The Beauty Of…La La Land: Red & Blue
For a while, I’d put off a rewatch of La La Land out of fear that it wouldn’t live up to my memory of it. My recollection was dreamy at best — Sebastian’s striking and mournful jazz, Mia’s yellow dress, the soft-centered, balmy backdrop of Los Angeles. “A regular hell is L.A.” wrote Kerouac, and “I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm palmy air — air you can kiss — and palms.” I wanted the memory of the movie to stay as golden as its setting and so, was tempted to never watch La La Land ever again.
But something changed this summer. Enough was enough. And by the first ten minutes my resolution changed from never watching the movie again to putting it on at least once a season. It’s an indulgent film, but still intentional.
Because of director Damien Chazelle’s subversive use of color theory— notably the youngest director to win an Oscar — La La Land has become one of my most notable watches of the summer.
There are a couple of colors that have well-defined and stereotyped uses in film. Red is an extremity, a climax. It is excitement, ardor, fury, war, passion. Yellow, the color of caution signs, is naivety, insecurity, childhood.
And then there’s blue, perhaps one of the most pigeonholed colors on the wheel. Blue is melancholy, tranquility, calm, isolation, and stability.
But if we look at blue’s common, almost excessive appearances in La La Land, we see a different story. When Sebastian explains the intensity behind jazz — detailing how one man shot another because he was accused of playing the wrong note — there’s blue.
When Mia and Sebastian begin their relationship at Griffith Theater, they’re cast in blue. In Chazelle’s gorgeous version of Los Angeles, blue is no longer the color of sadness. Blue is passion, a dream coming true.
Red has a new role as well. In La La Land, red represents the clarity of reality that is so often symbolized by blue. Mia wears a red jacket to a failed audition. So does Sebastian when he’s playing at a party with a bad 80s cover band. As the script reads, he’s “hating every second”. But Sebastian can’t do anything about his situation: he can’t hold his job at a restaurant, much less afford to buy his own club. It’s the reality of a young artist trying to make it big. Again, the same goes for Mia. She tries out for part after part, subjecting herself to embarrassment and disappointment over and over again.
What is perhaps most striking about Chazelle’s use of blue and red is how he lets them war and mingle. You don’t need to look hard to see how the colors struggle against each other. During Sebastian’s first concert with his new band, he is spotlighted in blue.
Then when the rest of the band jumps in and Mia realizes that this new-age jazz is not at all Sebastian’s passion, viewers are attacked by the onslaught of orange and red lighting on the screen. The clashing red and blue is just as arresting as it is glamorous; for our characters, reality clashes with their dreams.
But the most beautiful moments of La La Land happen not when reality and passion refuse to mix, but when they do. They are quiet moments, where the buzz of the city fades away and the world exists only for Mia and Sebastian.
In Sebastian’s bedroom, when the couple discusses their dreams, and their love for each other carries the scene, we see blue, red, and the gentle purple that ties them together. And of course, there is Mia and Sebastian’s final goodbye. It’s a marvelous scene, and all without any words.
Sebastian, in a brown suit that appears deep red, is backlit by the blue curtains of his jazz club. And as Mia, now a world famous actress, turns around to see him one more time, her face is illuminated in blue and purple.
Reality, dreams, and what comes when they collide. Mia and Sebastian could never be together, but they’ve achieved what they’ve always wanted, what they came to Los Angeles to do. In this balance of color, we see the balance that the city finally gave them.
