Summary
Five years later. We are back at the coffee shop where Mia worked as a Barista, only this time, she’s the successful actress being served. Sebastian is playing the piano in what looks like his own club—he’s the guy signing the paper work.
We see Mia’s new life: a lavish home and a husband, who isn’t Sebastian. She has a little daughter, and she seems settled and happy. As Sebastian makes his way to his club, he walks past a poster of Mia on the corner, but doesn’t even pause: he’s clearly accustomed to her level of success. Mia and her husband are off in the car on the way to meet friends, having left their daughter with a babysitter. They get caught in traffic so Mia suggests that they pull off and grab dinner elsewhere. They end up outside a jazz club and, as she goes down the steps, she notices the name: Seb’s, with a musical note for the apostrophe. It’s Sebastian on the mic, introducing his musicians—and he spots Mia. He then plays a piano solo. Everything goes dark around Mia and she remembers hearing him first play in the lounge bar. She replays the encounter: only this time instead of being brushed off when she approaches him, they kiss immediately. What follows is an uptempo montage of what their time together could have been like: a home together, a successful one-woman show, a magical technicolor life where she gets her part in the film and they stay together, he comes with her to Paris, plays jazz there and then they have a family. She imagines them older, watching home movies of her pregnancy, the newborn, holidays together and then, bringing it up to the present: instead of Mia and her current husband, she and Sebastian leave their little boy with a babysitter and set off in the car, into the traffic where they pull off and end up at the jazz club she is sitting in. This time a different pianist is playing. As the song ends, we’re back to reality: it’s Sebastian who’s been playing and he and Mia are no longer together. As she leaves, they catch a glance and a moment, and just smile at each other.
Analysis
When Mia is offered coffee on the house, she insists on paying. As a barista herself, that’s what the successful actress who used to come in would do, and Mia has learned to be equally magnanimous. This film has been built around the seasons, and everything has come back around now. There’s a satisfying circularity to the story: Mia, back in the coffee shop, is now where she always wanted to be: in the same place, yet on the other side of the till.
And equally, despite the movements and changes, L.A. still has traffic jams. And yet the traffic jam here is at night, not in the glaring heat of the sun as at the start; at the conclusion of the film, this feels appropriate. The reminder of the very start of the film here also encourages us to remember all of the individuals in their cars and all the separate dreams and hopes they harbored.
When Sebastian walks past the poster of Mia on the way to his club, we can't help remembering the prominent poster earlier on in the film outside Lipton's. The first time we see the poster outside Lipton's, Mia walks past, noticing it briefly, on her way to the restaurant where she first hears Sebastian play, and we do too. On the poster is an audience: many faces in a crowd, as though sitting in a cinema theatre or auditorium. It is significant that this poster is symbolically replaced at the end of the film by a poster with Mia's face on it. Throughout the film she has just been "someone in the crowd...waiting to be found"; like the faces in the initial poster she was just an audience member, watching others on the big screen; one of many, hard to single out. At the end of the film, though, her face on the poster signals the very clear fact that she is no longer just someone in the crowd, that she has indeed been found.
It is worth noting that Mia wears very basic colors at the end of the film. The color has drained out of her clothes in this new life with her husband and reminds us of (an albeit upscaled version of) what she wore as a barista. She has gained success and notoriety and her life seems happy, and yet without Sebastian perhaps there is a lack of color. This is particularly significant when we analyze Mia's daydream. While watching him play the piano at Seb's, Mia fantasizes about the life they could have had together, and her fantasy is full of color. And this is also where the music - which is otherwise absent in this section of the film - comes fully back into the film. The emotion she feels, still, for Sebastian spills out from her imagination onto our screens. And in this daydream, they both find themselves at the stage door—they are together experiencing a life she must now, as an actress, be accustomed to. We notice that unfinished sketches form the backdrop here, at the stage door, but as the couple continue walking together, the sketches become fully formed, fully realized and bright with color. This must remind us of the many posters throughout the film of palm trees, which look like real life scenes, just a bit heightened and so a bit warmer and more joyful. And it is here, against a colorful backdrop, that dancers and characters reminiscent of the old Hollywood musical come to join them. They all dance: it's a huge musical tribute to the triumph of their union, and though not wholly realistic (this backdrop looks like a film set), it is joyful and celebratory. And so, though the two could not continue together in real life, this suggests that Mia's emotional self still lives passionately with Sebastian and is full of joy, color and dance.
It is satisfying that the film ends with Mia imagining another life with Sebastian. If "la la land" is the city of dreamers, Mia still demonstrates her ability to dream, and in technicolor. What springs up from her imagination is joyous, much like the film we are watching. As she and Sebastian exchange a smile at the end, it is with a deep and grateful acknowledgement that they made each others' dreams come true.
