color (symbol)
The design and colors used in the film add a sense of heightened reality, which sits well with the musical. We believe in and recognize this world, and yet it is slightly more colorful than we are used to.
The world Mia shares with her housemates is full of bright primary colors, giving her space energy and a real sense of desire for a future in technicolor. By contrast, Sebastian's space is colorless when we first meet him: blacks and whites, evocative of old jazz photographs. When Mia comes into his life, color and vibrancy is added to his world.
In the dreamworld of the epilogue, the colors are again powerful and vibrant and these images have a cartoon-like, unreal quality to them. Production designer David Wasco explains that in this sequence “everything was done and painted by hand, and all the scenery, such as the orange grove bushes and shrubs, were cut out and painted. It was very much like how Hollywood did the musicals in the 1930s and ’50s.”
spotlight (symbol)
The spotlight is used to show us perspective: to zoom in when our characters do. When Mia first sees Sebastian playing, everything else goes dark; she sees only him. When she sings in the mirror at the party with her housemates, she only sees herself, contemplating what will become of her. At the cinema, looking for him in the audience, Mia stands directly in the spotlight in front of the screen: the only thing Sebastian really wanted to see. These effects give us access to the interior world of the characters, to, as they sing together in "Someone in the Crowd," "the only thing [they] really see... Watching while the world keeps spinning 'round."
doorways and windows (symbol)
Openings in the form of doorways and windows appear often in the film. They can give access to new worlds and opportunities, or they can emphasize a stasis where new avenues seem unavailable.
When Mia leaves the first audition of the film, disappointed and hopeless, we see the lift doors close on her—a clear signal of the place she is in, which seems to have no opportunities at all. Windows can also seem enclosing, acting as a barrier to the outside world. When Mia leaves for Boulder City, Sebastian is left at home, lying on his bed in front of a window where the shutters look like prison bars.
Conversely, in the next scene, windows are used as a point of access on to the world. Mia is at home in Boulder City, opening the shutters on her window to see Sebastian, who has come to give her news of a potential audition. Mia looking out of the window here gives us an indication that she is finding her way out of her prison, that this opening may be significant. Of course, on the poster of Mia's one-woman show, 'So Long Boulder City', there is a picture of a window. The play itself becomes an opening for Mia onto her career and a whole new life.
mirrors and reflections (symbol)
Chazelle uses mirror and reflections to suggest duality. Both Mia and Sebastian feel a strong desire for each other, and for the dreams they hope to realize. These two strong pulls direct them happily down the same path for a certain time, but then the dream swallows the romance and they must part. This duality is brought out in the mirror reflections Chazelle shoots.
hollywood dreams (allegory)
There is a strong sense in La La Land that the film would never have been made without the influence and infection of the great 20th century Hollywood musical. Huge tribute is paid to those who had the courage to dream and so encourage the next generation to do so. And the message is strong from the start of this film as people help other people out of their cars to dance on the freeway: we must pull together, encourage and support each other to do the work and to keep being creative. The lyrics of the opening song, "Another Day of Sun," make it clear: "And some day as I sing the song/A small-town kid will come along/That'll be the thing to push him on and he'll go/Behind these hills I'm reaching for the heights/And chasing all the lights that shine."
