The Contemporary Musical Transformed: The Influence of ‘La La Land’
When La La Land debuted in 2016, it mesmerized global audiences with its lively hues, captivating jazz, and poignant love story. Although it clearly paid homage to the classic days of Hollywood, the movie also played a significant role in advancing contemporary musicals. Alongside its visual flair and renowned cast, La La Land presented daring structural, thematic, and technical advancements that influenced filmmakers and viewers alike.
Reviving the Song-and-Dance Tradition
Musicals had gradually retreated from mainstream cinema, with few breaking through between the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. La La Land reignited public appetite for the genre by embracing classic tropes—spontaneous street performances, fantasy sequences, and ensemble numbers. The film’s opening, “Another Day of Sun,” immediately conjured memories of earlier musical spectacles with its sweeping camera movement across a Los Angeles freeway. However, director Damien Chazelle modernized the form with single-take choreography, integrating the bustle of contemporary city life rather than confining action to sound stages. This urban realism, tied intricately to the music, made song-and-dance central not merely as spectacle but as a language for character expression.
A Different Type of Musical Storytelling
Instead of adhering strictly to a cheerful storyline, La La Land delves into themes of aspiration, sacrifice, and the poignant price of pursuing dreams. The plot defies conventional routes: while it offers instances of sheer happiness, the movie ends with a sequence showcasing a potential alternate reality, confronting the sorrow of unfulfilled possibilities. Through this approach, Chazelle pushed back against the neat conclusions of traditional musicals, adding layers of modern emotional depth. Both reviewers and viewers observed how songs like “City of Stars” or “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” enrich the story, integrating music with the narrative both emotionally and conceptually.
Visual Storytelling and Cinematic Techniques
La La Land elevated its storytelling through distinctive visual language. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren employed bold primary colors reminiscent of Technicolor films, but harnessed digital technology and innovative lighting to evoke mood and memory. The film’s use of long takes in dance sequences, practical sets on location, and homage-laden visual cues expanded the musical idiom for a new generation. For instance, the planetarium dance is both a tribute to the fantasy ballets of Vincente Minnelli and a contemporary expression of limitless aspiration. Such sequences benefit from digital effects not as spectacle, but as tools to heighten emotion.
The Importance of Music and Sound in Building Character
Composer Justin Hurwitz and lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul crafted a soundscape that pays respect to jazz and traditional show tunes while incorporating contemporary music trends. The music’s diegetic and non-diegetic functions often blur: characters perform both for diegetic audiences (within the film) and for themselves, with layered implications for their psychological states. For example, Mia’s audition piece transforms from narrative exposition to personal catharsis, allowing the audience an intimate window into her internal conflict. Sebastian’s immersion in jazz reflects the tension between preservation and innovation, paralleling the film’s own genre-blending ethos.
Social and Cultural Resonance
La La Land found resonance beyond cinephile circles, becoming a cultural touchstone worldwide. Its success at the box office—exceeding $440 million globally—and its sweep of awards, including six Academy Awards, signaled renewed viability for original musicals in the mainstream. The film’s setting in multicultural Los Angeles, with a globally diverse supporting cast and an embrace of immigrant ambition, positioned it as a universal story even as it dramatized specifically American dreams. In education and community theatre, the film’s influence is evident in the growing selection of contemporary musicals with original scores, movement-based staging, and realistic character arcs.
Legacy: Inspiring a New Creative Wave
Since La La Land, several musicals have been released targeting comparable artistic and commercial success, including The Greatest Showman, Mary Poppins Returns, and In the Heights. Streaming services have also started funding musical productions, while prominent award organizations have shown greater openness to the genre. Experts and reviewers observe that the movie’s ability to merge nostalgia with innovation established a benchmark, showing that musicals can thrive in the market while maintaining artistic goals and modern significance.
A Reflective Synthesis
La La Land contributed substantially to the language and legacy of the modern musical. Its technical virtuosity, emotional authenticity, and willingness to embrace both the old and the new positioned it as a benchmark for innovation in a genre long defined by tradition. Rather than merely commemorating the past, the film expanded the vocabulary of the musical for a rapidly changing media landscape—inviting both creators and audiences to rediscover the magic and meaning of stories told through song and dance.
