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Jazz is an elixir of life, for musicians anyway, for those who want too. For the public, jazz is, at best, a carpet of impromptu sound clouds, a discipline in which, due to its open form, one can only really die.
Damien Chazelle, a jazz fanatic and acclaimed director of films like “Whiplash”, “La La Land” and “First Man”, has made the correct mini series, consisting of eight episodes, for Netflix: he has both first episodes was staged.
The story revolves around a jazz club in Paris, far from the tourist magnet. The “Eddy” is handled with artistic dedication by the American Elliot Udo (André Holland), but the success does not really appear. Elliot has debts that his business partner Farid (Tahar Rahim) has incurred with 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 includes that her daughter Julie (Amanda Stenberg) moves from New York to Paris and begins a complex father-daughter story.
A series like a jazz piece.
“The Eddy” is built as a mini-series similar to a jazz piece. This becomes clear when Farid locks his teenage boys in their room so they can seriously practice jazz. “What if we have to urinate?” Asks his son. “Then pee out the window, improvise!” Improvisation is one of the central characteristics of jazz, and the style of the series is well defined. Many things here seem improvised, even if they are not necessarily like that (like jazz). And music is always in the foreground, no matter how awkward the private situation is right now. Jazz and all its forms, once more accessible, then demanding, almost seems like a cure, but at least it is an outlet for feelings that are sometimes suppressed in the air and can only be exploded by sounds.
Damien Chazelle deliberately chose stylistic visual devices that are very reminiscent of the (deliberate) inflexibility of the Nouvelle Vague, or the cinema of John Cassavetes. Chazelle, who directed only the first two episodes, used a 16mm film for this, a first for Netflix, where otherwise it is only produced digitally. But this wonderfully granular cinematic footage perfectly corresponds to jazz’s improvisational touch. The images are agitated, agile and have corners and edges, sometimes focusing on details, sometimes on faces, always subordinate to music; “The Eddy” therefore does not correspond to any ordinary Parisian cliche, at least not to an American one: the series is decidedly cruel and does not impress with any postcard aesthetics.
Chazelle, on the other hand, does not use too much stylization for the grunge underground: his episodes are more documentary with his musical interludes, and this is clearly disadvantageous for dramaturgy; As honorable as the idea of reciprocating jazz is in the film, the plot progress is initially slack and stress-free. In many places, “The Eddy” is more of a smoky club night than a plot to be followed rigorously. Although a crime will soon accelerate, it always returns to its musical starting point.
This could at least result in a festival for jazz lovers, but Chazelle’s episodes are notable due to his apathy. Maybe he was already thinking about his next project “Babylon”. In any case, you can feel the lyrics of this filmmaker in “The Eddy”, but not his soul.
