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We live in a strange world: A series has appeared on Netflix, co-directed and produced by Oscar-winning Damien Chazelle, creator of films like Whiplash, The California Dream and The First Man, and there is little trace of this on the streaming site. While the site proudly advertises it’s in the top ten in Hungary, the eight-part miniseries The Eddy isn’t anywhere near that, I suppose it’s because no one has heard of it.
Now it should be the part you deserve, because The Eddy is a brilliant diamond in the dump that we call series made by Netflix, but unfortunately that’s not true by any means. The Eddy meets the very specific needs of a very thin coat, moderately at best, but not so. It’s a series that could have been an incredibly good party to film, but watching it is sometimes torment.
The Eddy is the name of a suburban jazz club in Paris, one of which is owned by Elliot Udo (André Holland of Castle Rock, among others), a star pianist who once saw more beautiful days and has been unwilling to play for years. Leading a band, yes, the club has its own band that doesn’t attract many viewers and only brings out the worst in Elliot, but at least he takes over. The life of the small warehouse club is fundamentally shaken when the best friend and manager of the club, Farid, is assassinated one night after the closing, after it turned out that he was involved in something very suspicious. And if that wasn’t enough, Elliot’s life will be returned to her teenage daughter, who would start going to school in Paris, but is more concerned with hating everything and everyone.
The series grew out of the brain of music producer Glen Ballard, Ballard has been working in the music industry since the 1980s, was involved in recording songs by Michael Jackson and George Benson in the 1980s, but gained a real reputation. when he produced Alanis Morissette’s best-known album (and the numbers’ rumor was rumored) he was converted a decade later. In the 2000s, Ballard had written many songs that were created by an ideal and imaginary jazz club, and began hosting these songs with others. The materials of the musician living in Paris were for director / producer Alan Poul (Tombhant Works, Westworld), then for writer Jack Thorne (Dark Materials of the Lord), and finally for Chazelle, who was involved in this project when Whiplasht He was not even involved. He showed. The plan was to build the script and plot around the songs, even in a musical, with the difference that here all the music would be performed live, in front of the cameras, be it a performance in a club, a rehearsal in a garage or happy music at a funeral.
The Eddy wants to be a great multiplayer tabloid about the outcasts of Paris, those who can’t find their place and can only find their world stuck in a musty cellar. The structure of the series is also based on highlighting certain characters, each part shifts a little in front of the central story, but focuses on a character who moves around the club. The first is about Elliot, the second is about his daughter, Julie, the third is about Farid’s widow, Amira, and so on. Each episode is intended to further delve into a character’s private life, learning about their cultural background, family life, their relationship with Elliot or even their fellow musicians.
The goal is noble, The Eddy wants to present as much of Parisian society as possible as possible, but sometimes he drowns in total failure because most stories can’t get out of below-average European movie cliches where The most creative people are addicts, Eastern Europeans are serious, loaded with trauma or criminals, and Americans can only make up for it all, even if they only cause an even bigger mess. The cultural goals of the series cannot be underestimated, but a long and ritualized washing of the dead is the best scene in the eight hours. I repeat: The best scene in a series about a jazz club is a multi-minute wash of the dead.
And anyone who can expect Chazelle to pick up Ed Eddy for his work as a director will be overwhelming, like me. However, it was a perfectly understandable move that the Whiplash director was dragged into this series, and also accepted it. On the one hand, Chazell went to high school in Paris, so the city is no stranger to him at all, and on the other hand, he just doesn’t know that he’s a jazz fan who only saw his astronaut movie The First Man. . Specifically, in the Oscar-winning California dream, the Ryan Gosling figure was not silent about the fact that one day he would open a club where he would play authentic, deep-rooted and authentic jazz. It would open at the end of that movie, but if it had been in Paris instead of Los Angeles, it would have looked like Elliot Udo’s place.
However, Chazelle’s directing style becomes specifically to the detriment of the story. The work of his hand are the first two parts, which were shot on a 16mm film, mainly in long settings, with a camera shaking like a poplar leaf, which is a good performance as a director, but it doesn’t always seem to be the Better option. The series also begins with a six-minute setup, which starts from the back of the title club, passes in front of the stage, shows the band, and then the club owner looking at the band. The intention is good, but the search for reality goes hand in hand with enjoyment because it is more disadvantageous to see less a picture of a band than to show musicians a nostril from a human height while playing music.
The stark, unadorned reality, too, stands in stark contrast to the script for The Eddy, which works with such clear symbolism that I wouldn’t dare give up its analysis at any graduation level. In the first part, Elliot’s engine suffocates (as in his life), two glasses of automatic coffee escape from his hands (as in his life), and after a facelift, he looks in the mirror for a long time (as it should in your life). In the second part, focused on her daughter, the harsh reality is exacerbated by the fact that a sixteen-year-old American girl has to watch for a long time while screaming about cocaine in the backyard of a suburban panel of young Arab merchants. . It’s like hitting a cauldron non-stop in the first two hours of The Eddy. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone gave up everything after that.
Photo: Lou Faulon / Netflix
And I wouldn’t call it a bad decision, either, although the standard will be much higher when directors take over French directors, who are much more unknown than Chazelle but work in a less scaling style. Houda Benyamina or Laïla Marrakchi may not be enough names to base a series on, but from his directing work, The Eddy will be much more visible, even if the script remains the same shot. They are also perfectly capable of capturing the intensity of live music, and that’s what this series is about, after all.
And for the great actors. André Holland is an interesting and charismatic figure in any role, and it is mainly thanks to him that all of Elliot’s terrible decisions, mistakes and outbursts can be endured. He is also credible as a Dutch musician, exhausted musician, and helpless and helpless father, and can get his misfortunes in various fields to be portrayed as a rather lost figure.
Featured in The Hate You Give as the protagonist’s daughter, Amandla Stenberg is one of the most annoying figures I’ve seen in the series recently, a true arrogant and pampered teenager who gets into the most awkward situations without any touch and ruins anything. in a matter of minutes without looking. to no one else. Presumably that was the goal, so Stenberg is doing his job perfectly, he just plays an unbearable role. The best moments for Polish Joanna Kulig (Cold War) are when she finally stops speaking French and English and can swear a lot in her native language, Polish. And the rest of the band is played by musicians who don’t have much acting experience, which is really bad when they get their own episode, not when they have to play music. Because they really do it authentically.
Filming The Eddy took nine months, a real club was built for him, American stars learned French, musicians played together for months, Ballard wrote these songs for years, Chazelle was seduced years ago, and this long work of sacrifice is so uncharacteristic. , resulted in an outdated series. It is very difficult to recommend: you must love or at least see with interest jazz in small clubs, European film production (the first two parts were presented at this year’s Berlin Film Festival), Arab and French culture in Paris, Multilingual dialogues, long music scenes, In addition to all this, you even have to have infinite patience to be able to tie a person for 8 hours. For me only 2-3 statements from the above list are true, and I sometimes experienced The Eddy as a torment.
The Eddy will be available on Netflix starting May 8.
(Cover image: Lou Faulon / Netflix)
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