Category: Melissa Benoist

WHIPLASH

By Marc S. Sanders

It’s impossible to find absolute perfection.  I don’t care if it’s in the field of medicine, law, mathematics, art or even music.  No one is THE ONE.  Yet, if you are determined to partake in that hunt, it’s likely you’ll scream with frustration.  You might think you’re on to something but still it’s not quite the one.  Maybe, however, you will force your search for the one if you throw a chair at your gifted student, scream some of the ugliest obscenities, impose threats, slap him, allow the tears to run, force a literal blood draw, or sweat them into numbing exhaustion.

Whiplash is the name of a piece of jazz music originally composed by Hank Levy.  It is also the title of Damien Chazelle’s brilliant first film, and the best to come out of 2014. Allegorically speaking, the term takes on a harsher connotation.   The word whiplash gives me an image of torn skin and hot, dripping blood.

Andrew (Miles Teller) attends the Shafer Conservatory in New York.  He’s a jazz drummer who gets hand picked by the esteemed conductor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons, in a well deserved Oscar winning role) to join his elite class.  Mr. Fletcher is cordial at first and a little instinctive as he’ll stop his musicians short of getting past one note before asking them to start again.  A hand gesture with a headshake and a wince.  Now go again.  Another gesture.  Go again.  One more gesture.  Again. Now an outburst of violent rage.

Individually, Andrew and Terence are determined with unhealthy mindsets to obtain levels of achievement that appear impossible to grasp.  The boy wants to get to where his drummer idol Buddy Rich plateaued.  The teacher wants to find the next Charlie “Bird” Parker.  These men of different generations are terribly talented.  Terribly I say because their passion for music is their self-imposed and cruel undoing.

Chazelle has much respect for the field of contemporary jazz.  I like jazz but I know nothing about how a piece is assembled so rhythmically among an assortment of instruments from the drums to the harp to the cello to the 88 keys and the various horns.  Put them all together, and there’s an atmospheric magic to what’s churned out.  It’s beautiful and bewildering.  Complicated, yet mesmerizing.  In Whiplash though, the music may be the worst antagonist because the frustrations that arrive with trying to become a master are unforgiving.

A late scene in the film shows Terence Fletcher, an altogether tyrant of a teacher, playing melodic nightclub piano in a bar.  He’s applauded and appreciatied as he presses down on the final key.  He thanks his audience with a nod.  Nevertheless, J.K. Simmons shows a different level of frustration.  Up to this point, the actor’s character has been a series of screaming eruptions.  In this moment, the man looks like he wants to cry.  No matter what he plays or how well loved he is, Terence Fletcher knows it could have been better.  So, if he lives with his suffering, then he will teach his best students to suffer through music as well.

Andrew is on the cusp of living his own life.  With a mother no longer in the picture, he still shares movie times with his father (Paul Reiser) perhaps so his father can still be a father, or maybe it is to remain a child to someone.  He’s starting a what could be a promising relationship with a girl named Nicole (Melissa Benoist), but his need to be a better drummer interfere and the only way he’ll know he’s at least as good as Buddy Rich is if he satisfies his teacher.  That’s the only sure sign.  

Does Terence turn Andrew into a monster, or is it the music?

This will always be one of Miles Teller’s best roles.  He’s got that innocent, quiet way about him, but as he gets “mentored” by this new composer, he changes.  He becomes devoid of care for Nicole and rebellious towards the lack of respect he receives from family and fellow students.  Like a chess champion, the art of drumming turns the drummer into an unloving creature soaked in blood and sweat.  This ongoing trajectory might make him a better musician but it will also bring him to an end result that matches his teacher.  

Beyond the energy of the music, Damien Chazelle steers a thrilling duo.  Simmons is an outstanding villain as a guy you can only hate until you see the motivations he’s only trapped himself into.  Only then you might just sympathize. Teller is circling the waters of a dangerous relationship with music.  Chazelle allows his picture to swim towards defiance with bloody and painful persistence. The epilogue of the film demonstrates precisely what these two men are searching for.  It’s only when you arrive at the end of Whiplash do you realize and empathize with the internal and physical pains these people choose to weigh on themselves.

To my ears, music is a beautiful, universal language.  

For the scribes, it’s an agony they choose to bear.

WHIPLASH (2014)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist
My Rating: 10/10
Rotten Tomatometer: 94% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A promising young drummer at a prestigious music conservatory is mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential.


That’s right, I finally jumped on the bandwagon and watched Whiplash after no fewer than eight years of prodding by my fellow cinephiles.  Not only can they finally get off my back about it, but they all now owe me one.  Hope you all enjoy Wild Tales when next we meet.

I was hesitant to watch Whiplash because it was released and gained notoriety at a time in my life when I was yearning for some positivity after getting psychically beaten down by some really depressing foreign films.  Why, I asked myself, would I want to subject myself to ninety minutes of watching J.K. Simmons verbally abuse some poor kid just so he could play the drums a little better?  I’ve seen this movie before.  The abusive mentor sees the light, the victimized student either turns his back or excels like never before, etcetera, etcetera, blah blah blah.  I had the whole plot written out in my head from start to finish.  (I used to do that a lot, I’m realizing…kinda stupid, in most cases.)

Having just finished watching it, I can say, without reservation, that Whiplash belongs on the short list of the best films ever made about the drive for artistic perfection along with The Red Shoes, Black Swan, and Amadeus.  And it manages to have its cake and eat it, too, when it comes to the ending.  Tragedy and triumph walk hand in hand, though not necessarily in the way I would have ever imagined it.

Andrew (Miles Teller) is a talented young jazz drummer who has just started his first year at the fictional Shaffer Conservatory of Music.  He is anxious to gain the attention of Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the leader of the school’s prestigious jazz ensemble, The Studio Band.  Fletcher is a piece of work.  To say he engages in mind games is like saying Bill Gates dabbles in computers.  He recruits Andrew for his own band in the middle of someone else’s music class.  On his first day with the Studio Band, Fletcher berates another musician for playing off key.

Did I say “berates?”  Fletcher belittles, humiliates, and degrades the poor guy with a stream of profanity that would have made the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket envious.  He fires the guy on the spot.  When the guy leaves, Fletcher looks around and confesses that he wasn’t really out of tune, but he didn’t know he wasn’t, which is just as bad.  Accurate?  Technically yes.  Does that kind of teaching method belong anywhere outside of a military unit?  I’m going with “no.”

Andrew is willing to go along with this because he doesn’t just want to be good, he wants to be GREAT.  He wants to be remembered in the same breath with Charlie Parker and Buddy Rich, and he believes, like Fletcher, that greatness is not achieved without struggle and sacrifice.  Again, technically true.  Would Rembrandt have painted half as well with both ears?  Would Beethoven’s Ninth be remembered today if Beethoven hadn’t been totally deaf by the time it was finished?  The rolls of the Screen Actors Guild are littered with actors from broken or abusive homes.

There’s a revealing scene when Andrew eats a meal at home with his father and uncle and his two cousins.  The table conversation rings with praise for the two cousins who play football at their school and scored a long touchdown, etcetera.  When Andrew talks about being a “core” member of the best conservatory jazz ensemble in the country, he’s met with polite congratulations and that’s about it.  No one seems to think he’s going to make it as a musician, not even his own father.  “I’d rather die drunk, broke at 34 and have people at a dinner table talk about me than live to be rich and sober at 90 and nobody remembered who I was.”  Like Charlie Parker.  Like Amadeus.  Andrew’s only goal is to be great.  If he has to give up friends, romance, even family to achieve it, so be it.

But at what cost?  Fletcher pushes Andrew so hard that his hands bleed during rehearsals.  He demotes Andrew, then puts him back in the core, demotes him again, then basically makes him re-audition for the core spot against two other alternates until 2 am.  In one excruciating scene, Andrew actually tries to play in a competition after being in a freaking car accident.  It’s a truly desperate act from someone who is so afraid of being anonymous that only a body cast will stop him from taking his shot.

Make no mistake, the rehearsal scenes and the verbal and mental abuse from Fletcher are not pleasant.  They’re emotionally engaging, but they were also off-putting.  In a strange way, I was reminded of Requiem for a Dream and its disturbing subject matter that was nevertheless compelling to watch.  When we get to what happens to Andrew after the car accident, I was getting thoroughly depressed, despite the powerful emotional beats of what came before.

But then the movie enters its final act, and that’s where Whiplash finds another gear story-wise.  Andrew and Fletcher meet in an out-of-school setting, and Fletcher has an interesting speech where he says, among other things, “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job.’”  He admits his tactics were brutal, but he devoutly believes in the necessity of pushing people beyond what is expected of them.  “Otherwise, we’re depriving the world of the next Louis Armstrong.”

Fletcher convinces Andrew to play for a new jazz ensemble one last time.  What happens at that concert is so horrifying that I watched most of it through my fingers.  I kid you not.  But then the screenplay transforms that situation into something magical, almost religious.  You get the sense that all of the horrible and despicable things Fletcher did and said during the whole film, all misery we had to endure with Andrew, during which time I wondered, “Why am I watching this??” – all of that unpleasantness was just the setup for the finale.  And that finale only means something because of everything that came before it.

In other words, just like Andrew, I was only able to experience that tremendous cathartic moment at the end because of the suffering I had experienced in the movie’s first 90 minutes.

…which leaves me feeling torn because that’s exactly the kind of thing that Fletcher believes in, but which I feel is unnecessary outside of a boot camp.  Ideally, yeah, I think that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  I’ve directed my fair share of community theatre productions, and I’ve never had to resort to yelling or humiliation as a method to get what I’m looking for.  But then, I’m directing community theatre, not a multi-million-dollar film that may live or die on the performances I’m getting or not getting from my star.  Nor am I a drill sergeant training men to become soldiers.  It seems there is a line, but apparently to get certain kinds of results, it must be crossed.

It’s this dichotomy that will likely keep me awake the next couple of notes.  That and the senses-shattering finale.  I mean…I did not see that coming.  (And man, I am a jazz fan, so to me it was like eating a perfectly-cooked steak.)  It was not a pleasant road to get there, but it had to be unpleasant.  Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been great.