I’m not the biggest on watching a film more than once, but if I’ve learned anything from this course, it’s that there are always new observations to be made. Over Thanksgiving break I watched La La Land for the second time; I wasn’t trying to observe anything in particular going into it, but by the end of the film my perception of it had changed a lot more than I expected. La La Land is a musical where an aspiring actress (Mia) and a jazz pianist (Seb) become drawn to each other from their shared goal of “making it” in their respective endeavors, but their relationship takes a hit when their career paths deviate from expectation. One thing I noticed from rewatching it was how much faster the film seemed to progress, especially in regard to the section of the film where Mia and Seb were together. It made me reconsider the pacing of the film and think about how the brevity of their relationship (both in narrative time and in movie duration) could have been a deliberate choice to convey the film’s message about maintaining a relationship and how much of a priority it was to the protagonists. I also think that having knowledge of the outcome made me view the relationship as a lot less substantive and robust because it felt like the relationship hinged upon whether there was an opportunity to make progress towards achieving their dreams.

The movie indicated the passage of time by providing word queues of the season it was taking place in, so when I was watching it again, I tried paying more attention to the themes represented in each season and how they were portrayed. I noticed that small changes in mise-en-scene in terms of color palette and lighting occurred from season to season, and that each one corresponded with a certain phase in the protagonists’ lives. Another motif I noticed in the film was the use of snow, which appeared once during Mia’s Hollywood party and also after Seb and Mia watched a movie together. I thought it symbolized an idealized perception of reality held by the characters in that moment: at the party, Mia was overly idealistic about her future as an actress and what opportunities the night might present to her; after the movie, Seb and Mia share an idealistic vision of their future together.