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Showing posts with label damien chazelle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label damien chazelle. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2016
Monday, October 10, 2016
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Roughly halfway through Damien Chazelle's La La Land, Emma Stone's would-be actor Mia is fretting about her upcoming one woman show. "It just feels really nostalgic to me." "That's the point." Ryan Gosling's jazz pianist boyfriend Sebastian replies. "Are people going to like it?" she responds. He turns to her with that cooler-than-cool Gosling gaze and replies "Fuck 'em".
"Fuck 'em" indeed. It's a naked bit of self-examination from writer/director Damien Chazelle, who's perhaps understandably worried that the reason the big budget tap-dancing trad-musicals have all but disappeared from our screens is because nobody wants to see them. Sure, you get the odd (generally iffy) Broadway adaption here and there, but we're a long way from the days of Singin' in the Rain, West Side Story and My Fair Lady.
He needn't worry, La La Land is one of the most sure-fire critical and commercial darlings I've seen in a very, very long time. It's got two of the most bankable, adored stars in Hollywood being very funny, very sweet and dancing their socks off. It's got gorgeous faux Technicolor palette and full Cinemascope photography. It's got a script that, despite the sugar-coated trappings of the genre, manages to feel vividly real. It's got musical numbers so dazzling that, in an auditorium full of jaded film critics at the London Film Festival, the opening sequence received a spontaneous round of rapturous applause.
Set in what feels like a dream of contemporary Los Angeles, La La Land is the story of Mia and Sebastian's relationship over one perma-summery year. They first meet when cutting each other up on the freeway, Sebastian honking his horn and giving Mia the finger as he pulls past her. "What an asshole..." she mutters. But soon all too soon - despite their protestations that they despise one another and there's absolutely no chemistry between them - they're falling in love.
What follows is admittedly cut from some pretty familiar cloth: their relationship grows, encounters problems and the two engage in some soul-searching about just what they mean to each other. But despite the familiar template this still surprises, serving up a romance that's simultaneously personal and universal, and one that concludes with an astonishingly effective emotional crescendo.
The ghosts of the golden age of Hollywood haunt these characters, looming in the background of scenes throughout, and at one point Chazelle stylishly and memorably mirrors an establishing shot from Rebel Without a Cause. But the film avoids outright fetishising old Hollywood, instead subjecting it to a mild critical examination via its most extroverted manifestation - the all singin' all dancin' musical. Though Gosling and Stone might tapdance their way down the streets like Astaire and Rogers, they're rooted firmly in 2016 - one of my favourite character touches is that the screen of Mia's iPhone 4S is cracked, an incidental detail that speaks volumes about her life.
Though crammed full of surface retro-stylings, the film consistently argues for innovation rather than slavish copying. The main vehicle for this is Gosling's Sebastian, who's initially obsessed with jazz dinosaurs and has an idea of musical purity lodged sometime in the 30s. It's only when he begins to experiment with form and removes the muso stick from up his own ass that he begins to loosen up and enjoy his art rather than merely appreciate it. Stone's Mia goes through a similar process, evolving from someone craving the approval of others to defining success in their own terms.
To convey all that while singing and dancing isn't going to be a picnic, but Chazelle simply couldn't have cast two better leads. Gosling in particular exudes a timeless style and poise, staring out from the screen with a hangdog yet confident expression that, appropriately enough, has more than a tinge of James Dean to it. He is every inch the moviestar, approaching every scene with grace and jaw-dropping cool. As a graduate of The Mickey Mouse Club it's no surprise that he can sing and dance, but few about these days could slide into a musical number so sleekly and naturally. Stone is also wonderful - the duo fizzing with refreshingly old-school chemistry.
I'd come to think that films like La La Land just couldn't get made anymore. These are insincere times, and this is a painfully sincere movie about two fools drifting in and out of love. It presents a gently loping, largely tension-free story without an atom of irony and resists the urge to insert vestigial elements like comedy best-friends and bitchy villains. It just is, functioning as a contemporary ideal of what the Hollywood studio machine once could (and amazingly, apparently still can) do best.
Damien Chazelle was already sniffing at the big leagues with Whiplash. After La La Land he's going to be white-hot. I can't wait to see what he does next.
★★★★★
What follows is admittedly cut from some pretty familiar cloth: their relationship grows, encounters problems and the two engage in some soul-searching about just what they mean to each other. But despite the familiar template this still surprises, serving up a romance that's simultaneously personal and universal, and one that concludes with an astonishingly effective emotional crescendo.
The ghosts of the golden age of Hollywood haunt these characters, looming in the background of scenes throughout, and at one point Chazelle stylishly and memorably mirrors an establishing shot from Rebel Without a Cause. But the film avoids outright fetishising old Hollywood, instead subjecting it to a mild critical examination via its most extroverted manifestation - the all singin' all dancin' musical. Though Gosling and Stone might tapdance their way down the streets like Astaire and Rogers, they're rooted firmly in 2016 - one of my favourite character touches is that the screen of Mia's iPhone 4S is cracked, an incidental detail that speaks volumes about her life.
Though crammed full of surface retro-stylings, the film consistently argues for innovation rather than slavish copying. The main vehicle for this is Gosling's Sebastian, who's initially obsessed with jazz dinosaurs and has an idea of musical purity lodged sometime in the 30s. It's only when he begins to experiment with form and removes the muso stick from up his own ass that he begins to loosen up and enjoy his art rather than merely appreciate it. Stone's Mia goes through a similar process, evolving from someone craving the approval of others to defining success in their own terms.
To convey all that while singing and dancing isn't going to be a picnic, but Chazelle simply couldn't have cast two better leads. Gosling in particular exudes a timeless style and poise, staring out from the screen with a hangdog yet confident expression that, appropriately enough, has more than a tinge of James Dean to it. He is every inch the moviestar, approaching every scene with grace and jaw-dropping cool. As a graduate of The Mickey Mouse Club it's no surprise that he can sing and dance, but few about these days could slide into a musical number so sleekly and naturally. Stone is also wonderful - the duo fizzing with refreshingly old-school chemistry.
I'd come to think that films like La La Land just couldn't get made anymore. These are insincere times, and this is a painfully sincere movie about two fools drifting in and out of love. It presents a gently loping, largely tension-free story without an atom of irony and resists the urge to insert vestigial elements like comedy best-friends and bitchy villains. It just is, functioning as a contemporary ideal of what the Hollywood studio machine once could (and amazingly, apparently still can) do best.
Damien Chazelle was already sniffing at the big leagues with Whiplash. After La La Land he's going to be white-hot. I can't wait to see what he does next.
★★★★★
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Saturday, January 17, 2015
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But the real crunchy, wriggly, deliciously creamy core of Damien Chazelle's film stems from the fact that, while it's very much about jazz drumming, it's just as much a warped satire on sports movies, a homoerotic BDSM duologue and an examination of precisely what you have to sacrifice to achieve perfection.
Set at the fictional Shaffer Conservatory, NY (the best music school in the United States) our hero is Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), a 19 year old jazz drummer. He's an undoubtedly talented, hard-working musician, light years beyond 99.9% of other musicians. Unfortunately in Shaffer's populated with the rest of the 0.01% and so he's struggling to find his moment to shine. He needs recognition fast as his ambition is to be none other than one of the greatest jazz drummers... of all time!
One day, in the midst of Neiman's practice session the feared and respected leader of Shaffer's studio band, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), stops in to listen. Fletcher simply radiates terrifying authority; his eyes are laser sights; his veins high voltage power cables; and his mouth a machine-gun dispensing belittling insults. Of all the dominating presences that've strolled across cinema screens in the last year Simmons' Fletcher beats them all into a cocked hat.
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This man is a monster, but a monster with a purpose. His philosophy is that true genius is only revealed through hardship; that no all-time great ever got where they were by being told their work as "good enough". He considers his rage, sadism and intimidation tactics the fire in a kiln, baking his students with blistering heat until they emerge rock-hard, invincible ultramusicians.
The rest of the film chronicles Fletcher's effects on Neiman, taking his initial lump of doughy clay and beating it into something special. Though there's a couple of other characters in the film (Neiman's father and new girlfriend), they're largely extraneous, functioning as prisms through which we witness the metamorphosis from man to drum machine. The drive for perfection is a messy one, screwing up Neiman's mind, body and soul - the anger and drive that Fletcher pours into his student leaving little room for human weaknesses like emotion and conscience.
So we zero in on the relationship between two people, the masochist and sadist (and thus the double-meaning of the title is revealed). Though Neiman initially whimpers and blubs under Fletcher's barrage of insults, we see him slowly growing to crave them. It's a similar situation with the pain: practicing so hard his hands become blood-soaked (as does his drum kit). But as he dunks his bleeding fists into buckets of ice water he gasps in orgasmic bliss. After all, if it hurts this much it's got to be improving him, right?
Where Whiplash gets interesting is that it refuses to condemn Fletcher's methods. That a film can come out and argue that unvarnished psychological abuse can genuinely work is brave and lightly satirical. In this it shares some DNA with Steven Shainberg's Secretary, taking extreme behaviour that 'normal' people simply can't comprehend and explaining its worth.
Cementing the satire is that we come to realise that practically nobody outside this tiny clique gives a toss about jazz-drumming. Fletcher bemoans the rise of "Starbucks jazz compilations", apparently unaware that this pretty much is jazz nowadays. It's notable that in the scenes set outside the school nobody cares, understands or pays attention to the music; even in a scene set in a jazz bar the reaction of the patrons is cool indifference. This rises to a hilarious peak in the concert scenes; the fact that the camera is locked on the two men conceals the fact that these massive venues are almost entirely empty, the herculean efforts of the characters songs greeted by polite, muted applause. The punchline comes in the climactic scenes when Neiman's father finally sees his son transformed into a monstrous, inhuman drumming machine. In an ordinary movie this would be where he beams in pride, instead he looks on with horror and confusion.
Sacrificing everything purely to become a master at some obscure art is at the heart of ascetic cinema; from umpteen martial arts movies right through to boxing movies and this film's direct antecedent, Black Swan. Whiplash presents a way of teaching that's in sharp opposition to the touchy-feely/instant-validation hug-based philosophy that appears so prevalent these days. In scenes where concerned parents, afraid that their little angel is being called names by the nasty music teacher, conspire to him sacked we look down their noses. These morons could never understand perfection. Nuts to them I say. I'm totally on board with Fletcher's style.
So go and see Whiplash. Marvel at the two stunning performances by Teller and Simmons, coo at the ultra-slick pin-point editing, tap your toe at the rat-a-tat pace, chuckle at the outre insults and let your jaw hang low at the stunning/terrifying final drum sequence. Best drum film ever? Certainly. Maybe one of the best music films ever too.
★★★★★
Whiplash is released 16th January 2015
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Cementing the satire is that we come to realise that practically nobody outside this tiny clique gives a toss about jazz-drumming. Fletcher bemoans the rise of "Starbucks jazz compilations", apparently unaware that this pretty much is jazz nowadays. It's notable that in the scenes set outside the school nobody cares, understands or pays attention to the music; even in a scene set in a jazz bar the reaction of the patrons is cool indifference. This rises to a hilarious peak in the concert scenes; the fact that the camera is locked on the two men conceals the fact that these massive venues are almost entirely empty, the herculean efforts of the characters songs greeted by polite, muted applause. The punchline comes in the climactic scenes when Neiman's father finally sees his son transformed into a monstrous, inhuman drumming machine. In an ordinary movie this would be where he beams in pride, instead he looks on with horror and confusion.
Sacrificing everything purely to become a master at some obscure art is at the heart of ascetic cinema; from umpteen martial arts movies right through to boxing movies and this film's direct antecedent, Black Swan. Whiplash presents a way of teaching that's in sharp opposition to the touchy-feely/instant-validation hug-based philosophy that appears so prevalent these days. In scenes where concerned parents, afraid that their little angel is being called names by the nasty music teacher, conspire to him sacked we look down their noses. These morons could never understand perfection. Nuts to them I say. I'm totally on board with Fletcher's style.
So go and see Whiplash. Marvel at the two stunning performances by Teller and Simmons, coo at the ultra-slick pin-point editing, tap your toe at the rat-a-tat pace, chuckle at the outre insults and let your jaw hang low at the stunning/terrifying final drum sequence. Best drum film ever? Certainly. Maybe one of the best music films ever too.
★★★★★
Whiplash is released 16th January 2015
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