La La Land

In April 2019, I watched the musical La La Land for the first time at Kinema Junpo Theater. I was really moved by the serious and sophisticated movie, yet the optimistic musical The Greatest Showman, which I watched one week later, was quite amusing, moreover, its music was too fantastic to remember how moved I had been by La La Land, though I thought that I would watch it again someday in a relaxed mood every time I saw the movie title on the internet. Then, in January 2021, I finally watched it at Marunouchi Piccadilly, a theater in Tokyo, again.

The film follows a young man and a young woman. The man is a jazz pianist. The woman goes for an actress. They are drawn to each other and encourage themselves to chase their respective dreams.

The young man and woman firstly meet in a traffic jam when they have ill feelings against each other. They meet again when Mia has a bad feeling against Seb but she was at least attracted by his piano performance. After that, they encounter in a party when they gradually become friends and finally start to date with each other. They also encourage themselves to make their respective dreams come true.

At the beginning, Mia looks unappealing, so I suspected that Emma Stone playing Mia had become unattractive before I knew it. She, however, gets increasingly pretty as she becomes friends and starts to date with Seb. I was really impressed by how she gets attractive falling in love with him. I thought that Ryan Gosling also gave a wonderful performance as Seb, all the same, I felt that Stone's performance was more fantastic.

I was most impressed with the scene where Mia gazes at Seb who is playing the keyboard instrument with a vague smile as a member of his old friend's band in a concert. In fact, I shed tears when I watched it for the second time. I then felt as if the two characters in the scene were asking me whether I live true to myself.