Damien Chazelle

First Man (2018)

First Man (2018)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2019) A Damien Chazelle film about Neil Armstrong? Sold—there’s no way I wasn’t going to watch this. Alas, the feeling I get at the end of First Man is merely one of satisfaction, not one of exceeded expectations. It may be that Armstrong, as one of the prototypical solid men specifically selected for moon landings because they were low-drama, may not have been as interesting a biographical figure as everything surrounding him. It may be because most of the highlights of First Man have been covered in other movies before (most notably The Right Stuff, and then For All Mankind, and then Apollo 13). It may be because in trying to portray the experience from a subjective perspective, Chazelle has minimized the impact of the spectacle we expected. But, no matter why, First Man is about as average a rendition of Armstrong’s experience as would have been put on-screen: he gets the highlights, but not much in terms of what made him tick—the characters surrounding him, whether it’s his wife, his superiors or teammate Buzz Aldrin (in another superlative supporting performance by Corey Stoll). Ryan Gosling doesn’t help—his mandate it to play a very private, very inward-driven character and he does exactly that. The highlight of the film, fortunately, arrives at exactly the right moment—stepping out of the Lunar Module and stepping on the moon, with the grainy artificially aged images finally giving place to the clean crisp splendour of IMAX footage taking us on another world. But it feels like a little too late, and actually limited by Armstrong’s perspective. I do like First Man (after all, I watched it exactly on the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing), but I’m disappointed that I’m not loving it.

La La Land (2016)

La La Land (2016)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2017) I will always be receptive to a good old-school Hollywood musical, and La La Land does get started with a terrific freeway dance number that clearly sets the tone for what follows—a classic musical paying homage to Hollywood dreams without being bound to strict realism. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone star as star-crossed artists who struggle to achieve their personal vision. Charming and likable like golden-era Hollywood stars, Gosling and Stone couldn’t be more suited for their roles as eager upstarts. Still, the real star here is writer/director Damien Chazelle, orchestrating a big musical with enough modern sensibilities to feel both timeless and contemporary. The dusk musical number (the film’s second-best highlight following the freeway opening number) is spectacular enough that I could have sworn it had been shot in-studio and heavily post-processed, but it turns out it was actually captured on location in few takes. More daringly, the film not only goes for a bittersweet ending in which our characters don’t necessarily end up together—but also shows us an alternate montage depicting what would have happened otherwise. I’m impressed but not entirely satisfied by that choice, something that is also true for the rest of the film: for all the crowd-pleasing moments, there are also odd choices and obsessions elsewhere. I’m getting too old and jaded to be swayed much by idealistic appeals to artistic purity, so a chunk of La La Land’s thematic appeal feels a bit jejune. But it is a film about ideals, and musicals don’t do well with pure realism (hence my ambivalence about the ending), so let’s enjoy the colours and the bounciness and the Hollywood satire and the idea that we’ve got such a film to tide us over in dour bleak 2017.

Whiplash (2014)

Whiplash (2014)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2014)  Anyone could be forgiven, after reading a short summary of Whiplash’s plot (“Student Jazz Musician tries to prove himself to demanding teacher”) that this would be a relatively sedate and dull affair, somewhere along the lines of a musical Good Will Hunting.  But that would be a terrible mistake, because Whiplash tells a musical coming-of-age drama with the tempo of an action movie.  Miles Teller is pretty good as the student willing to sacrifice just about everything in order to become a great musician, but J.K. Simmons is stellar as his nemesis, a teacher who thinks that developing a great musician or worth the worst methods imaginable.  His performance is Whiplash’s biggest special effect – a blend of meanness, bad temper, outright machiavelism and unapologetic righteousness.  Much of his character’s complexity is reflected elsewhere in the tight script, which delivers a deceptive triumph of an ending with implications that aren’t as triumphant as you may think.  Otherwise, the music sounds great even to untrained jazz listeners, the editing is spectacularly good and Damien Chazelle’s direction is effective without being showy.  The ending is terrific and caps off a film with very little padding.  (In fact, as the mystery of the missing folder suggests, it may even miss a bit of connective narrative.)  Whiplash, in other words, is a surprisingly good film, a more-than-worthy Oscar nominee, and a memorable viewing experience.  Who knew you could care so much about a drum solo?