In 2017, the movie La La Land won a total of six Academy Awards at the Oscars. But out of the six, one award stood out: Best Cinematography. This award, to say the least, received a split reaction. La La Land was competing against movies like Arrival, Lion, Moonlight, and Silence, with a huge portion of the audience believing that either Arrival or Silence deserved the win. But there is a very good reason why La La Land won, which goes far beyond just having color in a film or good camera angles. In actuality, the color itself can be considered a whole story.
At first glance, someone might look at the 2016 movie and simply say, “It’s a colorful movie, nothing more.” Well, no—it is something more. In the current day and age, movies are at a complete peak of being bland and dull. This is shown in movies like Wish, newer Marvel movies, and even the last of the Harry Potter films. So, a huge part of La La Land’s charm is just how colorful it is—and its use of color steps outside the binary lines we’ve seen over the years. For example, blue represents sadness, red is anger, black is bad, and yellow is happy. But that is one thing this movie completely strays away from.
Looking closer at the film, it’s obvious that there is a heavy use of primary colors—specifically red, yellow, and blue. These colors show up in many scenes. In the opening scene, “Another Day of Sun,” the majority of background characters are dressed almost entirely in primary colors, even with a sea of monotone-colored cars punctuated by the occasional yellow, red, and blue. In the song “Someone in the Crowd,” all three primary colors are used, with the exception of green. Even the two main characters—Sebastian (or Seb), played by Ryan Gosling, and Mia, played by Emma Stone—are portrayed with these colors far more than we might initially notice.
Mia is often wearing or surrounded by shades of blue. She wears a blue coat in her audition, a blue dress at the party, a blue sweatshirt during another audition—even blue shoes at one point. Seb, on the other hand, is often seen in a sea of red: a red car, red keytar, and red jacket. And it goes further than just clothing. When Mia first meets Sebastian, she’s wearing a blue dress and enters the bar because of a red door.
The colors used for the two protagonists are very different—even going so far as to have Mia in more vibrant colors in the beginning and Seb in less vibrant, more muted versions. The separation is evident when looking at the pool scene: Mia is wearing yellow, while Sebastian is wearing red. The colors don’t blend when next to each other, maintaining the clear difference between them. It’s not until the iconic tap scene, “A Lovely Night,” that a huge color in the scene is purple—a color that results from blending red and blue, their signature colors. And Seb no longer wears red, instead swapping it for a blue suit. This scene marks the beginning of colors blending with each other. The start scene shows Seb playing piano and Mia dancing alone to his music. The colors complement each other. When Sebastian picks up Mia, she’s surrounded by purple flowers. On their date, she wears purple. And the more time Mia spends with Sebastian, the more red her colors become. The colors merge as the two lovers grow closer.
That is, until things start to change—after Sebastian plays for his band for the first time. We begin to see the colors separating again, with primary colors standing out just as they did in the beginning. This is especially clear at the end when Sebastian misses Mia’s show. Unlike before, Sebastian is now the one surrounded by color, while Mia’s colors are all muted—even going black and white at one point. Even green is used to represent tension. It appears during their first argument and in Sebastian’s apartment.
Blue can be seen as representing stability, yet not following your dreams—while red represents pursuing them, and the toll it takes. “For La La Land, I wanted to explore how you balance life and art, and how you balance dreams and reality,” says director Damien Chazelle. Mia dreams of becoming an actress, so she’s surrounded by blue. Even in the early scene of Mia working at a café, she’s behind a blue wall while a famous actress walks in wearing red. Seb is wearing blue when he’s forced to play Christmas songs instead of the music he truly loves. When Mia decides to pursue her dream of acting, the lighting turns all red. Even when Seb gets a cup of coffee, he stands in front of a red building while looking at his old job, which was in a blue building.
It’s widely known that La La Land is a nod to Hollywood. So in the final scene, when we see the montage of what their life could have been, they are surrounded by color. But unlike before, the colors don’t feel the same. They feel more set and hollow—color that should represent perfection, yet even the color isn’t enough. It seems distant, cold. Unlike typical Hollywood stories, this one steps outside the boundaries of the norm. Hollywood often likes to show the perfect: in romance movies, no matter how toxic a couple may be, they almost always end up together—exceptions aside. But La La Land subverts these expectations, intentionally making the dream sequence cold compared to the real ending, where Sebastian and Mia know they won’t be together—a warm moment surrounded by a sea of blue.
The colors in La La Land represent dreams, love, warmth, and the choices that shape our lives. It’s completely unique and special because of that—and it tells its very own story about life and its many outcomes.