Whiplash

Here's another one for the day late and dollar short file.

At my daughter's suggestion, we watched a movie I could have sworn was only a year or two old. Wasn't it just recently that I saw J.K. Simmons accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the abusive (to put it mildly), music teacher in the film Whiplash? No, my wife said having looked it up, the movie was made in 2014. So either the pandemic is really messing with my sense of time, or it's my age. Probably both.

Anyway, Whiplash has received many accolades as being a contemporary classic. On this site it is ranked as the 298th best movie of all time. You can take that or leave it. Judging by the list's top twenty two movies which includes zero movies NOT made in Hollywood, and top thirty six films which were NOT made in this century, I prefer to leave it. But the film must have been very well received critically to rate so highly on a list of the best movies ever made since the year 1900!

Does it deserve all the praise? 

Whiplash is a tightly directed (by Damien Chazelle who also wrote the screenplay) and edited (by Tom Cross) psychological thriller featuring two outstanding performances by Simmons and Miles Teller in the lead role as Andrew Neyman, a talented young musician enrolled in a fictional New York music academy.

The premise is this: Andrew, a drummer, becomes involved in the school's premier jazz band led by the Simmons character, the notorious Terrence Fletcher. Fletcher is mean to everybody, but really seems to have it in for drummers, especially Andrew. But Andrew is fiercely driven to be the next Buddy Rich, (yes Buddy Rich) and willingly puts up with the abuse, accepting it exists only for the purpose of teaching him to be the best drummer he can possibly be.

Given that setup, you can probably fill in the rest of the plot and get it about ninety percent right, as it has been a formula for countless stories told over the ages.. 

It's the remaining ten percent that makes the film worth watching.

If by chance you haven't yet seen this eight, check that, nine-year-old movie and still plan to see it, you may want to stop reading now as much of what I have to say from here on contains serious spoiler material.

OK GOT THAT? 

Don't say I didn't warn you. 

My first criterion for what makes a good movie is that I think about it long after the closing credits. One way of doing that is being left with more questions than answers. Whiplash is open ended, it doesn't leave you with a sense of resolution at the end, even though it has a closing scene for the ages.

Films with premises such as this one, at least American ones, usually end in one of two ways. Either the Andrew character despite all the heartbreak, struggle, and fits and starts along the way, triumphs over adversity and in the end, sometime later, thanks his mentor for all the "tough love" making him what he is today. Or he triumphs despite the mentor who gets his comeuppance in the end. In both cases, the Andrew character gets the girl, and they live together happily ever after, at least until the sequel.

Does any of this happen in Whiplash? Well, with the exception of what happens with the girl, we don't know, it's up to us to decide.

Just like real life. 

It turns out, I seem to have a much different take on the story than many folks, including my family. After having digested the movie for a day or so, I asked my wife, daughter and son if they thought the movie had a happy ending. To a person they said yes.

I said no, I didn't think so. 

OK, HERE"S YOUR LAST SPOILER ALERT.

If you're still reading this, I'm assuming you've either seen the film or don't care. So this is how the movie ends, last chance, here goes:

With a band directed by Terrence Fletcher, Andrew performs a prolonged, no-holds-barred drum solo at Carnegie Hall which leaves everyone, including Fletcher, in awe. When he finishes, Fletcher gives the band it's cue for the closing chord, then the screen fades to black.

Andrew wins, he has proven to his abusive mentor that he's truly got what it takes, he has earned his rightful place in the pantheon of musicians, and presumably what he expressed a desire for earlier in the film, a shot at being remembered long after he's gone. More important perhaps as many have pointed out in reviews, in the end Andrew proves that he is the equal of Fletcher. 

On that last point I agree.

But what did he have to give up getting to that point and in reality, in which direction did he have to go to get there?

My view is that Andrew did not climb the heights in order to achieve equal status with Fletcher but rather, sank deeper and deeper into the depths to get there. In other words, in my view Whiplash is a modern-day Faust story, where the protagonist sells his soul to get something he desperately wants. 

So, if Andrew is Faust in this updated version, does that make Fletcher the Devil? 

It isn't until the last reel (so to speak) of the movie that you realize Fletcher is truly an evil character. Up until that point he is simply an asshole who despite sociopathic tendencies, may actually give a rat's ass about his students. He does show a trace of humanity in a scene where he expresses what seems to be genuine grief after the tragic death of a former student. And outside of class he displays a bit of charm at times.

After their student-teacher relationship ends, Andrew runs into Fletcher as he's playing a gig at a New York jazz club. After his set, Fletcher explains to Andrew that there should be no hard feelings because he uses his controversial techniques only to achieve perfection in his students' work, pushing them to places they never expected to go. Despite having just finished playing what to my ears anyway, was an insipid set of music, Fletcher explains to Andrew that the real enemy is mediocrity. The most memorable line in the movie comes at this point when Fletcher justifies his methods by telling Andrew:

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

Fletcher then invites Andrew to join him and his new band at the aforementioned Carnegie Hall gig.

Before going on stage, Fletcher tells his band that this could well be the make-or-break performance of their careers. The man's true nature becomes apparent the next scene when on stage, Andrew discovers that Fletcher has intentionally tripped him up by giving him the wrong score. Just before the band begins the number that Andrew didn't rehearse, on stage Fletcher reveals he knew all along it was Andrew who anonymously testified at a hearing against his former teacher, thereby costing him his job at the academy.

Does that make Fletcher evil?

Looking at his actions toward Andrew before that final scene, I'd say yes. Not a man of many layers, in my opinion, Fletcher is not a particularly complicated character. 

Fletcher recognizes Andrew's talent because upon hearing him play for the first time, he invites the new student to sit in with his elite band, when one would assume that normally, prospective band members would come to him. Before the first rehearsal, Fletcher acts as if he's taking the new member under his wing by expressing interest in Andrew's family, information he would soon use to humiliate Andrew. Fletcher learns that Andrew was brought up by his single father, a writer whose day job is high school literature teacher.  His mom left the family shortly after her son was born. Fletcher concludes the scene by telling the young man to take it easy and most of all, to "have fun." 

The easy-going manner continues briefly during the rehearsal, even after the first few times Fletcher stops the band, noting that Andrew is messing up the tempo. As Andrew continues to be not quite up to Fletcher's impossibly rigorous standards, the tide turns quickly and after about five starts and stops, Fletcher hurls a chair at Andrew's head. He then gets in Andrew's face, berates him, slaps him, and brings up for all to hear, the boy's family history, claiming his mother left her husband because he was a loser. 

Beyond the horrifying way in which the teacher hazes the pupil, it's a brilliant scene. As Fletcher picks up on mistakes in the band that are imperceptible at least to untrained ears, it gives the viewer the idea that while his methods may be way out of line, the guy sure knows his stuff, and that his perfectionism may in some way, justify his actions.

It's not until after the credits roll, when you realize that's nonsense. Well at least, in my opinion.

Putting everything together with a bit of dime store psychoanalysis, Fletcher is all about power, manipulation, control, and nothing else. From the outset Fletcher sees three things in Andrew that he could use to his own ends: his talent, immense drive, and perhaps most important of all, his vulnerability.

As we would learn later, Fletcher himself is no great shakes as a musician. Knowing that, in retrospect his comments on Andrew's father being a failure were really a reflection on himself. It's not a stretch to imagine that he despised Andrew because he knew form the start that his student had far more potential than he did. 

So, the extra "attention" he gave Andrew would result in one of two things, it would either turn the young man into a successful musician, which would look great on Fletcher's resume, or it would destroy him. Either way, Fletcher wins.

It's worth pointing out here that the student whose death inspired some human emotion from Fletcher, turned out before his death, to be a success story, a member of Wynton Marsalis's band, "first chair" no less. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine a less successful student eliciting that kind of response from Fletcher. It's also worth pointing out that the former student did not die in a car accident as stated by Fletcher, but rather took his own life, which some attributed to his experience with the monstrous teacher. 

In an interview, writer/director Chazelle, admitted that his character Fletcher had no redeeming qualities. 

Indeed.

Andrew's character is more complex, which also becomes apparent as the movie progresses. His vulnerability is on display early on when we see him work up the nerve to ask Nicole, the girl behind the movie theater concession stand, played by Melissa Benoist, out for a date. After he falls deeper and deeper into the clutches of Fletcher, he coldly dumps Nicole when he realizes his obsession, which at one point in the film nearly costs him his life, trumps everything else. 

In another telling scene, Andrew makes some snarky comments to his cousins at the dinner table, which seem out-of-line with the character we met at the opening of the film before he falls under Fletcher's spell.

Superficially, neither of these scenes make Andrew appear likable, no doubt, the influence of Fletcher. But like everything else in Whiplash, there is another side. As my wife pointed out, the comments to the family members, nasty as they may have been, were not undeserved. And as my daughter pointed out, beyond the obvious differences in their approach to life, there was little chemistry from the get-go between Andrew and Nicole. Come to think of it, he was doing her a great service by breaking up with her right to her face, rather than simply ignoring her, which I'm afraid is what most guys would do.

So in a sense, Fletcher's influence on the young man was not altogether negative.

No, it wasn't those two scenes that defined Andrew losing his soul as I thought at first. It was that damned drum solo at the end of the movie.

When Andrew is humiliated for the last time by Fletcher, he leaves the Carnegie Hall stage and runs into the arms of his father waiting for him in the wings. He then summons up the courage to return to the stage to take over the performance. "Follow me now" he says to the band which they willingly do, much to Fletcher's wrath.  

He then goes on to give a performance filled with bluster, death-defying velocity, theatrics, and pyrotechnics. In short, he does everything humanly possible on a drum kit except play with the sticks between his toes while standing on his head.

Maybe I'm tipping my hand here but to me, the only thing worse than a one-minute drum solo, is a two-minute drum solo. And the only thing worse than a two-minute drum solo is... well you get the idea. I have no idea what the running time of the last scene of the movie was, but it seemed to go on forever. In that sense, it was a fitting and even brilliant depiction of the conflict between the two main characters. 

But was it good music?

Well...

It probably doesn't matter as Whiplash isn't about music at all, as countless YouTube videos of real-life musicians commenting on the film testify. So it probably doesn't matter that any teacher no matter the discipline in the 21st Century using Terrence Fletcher's methods of humiliation, degradation, and emotional and physical abuse bordering on violence, wouldn't last a week in an academic setting, not even the great Wynton Marsalis himself.

And it probably doesn't matter that that kind of teaching style wouldn't produce the intended results anyway. Maybe that was the point. Fletcher's anecdote about (Chicago) Joe Jones throwing his cymbal at Charlie Parker's head, nearly decapitating him, is bullshit. What really happened was during a jam session with members of the Count Basie Band in the thirties, to express his dissatisfaction with a solo performed by the then very young Bird, Jones dropped a cymbal to the floor. Did that humiliation make Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker as Fletcher implied? 

I doubt it. 

That's not to say there isn't a tremendous amount of hard work, dedication and sacrifice that goes into becoming a successful musician. And yes, there is blood shed at times, usually from popped blisters, not the copious amounts the film would have us believe.

What I missed in a movie that is ostensibly about making music, is the real motivation behind all the hard work and sacrifice of musicians: the love and pure joy of making music. You see it in the faces of nearly all decent musicians as they perform, from the humblest to the most accomplished, from pop to the avant guarde, and everything in between.

It isn't until the end of Whiplash that you see that look on Andrew's face. But the way the film is cut, it's obvious that his satisfaction comes not from the music he's making, but the fact that he has finally gained the favor and acceptance of the monster whose spell he is under. And the look on the monster's face at that very moment says he's satisfied, having gained another victim. 

At the dinner table scene mentioned above, Andrew reveals his true motivation by recalling the Charlie Parker anecdote to his family. His father, beautifully underplayed by Paul Reiser, points out that Parker, a heroin addict, died at 34. He said that wasn't exactly his definition of success, but what do fathers know? It didn't matter to Andrew who claimed defiantly that he'd rather die young and be remembered than live to a ripe old age and be forgotten. 

What that comment brought to my mind was the fact that nearly 60 years after his death, the name Lee Harvey Oswald is more remembered today than that of practically every jazz musician, living or dead. It might have been a good comeback line for the dad if only he had thought of it in time.

But I digress.

Like I said, Whiplash is not at all about music but it does hint to what's important in life. What really made an impression upon me having thought about it for quite a while was that Terrence Fletcher's idea of success, (which would also become Andrew's), is fleeting and superficial.

We are left at the end of the move, with the two of them, Fletcher and Andrew, being one, hardly a happy ending, for me at least. 

Whatever happens after the final chord, one can only guess. Perhaps Andrew follows the path of Fletcher's other student who makes it big only to hang himself. Perhaps Andrew gets Fletcher's old job at the music academy and picks up where his mentor left off, beating the crap out of new, vulnerable students. Or perhaps Andrew and Fletcher, now BFFs, team up to take their maniacal act on the road.   

On the other hand, maybe Andrew leaves music altogether and follows the lead of another of the talented Mr. Simmons' many characters, the avuncular insurance salesman in those Farmers adds. 

Considering the other options, THAT would be a happy ending.