Whiplash is a truly remarkable film. When it opened in the US, it scored an exceptional 96% “fresh” rating from a summary of all film reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and 8.7 out of 10 on IMDB from public votes. That ranks it, amazingly, right up there with One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Goodfellas, The Matrix and Forrest Gump. Quite extraordinary for a $3m indie movie shot in 19 days and made by a novice.
The story, inspired by writer-director Damien Chazelle’s own experience, centres on a young drumming prodigy at America’s premier music college who is pushed to breaking point by a sadistic teacher – played with extraordinary gusto by JK Simmons, who has received a Golden Globe nomination and may well go on to do the same at the Oscars for this role of a lifetime.
But it’s not really a film about drumming, or music: it’s a combination of suspense thriller, taut psychological drama and mismatched buddy movie. Its producer Jason Reitman describes it as “Full Metal Jacket set in Juilliard”. Simmons, as the chrome-domed, muscle-bound music teacher Terence Fletcher, is every bit as terrifying as the (real-life) drill sergeant R Lee Ermey in Kubrick’s Vietnam war masterpiece. Fletcher asks young Andrew Neiman (played by Miles Teller from Rabbit Hole and Divergent) to turn up at 6am sharp for his big audition, but arrives with the rest of the band at 9am. He showers him with praise and then, just as Andrew starts to get confident, turns on the heat.
“You’re rushing. Now you’re dragging. Now you’re rushing. Not my tempo. Not my tempo. Not my tempo!! If you deliberately sabotage my band, I will fuck you like a pig.” Fletcher slaps the 19-year-old’s face, again and again, to mark out the correct time. Under this onslaught, a tear trickles down Andrew’s cheek. “Oh my dear God – are you one of those single tear people? You are a worthless pansy-ass who is now weeping and slobbering all over my drum set like a nine-year-old girl!”
His rants are simultaneously horrifying and grimly funny. But there is a point to Fletcher’s cruelty: this is Dead Poets Society from hell, an attempt to “push people beyond what is expected of them”. “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job’,” he declares in a rare moment of self-justification. Believing that jazz legend Charlie Parker would never have sought to achieve true greatness if he hadn’t had a cymbal thrown at his head and been booed off stage as a young man, Fletcher is practising the toughest kind of tough love.
Is Fletcher a hero or a villain? Will Andrew buckle, or will he rise, phoenix-like, from this baptism of fire? This being an indie film, the plot does not always conform to studio archetypes, which delightfully keeps the audience guessing; there are as many twists and reversals as in a good thriller. This is real edge-of-the-seat stuff.
There is real emotional heft here, too. Andrew’s quest for greatness takes no prisoners; he sacrifices both himself and the people he meets as ruthlessly as Fletcher sacrifices mediocre students, kicking them out on a whim. “You got any friends, Andy?” his uncle asks him at the dinner table. “No,” he replies. “I just never really saw the use.” We begin to realise that Fletcher and Andrew are very much alike, as each acquires a grudging respect for each other. What seemed like a mortal combat between protagonist and antagonist develops into something more like a twisted buddy movie.
Whiplash, too, takes no prisoners. Thrillingly shot and brilliantly acted, it doesn’t sugar-coat its messages, talk down to its audience or wrap up its scenes in a neat little bow. In the process, it achieves greatness itself. It’s ironic that a film about a struggling teenager should be one of the most grownup movies of the year.
Whiplash opens across the UK on 16 January 2015.
