Whiplash is one of those rare films where you need to understand the intention or you’ll find yourself rolling your eyes more than once as writer/director Damien Chazelle turns the volume not up to ten, not up to eleven, but he breaks the damned thing off. The sheer electricity of this movie had me so utterly amped up I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. This is the kind of movie that makes your heart beat faster. This is the kind of movie I would have wanted my high school or college coach showing me. It’s an exhibit as to how hard someone must push for greatness while testing the limits of how far that someone should be pushed.
This isn’t a movie for softies. This isn’t a movie for people that think things in life should come easy or those that think second, third and fourth place finishers deserve trophies. I’m sure some will see this as a cautionary tale of “how much is too much?”, and that’s definitely part of the story and not to be overlooked, but I look at it more as a story that proves greatness, as in true greatness, is reserved for a select few and it doesn’t matter what obstacles are placed in front of them. If the spotlight is meant for them, they’ll find their way into it.
In the instance of Whiplash, our potential future great is Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), a 19-year-old jazz drummer that fancies himself on the road to being one of the very best. Practicing day and night until his hands bleed, he catches the ear of Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), an instructor and jazz band leader at the elite music conservatory Andrew is attending. Fletcher is known just as much for his abilities to get the best out of people as he is for the methods in which he goes about getting it and Andrew believes he is meant to be the drummer in Fletcher’s band, but once he gets there it’s unclear if he’s got the constitution, nerves and drive to stay.
In the press notes for the film Chazelle reveals he was a drummer in a somewhat similar situation to Andrew, though there’s no telling if he endured the berating Fletcher doles out on a minute-by-minute basis, using any and every weakness Andrew may have to his psychological advantage. Simmons becomes the musical equivalent of R. Lee Ermey in Stanley Kubrick‘s Full Metal Jacket and it makes sense considering Chazelle says he “wanted to make a movie about music that felt like a war movie, or a gangster movie — where instruments replaced weapons, where words felt as violent as guns, and where the action unfolded not on a battlefield, but in a school rehearsal room, or on a concert stage.” Mission accomplished and this is a key distinction in appreciating Whiplash, key to surviving the over-the-top moments without an eye roll. Chazelle ratchets up the intensity not because he revels in the melodramatic, but because he’s trying to get across a feeling and an emotion you can’t necessarily evoke without a heightened sense of reality.
Simmons is an absolute monster in this movie and it’s the best I’ve ever seen from him, which is saying a lot as he rarely disappoints if ever. This is all-star caliber stuff and Teller is just as good with far fewer smug smiles than we typically get from the young actor and more genuine, real emotion. The role still plays to his strengths, which is that of a character that exudes confidence, but there’s an added layer here and it’s not the cocky frat boy meets meek puppy dog we’ve seen from Teller in the past. It’s closer to the performance he gave us in The Spectacular Now, which was excellent regardless of my overall thoughts on that film.
It’s Chazelle’s approach to this story, that war zone approach, that makes it so endlessly great. The final ten minutes or so are an absolute shelling by way of a drum kit, pounded to the last inch of its life and you simply can’t take your eyes off the screen. This ending will certainly be viewed many different ways by many different audience members and it’s so impressive it might leave some shell-shocked to the point they forget to even look for any deeper meaning, but it’s there, though Chazelle leaves feelings, emotion and the future of the film’s characters ambiguous, creating the possibility for most anything.
Whiplash certainly leaves open the debate for just how far is too far when it comes to wanting greatness and pushing someone to achieve it. Personally, I don’t see much of a debate. Either you have what it takes or you don’t and there will come a time where you’ll simply need to accept your fate. For some people that’s tough. For some people they won’t see quitting as an option. However, no matter how you walk away from this film I think it would be hard to debate its greatness as I could watch it over and over again, and my heart is beating faster just thinking about it.
