So, there are some movies that I know full well are good, but I tend to avoid them anyway because I am not sure how much I want to subject myself to the raw emotion the movies in question seem to provoke. Case in point: Sophie’s Choice. I know my ex-wife watched that one day while we were still married. I saw quite a bit of it. But I was also in the middle of something else and didn’t see the whole thing. Knowing what it is about, I am reluctant to fill in that gap despite knowing full well I will at some point. That’s more or less why I have avoided Whiplash despite generally liking the work of writer/director Damien Chazelle and actor J.K. Simmons. I just wasn’t sure how much I wanted to watch a movie about an abusive teacher pushing some kid to his limits.
Then again, I find something about Miles Teller off-putting, so maybe that didn’t help.
Andrew Neiman (Teller) is a hard-working and ambitious drummer studying music at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory. He catches the eye of demanding teacher Terrence Fletcher (Simmons) and gets a chance to join the man’s competitive jazz band. Andrew wants to be a jazz drummer, and he is talented, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready for Fletcher’s rather ruthless methods. Fletcher uses both physical and psychological abuse to get the best work out of his musicians, and his standards are nothing short of perfection. Screw up too badly for him, and you’re out of his band. Wanting nothing more than to get his teacher’s approval, Andrew essentially starts to do nothing but practice his drumming. Along the way, he becomes more estranged from his family and ends a relationship with sweet new girlfriend Nicole (Melissa Benoist).
He must have been pretty into that music since I think I would personally rather be dating Melissa Benoist, but that’s just me.
As it is, Fletcher’s methods may drive Andrew to a breaking point, one where the young man’s frustrations and even some physical injuries push him to the absolute limit for a man who seems incapable of accepting the mistakes of others without abuse. Is Fletcher’s pushing worth it? How much is too much?
Now, I knew about the way Simmons’s Fletcher torments his students, but what I didn’t know was that the movie also remembers that Simmons can be a very charismatic performer as well. He doesn’t just scream abuse and throw things at his students. He can sometimes be downright charming, the sort that might lull a person into a false sense of acceptance before he brings the hammer down for some infraction. As it is, that’s also just another weapon in his personal arsenal at times. Simmons got an Oscar for this, and he earned it. He’s magnetic as the ofttimes monstrous Fletcher, but there are other moments, moments where he is just as magnetic, where it becomes clear why people like him and why they might have given him a teaching position in the first place. There is a method to his madness, and the real problem is the man maybe doesn’t know when to turn it off.
It helps that Chazelle’s direction is so electric. This is a technique that would serve the director well in his later movies, and as someone who knows nothing about jazz or drumming, he makes it clear that to do it and do it well is not an effortless task. Andrew sweats hard and even has bleeding hands from gripping his sticks too hard. I didn’t find Teller that compelling, and the movie perhaps suggests that Fletcher’s methods might actually work, but as the story of a student looking to impress a demanding teacher, and I don’t think there’s ever been a teacher as demanding as Terence Fletcher, Chazelle’s style and Simmons’s performance are what makes this movie really stand out.
Grade: A-
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