Quote:
Originally Posted by Displaced Flames fan
It must suck to not be able to enjoy anything.
|
Yeah, it probably would. I saw a movie last night that I quite enjoyed - Locke. It's criminal that Simmons won an Oscar while Tom Hardy wasn't even nominated. And I just read an excellent novel - Lustrum by Robert Harris. In both cases my appreciation for drama was satisfied without the need to be shut off the rational and discerning part of my brain.
Anyway, I wasn't the only person to notice the implausibility of Whiplash, and the resort to heat rather than light.
The Oscar contender favours extremity over emotional or musical truth. So it will probably win, says Ivan Hewett
Quote:
The reason it gets jazz wrong is the same as the reason it gets everything else wrong. Both spring from a deep underlying malaise.
That malaise is the determination of director Damien Chazelle to generate a blistering emotional heat, at the cost of any emotional or musical truth. Intensity of effect is all that matters to him, and he certainly achieves it. The scenes where J K Simmons as Terence Fletcher screams racial abuse into the face of his gifted student Andrew (played by Miles Teller) are savage enough to make one squirm.
In that respect, Whiplash (as the title might suggest) is a telling example of the ‘pornification’ of culture, i.e. the idea that ‘going to extremes’ and aiming always for maximum shock effect are the only ways to make a valid artistic statement.
|