Movies About Creative Thinking: Obsessed with the craft
About people for whom the quality of the work became more important than everything else, themselves included.
Movies About Creative Thinking: Obsessed with the craft
Part three of seven. About people for whom the quality of the work became more important than everything else, themselves included.
The selection is deliberately uneven: some of these films admire the obsession, others argue with it.
Whiplash (2014)
A student at a jazz conservatory ends up with a teacher who believes cruelty is the only way to produce a great musician.
Topics: the line between demanding standards and abuse, ambition as fuel and as a trap, the price of greatness, the student and mentor relationship stripped of sentiment.
Aftertaste: wired, almost physical. Many describe the finale as the most powerful of the decade and still walk out with an unpleasant residue that lasts until morning.
Amadeus (1984)
A court composer watches a man to whom everything comes effortlessly, the very thing he himself has given his life for.
Topics: gift and mastery as different things, professional envy, mediocrity as a self-perception, music inside a courtly system.
Aftertaste: majestic and bitter. Three hours that pass unnoticed, with music that lodges in your head for a week.
Black Swan (2010)
A ballerina lands a role that demands a quality she does not have, and starts growing that quality inside herself.
Topics: technical perfection against expressiveness, perfectionism and control, pressure from a mother and from the company, the body as an instrument.
Aftertaste: anxious and disorienting. A film about creativity shot by the rules of horror, and the feeling matches.
Ratatouille (2007)
The animated film that says it best about the nature of taste, of criticism, and of the right to a profession.
Topics: talent regardless of origin, the role of the critic and the point of criticism at all, mentorship, craft as pleasure.
Aftertaste: warm, cosy, appetising. One of the few films in the selection that works equally well for relaxing and for a conversation about the profession.
Chef (2014)
The head chef of a well-known restaurant walks out of a system that will not let him change the menu and buys a food truck.
Topics: a return to a small scale, creative freedom against a steady income, public criticism and the reaction to it, working with your hands as therapy.
Aftertaste: sunny and very kind. A film with wonderful music that leaves you wanting to cook and to call the people you love.
La La Land (2016)
A pianist and an actress in Los Angeles, each with their own idea of what must never be sacrificed.
Topics: purity of genre against the work that pays, support inside a couple, refusing to compromise and its consequences, the city as an accomplice.
Aftertaste: a bright sadness against a festive picture. The first hour lifts your mood, the ending leaves a lump in your throat, and that is exactly what people love it for.
Next part: a change of viewpoint.
The whole series: