Director's Style: Damien Chazelle

Damien Chazelle - The Reality of Dreams

 He may only be 33 years old, with only four feature films under his belt, but he has already established himself as one of the most talented directors of our generation. He was referred to as "the Millenial Auteur" by The Hollywood Reporter, and rightfully so. He has already had two films nominated for Best Picture in the Academy Awards (and, hopefully, a third one this year), having already won one Oscar for Best Directing, becoming the youngest director to ever win such recognition. He is definitely already an auteur, and, in this article, I'll be exploring what connects his films. More specifically, I'll be talking about Whiplash, La La Land, and First Man (I haven't seen Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench yet, so I can't talk about it). I want to explore what do they have in common in terms of themes, messages, and techniques, and, through that, establish what may be called the "style" of Damien Chazelle.

 Let's first establish the plots of each of the films I'll be talking about and then explore what do they have in common.

 Whiplash is a gritty drama about a promising and ambitious young jazz drummer who goes to a prestigious music conservatory and comes in conflict with a strict and demanding teacher who will stop at nothing to bring the full potential in his students. La La Land is a romantic musical about an ambitious actress and a passionate pianist who fall in love while pursuing their dreams. First Man is the biopic of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. 

 What do these three stories have in common? Do they have anything in common?

 In essence, all of them are about dreams, ambitions, and passions. They all are about passionate people with big dreams and their journey to try to achieve them. But they treat that subject in a very unique way. Whiplash is about the way that, if you want to achieve something, you have to try and try over and over again. It's also about the consequences, both physical and psychological, of such endeavor. It's about how the search for self-realization may affect you, showing its painful (and bloody) process. La La Land, although in an apparently rosier tone, also shows that real side of dreams. It shows that accomplishing your dreams doesn't come without pain and sacrifice, in a similar way to Whiplash. The difference being the use of a light musical ambiance to give a big emotional blow to the audience, ending up not being escapist at all, but being extremely realist. And, finally, First Man. Although, unlike his previous films, not having music as a more obviously central role, it shows these struggles and the suffering associated with achieving your dreams using a real-life story. It shows the traumas and losses this man had to go through in order to accomplish this big collective ambition of humanity. In a way, it even transcends the previous films in the way it's not about the dreams of a single individual but it's about a collective dream shared by humanity as a whole.

 And so, all of Damien Chazelle's films are, deep down, about "the reality of dreams". What do I mean by this? They are about the universal ambition that, I believe, is shared by everyone for self-realization. However, he doesn't talk about dreams in an escapist way, not even in La La Land. He completely breaks away from a tradition of sugar-coated Hollywood narratives, showing what you really must go through to achieve your dreams. It's not all sunshine and blue sky. There is pain, there is loss, and there is sacrifice. That is what connects all his films. This is the theme that Chazelle repeatedly explores in all his features, each one exploring a different point of view. Whiplash is more about the extremes of unrestrained ambition. La La Land is more about the sacrifices one must make to achieve one's dreams and the one that is more obviously a love letter to all the dreamers of the world. And First Man is more about the reality and the demystification of the achievement of one of humanity's greatest dreams. All of these films focus on showing what really goes on in accomplishing a dream, without any sugar coating, and each one with a different approach.

 This is what probably is the most central aspect of Chazelle's directing style. But it's not the only one.

 Another interesting one being music. All his films are extremely musical. Whiplash and La La Land being the more obvious, having it in a more central way to their plots. However, First Man also shares this musicality. They all have incredible scores, thanks to Chazelle's collaboration with Justin Hurwitz. And those scores are brilliantly used in the films, establishing the emotional atmosphere of the scene, elevating it to a whole new emotional level. But what is original about Chazelle in this aspect is the way he makes this musicality so central to his films. The soundtrack in them is almost a character of its own.

 And also, it's important to note that all the protagonists in his movies have a certain connection to music. Andrew in Whiplash is a drummer, Sebastian in La La Land is a pianist, and Neil in First Man, although an astronaut, is referenced to know how to play the piano and has a deep emotional connection with a specific music (Samuel J. Hoffman's Lunar Rhapsody).

 Going on more technical terms, it's already recognizable the use in his films of rapid and energetic editing, complex and beautiful tracking shots and whip pans. All this contributes to immerse the audience in his stories. And one thing is true, when you are watching one of Chazelle's films, you become completely enveloped by this magic and forget temporarily about the reality outside the movie theatre, which only proves the power of his films and the brilliant way that art can abstract us temporarily from reality and create in us a greater understanding of it.

 Damien Chazelle is already one of the greatest and most important filmmakers of our time and I can't wait for his next projects. All his films are absolute masterpieces and they are all in my all-time favorites list. And above all, his films are extremely important in our modern world. They are almost like an anchor of hope in a world that seems more and more hopeless every day. They are all realist but in a hopeful way. They show the reality of dreams.