Is 'La La Land's ending happy or sad? We're still debating

Caution: Major spoilers on how La La Land ends are ahead. 

If you haven't seen La La Land yet, stop reading now.

But if you have, you've taken in the sweeping dance ballet finale of Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian's (Ryan Gosling) love story. You've seen her go off to Paris and become a major movie star. You've seen him finally open his throwback jazz club.

And you've found out to get there, they had to leave each other behind.

Since Damien Chazelle's modern musical scored a record-tying 14 Oscar nominations, moviegoers have debated its merits, with some calling the film "life-affirming food for the soul" and others deeming it a "nostalgic, easily forgettable romance."

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Audiences are emotionally divided on the film's finale, with some finding the takeaway of La La Land's fork-in-the-road ending a poignant sacrifice of love for success, while others have found the plot realistic and even optimistic, showing life offers more than one path forward.

"The first time I saw La La Land, I was utterly heartbroken by those final scenes and the revelation that, hey, these crazy kids really didn't make it after all," says Kate Erbland, film editor at IndieWire.com. "It seemed like such a gut-wrenching twist after everything the pair had been through."

She adds: "After subsequent re-watches, I've managed to get at least a pragmatic handle on the way the story ends, but I still find the 'what if' sequence to be the very best example of the film's emotional and imaginative power. It's just lovely, so well-made and so charming, all with a deep melancholy that's hard to shake even now."

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Others were left with more of a lift. "To me, the ending says that some partners enter our lives to inspire us, even if they don't end up being our soulmate for life," says Dave Karger, special correspondent for IMDb.com, calling the ending bittersweet. "Without each other, Mia and Sebastian would never have achieved their dreams."

Ultimately keeping Mia and Sebastian apart was key, Chazelle says. "It was kind of an acknowledgement that life doesn’t always completely live up to the perfect version that we have in our heads, but that that’s OK," he says.

After Mia unwittingly enters Sebastian's jazz club with her husband (Tom Everett Scott), the camera pulls back and a "what if" scenario begins: What if he had kissed her when she came into that restaurant? What if he'd said no to joining a top 40 band? What if he'd gone with her to Paris?

While the film reinforced the positive ways the couple pushed each other, "the 'what if?' aspect resonated the most for me," Stone says. "We've all had that moment in our lives — the road not taken, the moment we turned left when we could have turned right."

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Sebastian and Mia proceed to dance through this dialogue-free dream sequence, with the set pieces growing more abstract.

"I knew I wanted to do a big dream ballet at the end," says Chazelle, referencing old MGM musicals. "There’s sort of a tradition that I just loved so much and wondered, why don’t we see sequences like that anymore?"

Stone calls the final sequence a beautiful exploration of the road not taken, "using the tools that only a musical can use to flesh it out and run with it."

In short, the last 10 minutes of La La Land is the feel-good ending Old Hollywood would have scripted.

"Let’s give them the old-fashioned musical version of their story, where there’s no real conflict and we can be left to reflect, is that actually better than what happened? Or are they actually in an even better place in real life than they would be there?" says Chazelle. "That’s the question the audience can be left with."