Whiplash Painfully Good

While I did study literature and film in college, my knowledge of music is woefully inadequate. So when I heard about the new film written and directed by Damien Chazelle Whiplash focused on music, I thought Metallica and not Hank Levy.  (I doubt Lars could play the song by Levy.)  

Whiplash moves briskly like the song itself—fast, technical and tense. The film stars Miles Teller as first-year student Andrew, who attends Shaffer Conservatory, one of the best musical colleges in the country. Practicing one day the aforementioned song, his drumming catches the attention of the mercurial Terence Fletcher, played with amazing intensity by J.K. Simmons. Fletcher is the brilliant musician who conducts the school’s prestige jazz band.  He demands discipline, dedication and deference. 

The basic plot is familiar: exacting teacher/coach/leader demands excellence from his students/players/men.  The difference is how Fletcher “instructs”; he manipulates, humiliates, and intimidates his students. Fletcher uses every little piece of information as a tool against his students. Fletcher, in one intense scene, repeatedly smacks Andrew in full view of the band in effort to teach the difference between “rushing” and “dragging.” It is cruel and shocking.  The scenes between Fletcher and Andrew and the band are the strength of the film.  Those scenes are intense and difficult to watch. 

Fletcher thinks his approach produces the best musicians, citing one story about a famous drummer’s perseverance to his pupil, Andrew. We see the folly in this. The berating and mind-fucking of his students is antithetical to pedagogical methodologies and being a decent person. In short, it is sadistic and unnecessary. Or is that the only way to produce extraordinary efforts?  That depends on how one takes the ending. Has Fletcher’s methods worked as Andrew plays triumphantly as the movie ends?  Or does Andrew triumph in spite or to spite Fletcher? Perhaps, it is not a triumphant at all. The film leaves the viewer to decide.  

Either way, the film is one entertaining and intense experience. It is worth the time to seek it out.