“Unsettled but not unsatisfied” fits what Chazelle is doing thematically in both movies. It’s a remarkable achievement.

Still I thought the segment in Whiplash between the competition and the meeting between Andrew and Fletcher after Fletcher was fired lost momentum because of the shift of goal. It was consistent thematically but it didn’t fit with the pace of the rest of the story — a risky gambit (with a false ending) that didn’t quite pay off, for me at least.