Jazz is an elixir of life, for the musicians anyway, for those who would like to, too. For the audience, jazz is in the best case a carpet of improvised sound clouds, a discipline in which, due to its open shape, one can only really dilete.
Damien Chazelle, a music-loving jazz fan and celebrated director of films such as “Whiplash”, “La La Land” and “First Man”, has now made the right mini series, consisting of eight episodes, for Netflix – he has the first two episodes staged itself.
Mini series
The Eddy, F 2020
Eight-part mini series
Directed by Damien Gazelle
With: André Holland, Amanda Stenberg, Tahar Rahim u. a.
From May 8th
Netflix
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The story revolves around a jazz club in Paris, far from the tourist magnet. The “Eddy” is managed with artistic dedication by the American Elliot Udo (André Holland), but the success does not really appear. Elliot has debts, which his business partner Farid (Tahar Rahim) has made to unscrupulous criminals. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: The problems become even more dramatic for “The Eddy” and Elliot in the first episode. This also means that his daughter Julie (Amanda Stenberg) moves from New York to Paris and a complex father-daughter story begins.
A series like a jazz piece
“The Eddy” is constructed as a mini series similar to a jazz piece. This becomes clear when Farid locks up his teenage kids in their room so that they can seriously practice jazz. “What if we have to pee?” Asks his son. “Then pee out the window, improvise!” Improvisation is one of the core characteristics of jazz, and the way the series is made is well defined. A lot of things here seem improvised, even if they are not necessarily so (just like jazz). And the music is always in the foreground, no matter how uncomfortable the private situation is at the moment. Jazz and all its forms, once more accessible, then demanding, almost seems like a cure, but at least it is an outlet for the feelings that are sometimes suppressed in the air and can only be erupted by the sounds.
Damien Chazelle deliberately chose visual stylistic devices that are strongly reminiscent of the (deliberate) inflexibility of the Nouvelle Vague, or the cinema by John Cassavetes. Chazelle, who only staged the first two episodes, used 16mm film for this, a novelty at Netflix, where otherwise only digitally produced. But this wonderfully granular film material corresponds perfectly with the improvisational touch of jazz. The images jiggle, are agile and have rough edges, they focus sometimes on details, sometimes on faces, always subordinate to the music; “The Eddy” therefore does not correspond to any common Paris cliché, at least not to any American one – the series is decidedly uninhibited and unimpressed by any postcard aesthetics.
Chazelle, on the other hand, does not use too much stylization for the grunge underground – his episodes are more documentary with their musical interludes, and this is clearly disadvantageous for the dramaturgy; As honorable as the idea may be to correspond to jazz on film, the progress of the plot is initially lax and without tension. In many places “The Eddy” is more a smoky club evening than a plot to be followed rigorously. Although a crime will soon pick up speed, it always returns to its musical starting point.
This could at least result in a festival for jazz lovers, but Chazelle’s episodes are noticeable in his listlessness. Maybe he was already thinking about his next project “Babylon”. In any case, you can feel the handwriting of this filmmaker on “The Eddy”, but not his lifeblood.
