Bring the Noise

Movies: Whiplash

I don't know how to begin this review except to take the Lord's name in vain as a way to express how much I loved Whiplash. Goddamn, that was a great movie.

Directed by Damien Chazelle, Whiplash is a small masterpiece. Unlike the huge epics and blatant Oscar bait commonly released during this time of year, Whiplash is small, unpretentious, and comes out of nowhere to get up in your face and slap you upside the head with its intensity. Everything about it--the fresh jazz soundtrack, the quick cuts and sharp camera angles, and the ferocity of both J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller's performances--is designed to leave you breathless.

Miles Teller plays 19-year-old Andrew Neiman, a first-year at a prestigious music conservatory who dreams of being a great jazz drummer like his idol, Buddy Rich. Andrew is plucked from his lower level music class by Terrence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) and given a shot as a drum alternate for Fletcher's elite studio band class. It becomes apparent on Andrew's first day in studio band that Fletcher is manipulative and abusive toward his students--he humiliates and insults the members of his (suspiciously all-male) class for the slightest mistake and drops and adds new members on a whim. After Fletcher spends class screaming at Andrew, slapping him in the face, and throwing a chair at his head, Andrew goes home and practices the drums until his hands bleed. So begins the emotionally abusive, practically sadomasochistic relationship between the two men: one who wants to be "one of the greats" and the other who wants to discover and, in his sick way, mentor a revolutionary musician.

There are plenty of characters in Whiplash, but they all serve as props to the central relationship between Fletcher and Andrew. This is one of the only weakness of the film. Andrew's father starts out as a solid character--taking his son to the movies, arguing that being a musical genius isn't worth it if you end up dead at 34 (as Charlie Parker did), and coming to his son's rescue when it seems that the young man might be losing it. But ultimately, Andrew's father only serves as the audience's surrogate: the voice of reason Andrew stalwartly ignores as he becomes more and more invested in meeting Fletcher's challenges.

Andrew also has a love interest who certainly could have been fleshed out as a character in her own right. Instead, she is merely a prop to reveal Andrew's youthful arrogance. He dumps her early on, implying strongly that she'll just hold him back from his destiny.

The dismissiveness with which the secondary characters are treated is mirrored in the way that Fletcher treats the other drummers in his band. Once Fletcher sees Andrew's potential, he uses the other drummers (there are three guys, including Andrew, vying for one part during a climatic scene) as a way to manipulate Andrew into performing even better. While Andrew appears single-minded in his drive to become as excellent a jazz drummer as humanly possible, Fletcher is equally focused on bringing out the talents of one special player--even if it is detrimental to the band as a whole.

Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons turn in brilliant performances. Simmons is terrifying as Fletcher, and he teeters on the brink between playing a sincerely passionate man who wants to push students beyond what they ever believed they could achieve and playing a cartoon villain. In fact, Simmons does occasionally let his inner cartoon villain come out, but he does so in such a masterful, believable way that you totally buy it. I totally bought that the young men in his studio band would put up with Fletcher's bullshit and abuse in order to have potential doors open for them down the line.

Teller, who took drum lessons in order to learn how to fake-play in this movie, captures the masculine bravado of a 19-year-old boy who is deeply talented and knows it. Andrew lives in a black and white world: it's all or nothing for him. He will either be one of the greatest musicians of his generation, or he'll be nothing.

Taken together, Simmons and Teller's performances almost blend into one. Their anger, their passion, their talent, and their disturbing willingness to use one another to accomplish their goals swirls into a fucked up teacher/student relationship like I've never seen before. And what I loved about Whiplash is Chazelle's unwillingness to come down against Fletcher's abusive teaching tactics and Teller's unhealthy single-mindedness. In fact, the end of the movie seems to suggest that Fletcher is right to push his students to their extremes and to pit students against each other in order to uncover the true talent of one particular student. The film is a blunt, stark look at what it takes to be the best. Whiplash asks "is it worth it to give up your life in service to your craft?" and it answers its own question: "for a true artist, yes."

5 out of 5 stars