getting fired. Once is an accident; by doing this twice, the film sets a seed of doubt in the audience's mind that maybe these two people aren't right for each other. They start to form a relationship and grow closer together, and they let each other know what they want most in life. Mia wants to be an actor. Seb wants to open his own jazz club. Those are their dreams at the start of the film; at this stage in their lives. The film goes on, and Seb gets a job as a piano player for a band called The Messengers. It's a good gig. A really good one, actually. But it puts a strain on Seb's and Mia's relationship. He's barely there. And the one time he popped in to have dinner with her, it went sour kinda fast. Plus, the other time he tried to show up for her one-woman show, well... he didn't show. Which is kinda the straw that broke the camel's back, as far as their relationship goes. Definitely not for Mia's career; that show is what directly leads to her success as an actor.

Five years later... they've done it. They've achieved their dream. Mia is a successful actor. Seb has his own jazz joint. They go about their lives as you'd expect them to. Then Mia turns off the highway, and goes into a ritzy blue club with music coming out of it. She sees the sign: Seb's, with the musical note where the apostrophe is. The sign she designed. She walks in and takes a seat, knowing who's on piano. He sees her after doing a set, and then the lights dim, and the light shines on him just as it did in Simmons' place, and playing the exact same music too.

Seb has a new dream. It's not as wildly different as his old dream of starting up the jazz joint. It's just for him to have done things differently; instead of him being a dick, he goes for the kiss, and he and Mia take on life and the world together. The jazz club, the one-woman show, acting, everything. He turns down Keith's offer. He's there for her show. He moves to Paris with her and starts a club called whatever "Chicken on a Stick" is translated into French. He starts a family.

Dreams are a powerful thing. They motivate many of us into trying things that may or may not work. They motivate us to get what we want deep down in our hearts, whether it be money, fame, to put our hearts out there into the world, or to have our names attached to something people love. And dreams can inspire us to do these things and more. However, even once you’ve achieved a dream you once had, doesn’t mean that they stop. You may have new ambitions, new goals, new projects you want to achieve. Get the girl, become a millionaire, get your dream project off the ground. And, of course, there may or may not be obstacles preventing you from getting these things, but that is not the point in this film. Because the thing about dreams is, they end. No matter how strong it is, sooner or later, you must come back down to reality. They can never go on forever. For Seb, at least there’s a silver lining, because the life he must return to isn’t so bad. It’s what he always wanted, so he may as well keep it. It's just calming to dream. Whether he chases after this new dream or not is up to our own imaginations. But life goes on, just as it always has, dreams or no.

But Seb, seriously: Why you gotta dance with another man's wife like that?