On paper, a film about jazz drumming, starring the guy who played the dad in Juno is not a hit but break-out writer/director Damien Chazelle has produced a thundering picture with a virtuoso lead performance.
Miles Teller plays Andrew, an ambitious drummer at the best music school in America. He’s a first year desperate to make it as a great jazz musician.
He is overheard practicing by the school’s head honcho Terence Fletcher (JK Simmons), who enlists him into the school’s elite band.
Fletcher pushes him harder and harder to the brink of his ability and sanity.
If Simmons is not one of the hot tips for an Oscar this awards season then there must have been some kind of catastrophe.
We won’t know for another month or so how well Jamie Dornan takes of the role of Christian Grey but I’d wager that by far the most sadistic character you will see on the big screen in 2015 is Simmons’ mean Terence Fletcher. And no, it ain’t sexy.
The top teacher at the country’s most prestigious music school, Fletcher’s default mode is forboding. He is capable of tripping into hand-on-the-shoulder support, but seemingly only so the upcoming shoutfest hits twice as hard.
Simmons’ deep voice thunders, instruments are thrown and the vein on his temple looks set to burst. In the insult Olympics, he’d be on the podium next to Malcolm Tucker too.
The reason he’s so hard, he says, is because the only way you become a great jazz musician – or great anything – is if you push yourself beyond what you imagined you could. After a tongue lashing, his charges will push themselves that bit harder.
“The worst thing a teacher can ever say is ‘good job’,” he says. And we’re encouraged to agree too, up to a point. But where is that point? That’s the question Whiplash is asking.
Student Andrew gets increasingly obsessed, belittling family friends’ football achievements and chucking his lovely girlfriend, as he starts to believe that he’s gifted.
Ostensibly, this may be a film about jazz drumming but it bears quite a lot of resemblance to the set up of a lot of sports movies.
He’s the raw but talented rookie and he’s the rough, troubled by brilliant coach. Well, yes. But what this film explores that is very rarely discussed in sports movies is part of what makes Whiplash so absorbingly effective.
Both Andrew and Fletcher step beyond the genre stereotypes and we’re left thinking about the cost of greatness.
The journey these guys go on can be seen simultaneously – as the film’s production notes point out – as a descent into madness or an ascent to greatness.
In the hands of inspired young writer and director Damien Chazelle – he’s only 29! – jazz drumming becomes as gladiatorial as any impact sport.
A section where Andrew and two other aspiring where three drummers are essentially tortured by Fletcher into playing and unplayable tempo until they are sweaty and weeping with hands gushing blood as instruments are thrown at them and orders barked in their faces is as visceral and heart-pounding as any fight scene you’ll see.
Who would have thunk so much edge-of-the-seat drama could be wrung from a picture about a boy who wants to be a jazz drummer, starring the dad from Juno?
- FIVE out of five stars.
Whiplash, cert 15. Running time 106 minutes. Out Friday, January 16.
Here's the trailer:
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