Review of the film Whiplash

"There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job.”*

    

     Whiplash is a firework of a film — speeding and crackling upwards, aiming at that single explosive end note. It’s an exhilarating 106 minutes. Set at a movie world stand-in for Juliard Conservatory, the story centers on a 19 years old aspiring drummer and his relationship with the demanding conductor of the school’s top big jazz band. The young musician, Andrew (Miles Teller), finds himself called up to this esteemed group where he quickly discovers the nature of pressure. Insults are thrown, chairs hurled, and sloppy tears provoked in an unpredictable storm — controlled by precisionist maestro Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons), wildly oscillating between a menacing simmer and a boiling rage. He towers over his musicians by instilling the ultimate fear of failure — in his eyes. 

     Andrew quickly becomes obsessed with proving to this man that he can perform to the unyieldingly high expectations that have been set. While practicing for endless swaths of time, the student pushes himself to the point of exhaustion, sweat weeping from his body and blood oozing from the blisters that line his palms and fingers. The performance, and Fletcher’s always receding approval, become Andrew’s obsession — the only thing he can see through his tunnel vision aimed at perfection. The sliver of a barrier between breakdown and breakthrough lives in the tension of every second as he pushes and pushes towards an apex. The conductor’s shadow looms constantly.

     This film is a strange experience — wholly engrossing and entertaining, while also being mystifyingly uncomfortable. Perhaps the latter is that the power dynamic playing out between these two men seems on the edge of insanity. One could see Fletcher as purely a villain in the story, but there is something in Andrew’s character that borders on malignantly vainglorious too. Perhaps this is what the quest for genius looks like.

     In the final scene — one of the most entertaining and astounding film scenes I’ve ever witnessed — the two men are finally, for a moment, on equal footing. They face off eye to eye over the drum kit, their supreme battleground. And even though no fists fly or chairs are thrown, each is giving the other absolutely every piece of spitting fight that resides within. One will rise to that pinnacle edge of breakthrough. And there will be not a single witness to this explosion of a performance who would ever think to utter the words, “Good job.” 

Stunned silence will do. 

Catch your breath.

*dialogue from the film