Whiplash
Whiplash
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Synopsis

A young and talented drummer attending a prestigious music academy finds himself under the wing of the most respected professor at the school, one who does not hold back on abuse towards his students. The two form an odd relationship as the student tries to achieve greatness, and the professor tries to stop him.

Damien Chazelle---USA---2014---107 min

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  • Currently 4/5 Stars.
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   | Lewis#4

Here we have a contest of wills between two obsessive, psychologically damaged characters. Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) is a first-year percussion student at the fictitious Schaffer Conservatory. Fiercely ambitious and driven (and consequently friendless), Andrew hopes to be the main drummer in the school's prestigious jazz band. The band is conducted with drill-sergeant ferocity by Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons), who carries a no-learning-without-tears philosophy to sadistic extremes. Fletcher becomes a brutal father figure to Andrew (this in sharp contest to Andrew's gentler and more supportive real father [Paul Reiser]), and the band practice sessions in which they play out their power struggle are the tent poles that support this tightly paced film. Simmons certainly deserved the Oscar that he received for this intense, no-holds-barred performance. The younger Teller holds his own and then some (and his way around a drum set is shown to good advantage here). This is a fine film if also a credibility-straining depiction of music as a blood sport. (There is, literally, blood on the drums in several scenes.) In reality no one like Fletcher, a bully who inflects psychological and physical abuse on the students, would last ten minutes in a modern conservatory. This man is a true sadist, controlling and unpredictable, masking his sadism with a tough-love theory of pedagogy, and it is disappointing that he was never really called on this in the film. Another small flaw: We are told that Schaffer Conservatory is a “top school,” and yet there is no attempt to create the ambiance of a music school, no violinist sawing away in a practice room, no distantly heard vocal exercises. (The jazz band compositions and arrangements, on the other hand, are superb.) Again, a fine, compelling film.

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