Whiplash

Have you ever been on the edge of your seat without being in a thriller? (Or without having hemorrhoids?  But that goes without saying) There’s an edginess that comes from watching a thrilling chase or a rescue operation or a Hitchcock and then there’s an edginess that comes from sympathizing with an ambitious and talented kid voluntarily taking abuse from an  ultrabully. Whiplash is the most intense film I’ve seen since Aliens.

Andrew (Miles Teller) is an aspiring jazz drummer at the esteemed Schaffer Conservatory of Music. Like Juilliard, SchafCon is a feeder school for Broadway dreams. The musicians are far beyond dabbling and Andrew aims for greatness, nothing less.

Enter Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the school’s most notorious … “teacher” isn’t quite the right word. Teachers rarely hit or motivate with angry ethnic slurs. Teacher implies learning; what Fletcher’s students learn is: anything less than exactitude is unacceptable and will be treated as a prison guard or drill sergeant treats an unwanted show of personality.

Starting with an unexplained 6 a.m. day #1 hazing, Andrew gets a first-hand look at the price of attracting Fletcher’s attention. The core musicians straggle in for the 9 a.m. start time at ten to. There’s easiness at first, but with each passing minute, the mood gets quieter, tenser. Fletcher walks in precisely at the stroke of nine with every student in the class attentive, ready, and dead serious, like soldiers about to be ordered to attack. It takes less than a minute to see why – Fletcher is an abusive perfectionist who wields a 0% tolerance policy for … pretty much anything. Look, we’re well beyond “no whispering or passing notes” here. This man is ruthless. You pay attention, you conform and you play perfect or you leave.

Andrew’s indoctrination comes with tears. There must be five full minutes of screen time devoted to whether or not Andrew is rushing or dragging a certain section of “Whiplash.” It even comes down to the physical as Fletcher has Andrew count time while the bully slaps him in the face at counted intervals. “Am I rushing or dragging?!” “AM I RUSHING OR DRAGGING?!” I wish I were watching with Jean-Paul Sartre – how wonderful he would find the masochistic interplay: Andrew desires nothing more than to become a star, and thus voluntarily subjects himself to inhuman abuse.  Hell is other people.  Hell is ourselves.

Andrew practices beyond what would constitute normal or excessive or even avid. He plays until his fingers bleed; then he puts bandages on the open wounds and plays more, and then he exchanges the bloody bandages for bigger bandages and plays more, longer, faster, like a man possessed, like the Devil himself will collect payment the moment he stops.

And you just know there still gonna be an old guy in the audience sayin’, “meh. In my day …”

Whiplash is 100% about the relationship between Simmons and Teller. All the rest, all the rests, :rimshot: (and a :rimshot: for invoking a :rimshot: in a movie about a drummer) is just noise.

Now here’s the weird part for me – isn’t jazz supposed to be a free form art? Great jazz players are great because of skill sets and instincts; not how well they read music or played what was exactly on the sheet. In fact, that describes almost all great musicians; am I wrong here?

This is easily the best role in the careers of both Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons. I’m still not sold on Teller as a guy I want hangin’ around my movie, but he was darn good as the kid so obsessed with stardom he subjects his entire person to the endeavor. Anybody who watched “Oz” has seen Simmons play a Neo-Nazi. He’s worse here. There’s no fun in it, but it’s hard to deny this is a great actor in a great role.

It is impossible to know what to root for in Whiplash. The kid has a death wish – Fletcher is a bully and will bully him raw until the kid protests. But Andrew wants greatness and Fletcher’s “carrot or mega-stick” approach demonstrates the discipline needed to achieve the desired results. So … do we encourage this hideous self-destructive relationship or do we encourage Andrew to “be normal” and pursue goals that don’t interest him?

♪Come on noob
Why don’t we go a round
With all the jazz
I’m gonna make you bleed
Cause I am that renowned
And all that jazz
Start to play
NO! STOP IT, NOW!
Try again
OMG, YOU SOW!
It’s just the daily rep
Right here at Evil Prep
Playing all
That
Jazz♫

Rated R, 107 Minutes
D: Damien Chazelle
W: Damien Chazelle
Genre: Suicide-by-ambition
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Sadists
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Realists

♪ Parody inspired by “All That Jazz”