Damien Chazelle makes performance feel perilous, and we recommend him for the pressure he can put into a musical sequence. His weakness is how readily he treats the willingness to suffer as evidence of artistic seriousness.
Fi1m perspective
In Whiplash (2014), a stretch of drumming carries the threat of another judgement from Fletcher, the teacher who uses high standards to excuse his cruelty. Chazelle makes practice frightening by keeping our attention on the work and the man waiting to find fault with it. We were tense at the prospect of Andrew playing again, because another attempt meant another opportunity for Fletcher to punish him. The musical sequences justify our enthusiasm for Chazelle, even when his view of musicianship seems too narrow.
Editor Tom Cross keeps the playing under pressure, making each performance feel liable to go wrong. Cinematographer Sharone Meir gives the physical effort enough weight that Andrew's determination becomes uncomfortable to watch. J.K. Simmons gives Fletcher enough force and complication to keep him from becoming a simple warning about bad teaching. Chazelle directs the struggle so persuasively that we nearly overlook how little life he has given the people outside it.
Music was central from his debut, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009), a black-and-white jazz musical. It also began his collaboration with composer Justin Hurwitz. That partnership matters because Hurwitz's scores help determine the rhythm and feeling of Chazelle's films, rather than merely accompanying the action. In the musical romance La La Land (2016), the score helps shape the film. First Man (2018), his film about Neil Armstrong, took a more contained, anxious approach.
Babylon (2022) returned to performers, this time in Hollywood during the transition to sound, with Hurwitz again supplying the score. Its detailed period staging gives Chazelle plenty of scope to demonstrate his technical skill. But the excess becomes exhausting, and it grows harder to tell what he wants us to think about the industry he is showing.
The question is already there, more usefully contained, in Whiplash: what does all this punishment produce? Andrew's desire to excel is convincing; what he might want to express is less clear. We wanted the lives beyond teacher and student to matter more, so that abandoning them would feel like a loss. Start with Whiplash, and be wary of taking Fletcher's account of greatness at face value.
Biography
Damien Sayre Chazelle is an American director and screenwriter. Born on 19 January 1985 in Providence, Rhode Island, he studied filmmaking at Harvard University, graduating in 2007. His early feature Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009) was followed by the short film Whiplash (2013), which he expanded into the 2014 feature of the same name that he wrote and directed.
Chazelle is known for the musical La La Land (2016), which he wrote and directed, the biographical drama First Man (2018), and the period film Babylon (2022), which he also wrote and directed. For La La Land he won the Academy Award for Best Director, becoming the youngest recipient of the award at age 32. He has also directed episodes of the series The Eddy (2020).
