Damien Chazelle makes jazz practice frightening, helped by Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons and editing that keeps every performance under pressure. We recommend this gripping thriller, though its interest in musical ambition sometimes stops at how much pain a student can take.
Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash is a gripping music-school thriller with a narrow view of what makes a musician great. It puts a driven young jazz drummer, Andrew, under the instruction of Fletcher, a teacher whose cruelty has the convenient excuse of high standards. We recommend it for the performances and the sheer force of the musical sequences, with a reservation about how readily it makes suffering look important. Chazelle writes and directs as though there might be no more frightening prospect than another chance to play.
Miles Teller gives Andrew enough pride to complicate our sympathy. His hunger to excel can make him unpleasant, and Teller does not ask us to excuse that merely because Fletcher is worse. J.K. Simmons understands that a bully becomes more dangerous when people find him compelling, and his verbal attacks have a terrible comic efficiency. We laughed at the force of those tirades, then felt ashamed: Simmons had made a teacher’s abuse of a student entertaining.
The music sequences are where Chazelle earns the tension. Tom Cross’s editing makes drumming feel precarious, with each stretch of playing carrying the threat of another judgement from Fletcher. Sharone Meir’s cinematography gives the physical labour of performance enough weight that Andrew’s determination becomes uncomfortable to watch. Together they make us attend to the effort of getting the music right, even when we would rather hear what these people might play without someone making them afraid.
Melanie Jones’s production design helps make the music school feel like a place with nowhere to relax. The teaching spaces seem organised around scrutiny, which suits the drama but also contributes to its cramped account of musical life. Justin Hurwitz’s score supports the unease, helping to sustain the pressure between the confrontations. It is effective thriller-making, though the constant assessment leaves little room for pleasure, curiosity or the sound of musicians enjoying one another’s company.
That limitation matters because the film invites us to consider whether Fletcher’s methods can produce greatness. It gives cruelty a formidable performer and gives resistance to it less dramatic force. Andrew’s obsession is convincing, but the lives beyond the central struggle are thin enough that giving them up can seem less costly than it should. Chazelle has made the teacher and student so absorbing that the weaker side stories almost disappear; we wanted those distractions to be more persuasive, precisely because Andrew does not.
As a variation on the sports drama, the film understands the appeal of punishing practice and an impossible coach. Fletcher’s behaviour is ugly enough to trouble the familiar promise that hard work will be rewarded, and Simmons prevents him from becoming merely a lesson in bad teaching. Yet Chazelle sometimes treats intensity as sufficient evidence of insight. We learn a great deal about how badly Andrew wants to excel, rather less about what he might want to express.
At 107 minutes, Whiplash sustains a degree of pressure that many thrillers lose while explaining their stakes. Its doubts about Fletcher are real, even when the excitement makes them easy to forget. Teller and Simmons are reason enough to accept its limited interest in anything beyond their struggle. Do not choose it for a restful evening of jazz.
