Director: Damien Chazelle
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Stars: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist
Genre: Drama, Music
Ratings: 8.6/10 from 185,509 users
Originally Posted by
imdb
A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student's potential.
Code:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2582802/
*** spoilers ahead ***
Originally Posted by
imdb comments
The movie is very sensitively filmed. The camera relentlessly explores every bump on Teller's and Simmons's heads like a documentary about Greek sculpture. It adds a lot to the feel of the movie in a wonderfully subtle way.
Simmons and Teller (as the "Studio" band director and the, I guess, protagonist young drummer) do a great job. Simmons in particular is really the nexus of energy for the entire movie, and owns that role with absolute precision.
The music, when it's actually music, is well-chosen and well-performed.
Simmons ("Fletcher") and Teller ("Andrew") are essentially the only characters in the film. Andrew's dad and his not-really girlfriend are secondary characters that serve to remind the audience what actual humans are like. Andrew is an insufferable jerk, and Teller does an amazing job of maintaining (mostly) a stone-faced, blankly insensitive look throughout almost every tense moment of the film. Simmons's Fletcher is a superb sadistic maniac. He's not "intense" or "volatile" - he's a psychotic monster.
like a stone needing/wanting a chisel to become a sculpture?
this movie may actually be viewed as some kind of a dystopian society very close to or even available in current times:
- it shows what life could look like if the maximizing of our talents/skills/inclinations (like playing music) or maximizing the efficiency of our jobs (like teaching music) would assume top priority and everything else (other human experiences or moral considerations or personal relationships) became matters of very low or no priority
- what is 'the best'? the most bpm, the most difficult compositions, the most sweat per note, the most $ per person, the most awards on the wall, the most minutes spent on tv, the most covers of magazines reached,...? sculpture or stone?
did the maestro triumph because he squeezed the last drop of talent from the pupil? or was it at the price of becoming a monster
did the pupil triumph because he achieved the limits of his skill? or was it at the price of becoming machine-like
did the audience triumph because they got to taste these performance(s)? or was it just hunger for new extreme/extravagant experiences
did the society triumph because it catered to such interests? or was it just more horses for the race towards new limits and extremes
did the economy triumph because of the involved profit from all of them? or was it just yet another increase of the perpetual growth bubble
what about the viewer, did his observations make him desire the same or something different than the above?
anyways, it was unusual, the drill-maestro did his role very well, i was not fond of the expressionless student's acting, it had decent music, however much of the movie was rather sterile and not too interesting
one of the idea was how only top-notch technicall skill matters, but extremely skilled musicians do not necessarily make interesting music, let alone music that gets stuck in your mind or that makes you abuse the repeat button
that review above mentioned movie was an allegory about improving skills, but it works also on a deeper level - think about the destination of one's materialistic journey: to achieve improved and purified skills that are applicable/necessary in the spiritual world (some parts of the journey may include meeting & dealing with characters similar to those portrayed in the movie, but they aren't so one-sided or simplistic as the movie shows them)
for other good movies with related music/biography topics (not musicals), see:
Amadeus (1984) classical
Coal Miner's Daughter (1990) country
8 Mile (2002) hip-hop
Crazy Heart (2009) country
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