Review: Whiplash

Miles Teller plays an aspiring jazz drummer and freshman at a prestigious music school who gets hired by instructor J.K. Simmons to join his exclusive jazz band. At first, Teller is overjoyed, but quickly learns that his instructor is a highly volatile, profanely insulting, ultra-demanding perfectionist. Is he trying to push his students to their limits in the hopes of making them great, or is he just an arsehole whose behaviour might prove to have psychological effects on them? Teller’s unconditionally loving but perhaps less ambitious dad Paul Reiser (in one of his few genuinely solid performances) starts to worry that it is indeed the latter at work here. Meanwhile, Teller plucks up the courage to ask cinema employee Melissa Benoist out on a date, but can he juggle a relationship with his musical pursuits? Chris Mulkey turns up briefly as a relative who doesn’t quite get Teller’s chosen field of study/career (Teller’s arrogant attitude doesn’t much help bridge the gap, either).

 

An unusual, and frankly lumpy mixture of music school drama and “Full Metal Jacket”, this 2014 film from writer-director Damien Chazelle (who based the film on his own short film) is the perfect example of just because something is true to what the filmmaker knows, doesn’t mean the audience will actually believe it. Chazelle apparently based parts of the film on his own experiences as part of a school band, and I’ve heard others suggest that the hardcore, manipulative and abusive teacher played by an Oscar-winning J.K. Simmons is true of many such instructors. Terrific, except Chazelle and Simmons didn’t make me believe it. It’s not just the Simmons character, though. Look at that stupid scene involving a car accident. It’s not only contrived, but it’s completely and utterly ridiculous.

 

Thankfully, Chazelle has, however, delivered a pretty entertaining and very unique take on an old subject. I may not have fully bought the reality of it, but I can’t say I was bored at any point during this almost “Sleuth”-like psychological battle of wills between student and master here (One minute Simmons wants Teller to ‘have fun’, the next minute he’s hurling a cymbal and screaming, etc.) I just don’t understand why it’s being touted as such a terrific film by critics. It’s surface-level entertainment, no more than that because it has been so over-pitched.

 

That’s not to say that it can’t be enjoyed. Simmons’ R. Lee Ermey-esque ranting isn’t organic or believable to me, but I can’t deny it’s a highly entertaining performance on a surface, almost cartoony level. It’s a fine piece of undeniable showboating from the popular character actor. There’s also one scene in the whole film that allows him to show an emotion other than volcanic anger, and although it doesn’t turn the film into greatness, it helps make it a bit better and briefly peek above the surface. I would’ve liked a lot more of that, to be honest, but I’m aware a lot of people really loved this film. I’m not normally a fan of handheld camerawork, particularly when it tries to add an artificial tension to a scene. However, in conjunction with Simmons’ often explosive ranting and the constant percussive jazz soundtrack, it actually adds to the discombobulated and uneasy vibe of the whole film. So kudos to whoever came up with the terrific soundtrack (despite not being a fan of the genre myself) as well as high praise for the superlative editing. It’s a deliberately nerve-wracking film, though I’m still going to gripe about the colour and lighting choices by Chazelle and the film’s cinematographer Sharone Meir (the remake of “Last House on the Left”, “Mean Creek”), who favour the filtered look that you know drives me completely insane.

 

Like with Simmons (highly overrated if you ask me), I’m not normally a Miles Teller fan, I often find him unlikeable on screen. In this film, I must say he’s actually pretty good. Although he’s probably not on the genius level of the character he plays, Teller is apparently an experienced drummer, so that experience probably helped him focus more on the character itself, whereas an actor not at all experienced in music, might’ve gotten tripped up on that or have been forced to get someone else to do all the drumming for them. Teller still trained for the part and has someone visually double for him on screen, but apparently about 40% of what you hear in the film is Teller’s recorded drumming. The fact that he can do all of that and give a genuinely good performance, at the very least shows that he’s more than just the douchebag-y guy from “The Spectacular Now” and “21 & Over”. Maybe I’ve misjudged him, or maybe every actor has their shining moment (Hey, even Nic Cage has an Oscar to his name!). I particularly liked a scene involving a phone conversation where Teller comes to a realisation that he has let a good thing go, and he feels terrible about it. You kinda feel sorry for him, but you also know that he’s an arrogant, overly driven person who brought this upon himself by his obsession with music and careless dismissiveness of anything else. That Teller can play such arrogance without alienating the audience, makes me wish he was able to do that in his previous douchy roles (Douchy seems to be Teller’s thing). Perhaps this is just better material, I dunno. I also need to single out Melissa Benoist, whom I had never heard of before and I hear is going to be pretty big due to a certain comic book-derived TV series. She doesn’t have a lot of screen time here, but she’s got a real down-to-earth beauty and charisma to her. She seems really relatable and I want to see a lot more from her in the future.

 

More entertaining than actually ‘credible’, this film is pretty overpitched, but undeniably entertaining in a gruelling, intense, and deliberately irritating kind of way. I kinda liked it, but boy did this not deserve a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars.

 

Rating: B-