Get Reel | Film review: Whiplash is a multilayered drama about a jazz drummer and his mentor
Incandescent light bulb inventor Thomas Alva Edison believed that genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. The way that Terence Fletcher, the volatile music instructor who electrifies proceedings in Damien Chazelle's seems to view it, though, genius can only come out of the shedding of copious amounts of blood and tears as well as sweat.
Starring: Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser
Director: Damien Chazelle
Category: IIB
Incandescent light bulb inventor Thomas Alva Edison believed that genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. The way that Terence Fletcher, the volatile music instructor who electrifies proceedings in Damien Chazelle's seems to view it, though, genius can only come out of the shedding of copious amounts of blood and tears as well as sweat.
As played by J.K. Simmons, Fletcher is the teacher from hell who seems like he wants to break his charges rather than get them to make the most of their abilities. Sure, there are moments when he reveals a soft side — but one can never be sure if that's just a ruse to get personal information to taunt people with later on.
The audience will inevitably sympathise — or empathise, if they too have had experiences of being bullied by people in positions of power — with Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller), the 19-year-old first year student at the fictional Schaffer Conservatory of Music who Fletcher singles out for some particularly punishing attention.
This even though the driven jazz drummer doesn't come across as the nicest guy in the world, especially the way he treats his erstwhile girlfriend Nicole (Melissa Benoist).
The expanded, feature-length version of a short film made a year earlier begins with sounds rather than images, and the increasingly frenzied beating of drums is heard before the camera zeroes in on a young man energetically playing an extended drum set that marks him out as talented and passionate.
