Confession time: I did not like La La Land. Just hear me out.
When I saw the trailer for La La Land, I was all in. The song on the trailer, Mia and Sebastian’s Theme has become one of my favourite songs, full stop. But then I saw the movie.
I love jazz. And I learned at a young age that jazz in Malaysia was a hard mistress. I accepted that jazz CDs at Tower Records were going to be premium priced. That the songs I wanted weren’t going to be easily found on Limewire or Napster. That most of my favourite musicians were dead and that I’d never see them live. I get it. That was the price you paid for loving jazz.
But Ryan Gosling’s character just felt forced. Sebastian felt like a pastiche, a new convert to jazz, overzealous in his love of the art form, looking down on other forms of jazz as impure, and hustling harder than everyone else because no one else loves jazz the way he loves jazz.
I also love musicals. I love those all-singing all-dancing musical numbers. Anchors Aweigh and Singing In The Rain. West Side Story, Mary Poppins, and The Sound of Music. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra.
La La Land however felt flat. Just like how Gosling throws his fists up at inauthentic jazz, La La Land felt like everything he was raging against when compared to musicals.
That being said, I absolutely love the La La Land soundtrack.
I also really like Damien Chazelle as an auteur – Whiplash and First Man were amazing – his direction and camera work are always amazing and dynamic. His sets are gorgeous. His scene setting is impeccable. It’s just that La La Land didn’t work for me.
So when I saw the trailer for The Eddy, I was all in. Do you see where I’m going with this? Hear me out.
This series tells the story of Elliot, played by André Holland, an American jazz pianist who opens a club in Paris called The Eddy with his best friend Farid. A jazz pianist, opens a jazz club in Paris, with his Middle Eastern best friend. Yes, yes, and yes.
The Eddy however is more than just that. Elliot and Farid run into some trouble with an Eastern European gang, cops get involved, Elliot’s teenage daughter is a handful, Elliot’s love life is a mess, and all while he tries to get the band he manages signed to a record deal. There’s a lot going on here.
As a fan of Chazelle and a fan of jazz, I had hoped that The Eddy would be about a jazz club. It isn’t. And a part of me wishes that it would have been just that. But The Eddy isn’t. Now, I’m not down on it. In fact, I devoured the eight episode limited series over two sittings, in two days. I just went into it expecting something else.
The Eddy is an electric watch. Full rounded characters, with baggage, and problems, and moments of beauty and love. Chazelle’s camera work is beautiful. Long, long scenes moving from one part of the club to another as Chazelle’s camera chases arguing lovers. André Holland plays Elliot, a man at his wit’s end, to perfection. He is pulled emotionally between his daughter, his lover, his club, his music, and his passion, all the time having Chazelle’s camera right up in his face.
The setting of The Eddy also shows a different side of Paris. A Parisian’s Paris. Characters switching from Arabic to French to English to Polish. All while the soundtrack plays jazz. Just absolutely amazing jazz.
And what do you expect from a show that counts six time Grammy Award winner Glen Ballard as its composer and executive producer. Here’s his Wikipedia entry. Go over it, I’ll wait.
Making a movie is hard. First you need a story. Then you need a script. The you need to find the actors to bring all of that to life. Making a movie about something technical adds another layer of difficulty. Making a movie about sciency stuff? Cool. There’s a phone number you can call to double check all your science. Seriously. It’s 844-NEED-SCI. It’s the phone number for The Science & Entertainment Exchange.
But make a movie about something physically technical, like kicking a ball (I’m looking at you Goal, Goal 2, and Goal 3), or someone playing the piano, it becomes that bit harder.
(Props to Ryan Gosling for learning the piano for La La Land. The production wanted to bring in a stunt pianist to shoot all the piano playing close ups, but Gosling trained for it and ended up playing those parts himself.)
I bring all of that up because the music and the musicians in The Eddy are exceptional. How many times have we seen a character who is supposed to be composing the most amazing music ever and it ends up being bleh? Not here. And that is why you bring on Glen Ballard. Each and every song played in the show is great. When the characters talk about how beautiful a song is, you believe them, because the song is genuinely beautiful. It also helps when you have real life musicians and composers like Randy Kerber, Ludovic Louis, Jowee Omicil, Damian Nueva, and Lad Obradovic playing your band members.
(You better believe I’ll be buying The Eddy soundtrack on vinyl when it comes out. My wallet and ears demand it.)
The Eddy is genuinely a great show. It isn’t the show I was hoping it would be, but that’s okay. Because this is the show that I got, and this show is great. Watch it if you love adult drama. Watch it if you love being surprised by actors you’ve never seen before. And if you also happen to love jazz, well, then this really is a no-brainer.
The Eddy
Netflix, Season 1, 8 episodes
Created by: Jack Thorne
Writers: Jack Thorne, Rachel Del-Lahay, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Hamid Hlioua, and Phillip Howze
Directors: Damien Chazelle, Houda Benyamina, Laïla Marrakchi, and Alan Poul
Cast: André Holland, Joanna Kulig, Amandla Stenberg, Tahar Rahim, Leïla Bekhti, Randy Kerber, Ludovic Louis, Jowee Omicil, Damian Nueva, and Lad Obradovic.
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