Whiplash

4 Stars (out of four)

This was one of those films that rivets you to your seat with its intensity.  It has amazing performances and is not one to be missed.

Andrew (Miles Teller) is an amazingly talented jazz drummer attending the Shaffer Music Conservatory, the best music school in the country.  He is discovered by the school's brilliant instructor Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) and is put into the school's most prestigious band.  What follows is a trip through Hell as Fletcher berates and pushes Andrew to reach his fullest potential.  But at what cost?

At first, this movie seems to be the musical equivalent to Full Metal Jacket's boot camp sequences.  Both Fletcher and Gunnery Sergeant Hartman want to coax out the best their students can be by incredibly intense methods.  But what elevates Whiplash is that as much as a bastard Fletcher is, he really does seem to have his students' best interests at heart.  Anyone who has seen J.K. Simmons' brilliant work as the evil white-supremacist Hank Schillinger in HBO's Oz will already be familiar with his intense and magnetic acting style, vascillating wildly between sympathetic and psychotically cruel in the blink of an eye like a bipolar pinball.  Miles Teller, to his credit, keeps up with Simmons step by step, which makes this an amazing tour de force by two great actors.  It is amazing to watch.

Now, some may look at this and scratch their heads over the motivations of why Andrew would continue to put up with such abuse and still come back for more.  I remember actually having a few flashbacks in this film to my band days being a part of a couple of organizations that were a cut above the regular.  And anyone who has been in a team, athletic or otherwise, that is known for excellence will understand the drive of both the students and the teachers for greatness.  It is not enough to just be "good."  Greatness must be scratched out, and it is agonizing in attaining it.  In my experience, most great music teachers and students become very singularly focused and don't really care about anything or anyone else around them.  There tends to be a lot of collateral damage and bloody bodies on the path.  This film, better than any other, shows the drive and grit needed to be better than most when talent just isn't enough.  Now, Fletcher holds that the only way to realize that full potential is to push the student far beyond anything they thought possible to the point of sadistic cruelty.  Is this necessarily needed?  Who knows?  But the great ones usually suffer for their art.  Everyone has heard this little cliché, but this film lays bare as to just what that really means.  Great artists suffer for their art because if it was easy, everyone would do it.