JK Simmons earned a Golden Globe and is nominated for an Oscar for director Damien Chazelle's Whiplash. The film should have created more buzz in the ongoing awards season if only because it is so disturbing. Andrew Nieman (a truly mesmeric Miles Teller) is studying at the Shaffer conservatory, an upscale music school, where he is taken under the wings of conductor Terence Fletcher (Simmons), who has a reputation for toughness.
Nieman and Fletcher inhabit an ecosystem that is as rotten on the inside as it is dazzling on the outside. A number of recent cultural products have looked with a gimlet eye at the creative professions, from 2010's Black Swan to the currently running TV series, Mozart in The Jungle.
Whiplash adds to that list but its style is neither the brooding intensity of Black Swan nor the situational comedy of Mozart. It goes roundly for the jugular, setting the scene early, as we meet the foul-mouthed Fletcher who incites deep fear in his band with his deranged behavior.
A sample: To select the drummer for an upcoming performance, he makes three of his best bets go through hours of torture (while the other musicians wait), pitting them against one another, calling them names, even throwing things at them. He finally does find his drummer - Andrew - but not before the three are left bleeding and panting and hurting both physically and psychologically.
The movie's central conceit is the suggestion that Fletcher does this for his students' benefit. His favourite story has Jo Jones hurling a cymbal at upstart Charlie Parker because Jones was frustrated at Charlie's inability to do better with his talent. In Fletcher's telling, it was the terror of the missed cymbal that propelled the "Bird" to jazz superstardom.
In one scene, Andrew gives his girlfriend Nicole a long spiel about how they should break up since he wants to be great and for that he needs to devote himself completely to jazz.
"You are not great now?" Nicole asks.
"I want to be one of the greats," Andrew corrects himself.
Both Teller and Simmons are excellent in their parts but it is Teller who, through his silences and the occasional outbursts, completely dissolves into the character of a conflicted youth who will go to any lengths to impress his teacher and realise his intense desire to be "one of the greats".
The movie keeps the viewer guessing about whether Fletcher is really the hardest taskmaster in the world or is just a psychopath who loves to humiliate his students. This dilemma is distilled, among other things, through the back story of one of Fletcher's students who kills himself during the course of the film. His anxiety and depression, the attorney who fights to get Fletcher removed from Shaffer tells us, started during his time under Fletcher.
I came to the movie with the positive buzz that has attended its release in the US. By the time things started getting truly nasty for Andrew as he attempts to placate Fletcher, including overlooking the grievous injuries from an accident, I had made up my mind that the movie should conclude on some satisfyingly brutal defeat for Fletcher.
That does not happen. Fletcher takes Andrew to the breaking point - which happens about halfway into the film - but seduces him again with the promise of a part in an upcoming production. In their first meeting after their falling out, he regurgitates to Andrew his mantra for success: "to push people beyond what's expected of them". Coming as this does after the storm, the scene marks the high point of Fletcher's villainy: a man who refuses to acknowledge the evil inside him even to himself.
Perhaps Andrew was all along the kind of student Fletcher hankered after: one he could abuse, dig a grave for, and then have him rise like a Phoenix. With Andrew, Fletcher just got lucky. The duo ultimately find a perfect function in their dysfunction. Unnaturally but also gratifyingly, the movie ends on a fleetingly positive note. We are left with the hope that Andrew will be able to pick up the pieces again, and may even get back to drumming full time.
The movie thus far has stripped us of any desire for hope involving anything that is even remotely associated with Fletcher. All along, it has led us in that direction and has built enough of a crescendo for us to want a bloodbath. But for the sake of Andrew, we still hope, and with that hope, we eliminate the movie's central premise - that anything but love can be the precursor to genius.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
