Whiplash could be the best sports movie of the year.
OK, Whiplash isn’t a sports movie. It’s about music, art, teaching and ambition. The main characters are a 19-year-old jazz drummer and the wrathful instructor who pushes his students mercilessly to achieve greatness.
Though this story takes place at the fictional Shaffer Conservatory of Music in New York City (presumably a stand-in for The Julliard School or Berklee College of Music) and focuses on the studio jazz band that’s won the school many awards and a great deal of prestige, it could conceivably be a boxing or football movie. Substitute the drummer for an aspiring fighter or quarterback, and the teacher for a hard-driving coach, and you could have a similar film.
But perhaps that’s trying too hard to fit Whiplash into a familiar genre. Sports tend to tell a more straight-forward story. The hero wins or loses. There’s a journey as he or she strives towards excellence, improves skills and either reaches the goal or falls short.
Maybe it’s just a bit different when it comes to art. Yes, there’s a similar journey. Skills can improve with hard work and relentless practice. And something can be won, whether it’s placement in the best band, an award at a national competition, a recording contract or even just the respect of a teacher. But are the results as clear-cut?
Andrew Neyman (played by Miles Teller) wants to be a great jazz drummer. While others take the opportunity to socialize with friends and fellow students, enjoying their independence, the first-year student spends long, lonely nights working up the endurance and speed needed to play the great standards. He studies legendary musicians like Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa.
So when Terrence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the renowned band leader and instructor at Shaffer, notices Andrew and tabs him to play with his upperclassmen studio band, Andrew is both inspired and affirmed. Someone can see it in me. I’m not on the wrong path.
Fletcher initially seems like the nurturing, encouraging sort of mentor that any student would want. He asks Andrew about his family and background as a musician. Just listen to the greats, he says. Follow their lead and they’ll show you where to go. But Fletcher is laying a trap, beginning the first of many mind games he inflicts upon Andrew. First, he tells Andrew to report to school for a 6 a.m. session. Andrew is late, but no one is there. His classmates and Fletcher don’t show up until 9 a.m.
Was Fletcher there at 6 a.m., but left when Andrew was late? Or did he make him wait — and think — before about advancing to the studio band? Maybe Fletcher wanted to psych Andrew out and make him afraid. Maybe he just wanted to see what the kid would do when he was left alone in the early morning? Would Andrew get angry? Lonely? Would he go back to his dorm? Or would he stay and work?
When the session begins, Andrew finds out what the rest of his upperclassmen bandmates already know: Fletcher is a monster. He’s a drill sergeant, making cadets do endless push-ups in the rain and mud. He’s a boxing trainer, pushing his fighter to keep hitting that speed bag, jumping rope, and running those miles. He’s a football coach, yelling at his player to run that drill again and again in the blazing summer heat, without a drink of water.
We accept that sort of behavior in sports. We’re accustomed to the blood, sweat and exhaustion. Is it uncharacteristic in music, if for no other reason than we don’t often see musicians playing until their shirts are soaked, their hands are blistered and bloody and their tempers have been provoked to the limit? You may never view jazz the same way again.
Maybe I’m looking at this naively and someone who’s been in a top high school or college band, who’s gone to an elite music school is familiar with this sort of behavior. I gave up my dreams of being a drummer in junior high. But I only wanted to be Alex Van Halen. I never aspired to be Buddy Rich. If what we’re shown in Whiplash is what pursuing that goal is like, I never had any chance because I never even considered being great.
If you’re accustomed to seeing Simmons in lighter roles — like the father in Juno or the canceled NBC sitcom Growing Up Fisher, the curmudgeonly J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, or even the professor in those Farmers Insurance commercials — you might be shocked at seeing him so mean, angry and vindictive. But if you remember him as inmate Vern Schillinger, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, from HBO’s Oz, this will make you reminisce about the days he was one of the most fearsome characters on television.
With his bald head and biceps straining from the sleeves of his tight black t-shirt, Fletcher is all coiled fury, ready to unleash at anyone who isn’t willing to be great. As he tells Andrew at one point, the two most harmful words in the English language are “good job.”
Someone more rational might think Fletcher is nuts, that he takes his job entirely too seriously. But Andrew not only takes the abuse, he welcomes it. He sees the dictator as the one who can lead him to what he seeks. And he can’t stand that no one else in his life realizes how important this is to him. He looks down on his father, who settled for being a schoolteacher, rather than a writer. He sabotages a relationship, worried that it will distract him from his chance at being the best.
Writer-director Damien Chazelle takes the sports comparison head-on during a scene in which Andrew joins his extended family for dinner. Everyone seems more interested in his football-playing cousins. Oh, they won a game. He threw three touchdown passes. Yay. No one really cares that Andrew made the studio band and is under Fletcher’s tutelage. More accurately, they don’t know how to care.
Andrew can barely contain his contempt. How big a deal can his cousins be if they play for a Division III school? How much does it matter if they’ll never play in the NFL? Andrew could be the next Charlie Parker.
Are student and teacher both crazy? Do they deserve each other in the world that those who settle for being mediocre could never truly understand? But what if one pushes too far? What’s left after that? Where are the family and friends you’ve pushed away? What happened to the career you envisioned for yourself? What kind of life remains if those dreams aren’t attainable and maybe you’re not the person you thought you were?
Those are the questions Chazelle confronts the audience with in Whiplash. He challenges us with unlikable characters, daring us to take a side, but unafraid to provoke you into throwing up your hands and walking away. Personally, I can’t imagine doing that. This movie grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me forward. By the last 20-30 minutes, I was leaning into it, eager to see what happens and how the story ends. I think most of you will feel the same way watching it. Whiplash is one of the best movies you’ll see this year.
