Riveting, intense, passionate. Simply stunning.

Rating: Null/10 (6 January 2015)

I don't think I've had this intense, this passionate, this wild and soaring a film experience since, yes, Black Swan four years ago when I first saw it. They should probably put a label before the film starts warning viewers because this is probably the best depiction of a roller-coaster ride as I've ever seen a film be. How funny though, months ago when first hearing about the film, thinking it was going to be sort of like a simple and sweet story of a young man learning how to play drums. Entertainment-wise, it doesn't get any better than this really. You get completely entranced into it all. I knew J.K. Simmons was going to play a tough instructor, but gosh, was never prepared for what I got. The film wisely plays into many of your emotions at extremely high levels. It's a terrifying and intense film, and the direction is why. How Chazelle isn't being considered a front-runner for Director is anyone's guess. The film is a crowd-pleaser through and through. A scary one, a perhaps too-demented one, but a crowd-pleaser nonetheless, riding on the audience's feelings from minute to minute. If Black Swan had so much success with awards and nominations, how can't this? When that was a genre film about ballerinas and this is about playing music? Baffled.
J.K. Simmons, yeah... not much else to say really, everyone's said it already. What I found surprising is that he has a ton of screen time, and the film really is about him and Teller (okay, Teller and his obsession with his music but in terms of human relationships). It's all told through Teller's perspective, so there's no category fraud, but it could've been a case, certainly because the AMPAS has nominated way shorter roles in leading. Miles Teller, again, how he isn't in the awards conversation at all is baffling, baffling to me. His part is extremely meaty, and he knocks it out of the park, stunning you in awe. He doesn't go overboard at all either, he plays it exactly as it should for it to have a huge emotional impact yet still feel realistic enough to sustain that impact.
As an experience, it doesn't get much better than this. However, the film plays so much on emotional momentum and intensity and passion, that I feel like it may not be a film that holds up that well in retrospect, whether it be in months or as the years go by. I know that probably doesn't matter to quite a lot of people, but I rewatch films quite often and to me the rewatchability/retrospect factor is a big part as to why my love for certain films is sustained. I feel like certain people will be less enamored by it over time (like Black Swan) and that just like Aronofsky's thriller, many might just see it as an over-cooked, silly, unrealistic and over-the-top drama. And, perhaps worse because Black Swan is seen as a genre thriller and this a "music drama". I have some of those concerns too, but, the heck does it matter now...