Whiplash

Whiplash, Sony Pictures Classics (2014)

[SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS TO FOLLOW]

Anyone who’s watched Ken Burns’s celebrated documentary Jazz knows something of the tenuous relationships between genius and sanity and self-destruction. Sidney Bechet, one of the great early clarinetists and saxophonists, once started a gunfight in the middle of Paris after another musician accused him of playing the wrong cord. Clarinetist and bandleader Artie Shaw was married eight times, one of those times to Hollywood’s Lana Turner who suffered a near-breakdown from his emotional abuse. Benny Goodman, the anointed King of Swing, was a demanding taskmaster, staring down his musicians with what they called “the ray” when he felt they weren’t performing up to par. Billie Holiday, the great Lady Day, who grew up in utter poverty and worked as a prostitute in her early teens, essentially drank herself to death mixing in as much heroin and promiscuity as she could manage in her 44 years.

And then there’s Charlie Parker. The title of Most Important Person in Jazz History is a hotly debated topic, but for many people it’s simply a duel between Parker and Louis Armstrong. Parker is hands down, however, the greatest saxophonist of all time. That is inarguable. A raging alcoholic and heroin addict, Charlie Parker died on March 12, 1955, from a combination of pneumonia, bleeding ulcers, cirrhosis, and a heart condition. The coroner who examined Parker’s body afterwards estimated his age as somewhere between 50 and 60. He was 34 years old.

Parker is a legend, the embodiment of the results of hard work and perseverance married with talent. He is also the thematic center of the fantastic film Whiplash starring actor/musician Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons in an undoubtedly Oscar winning role. Simmons plays Terrance Fletcher, a tyrannical conductor of the highest-level jazz band at the fictional Shaffer Conservatory of Music. Teller plays Andrew Neiman, a drumming student who Fletcher singles out and then terrorizes.

The story itself is initially familiar. It harkens back to such cinematic tour-de-forces like MTV’s Varsity Blues, where Jon Voight’s Coach Kilmer abuses and humiliates his players all in the name of victory. Similarly here, Fletcher physically and emotionally abuses his musicians entirely without remorse or apology. “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job,’” he tells Neiman at one point in the film.

As precedence he uses a semi-apocryphal story about Charlie Parker who had a cymbal thrown at him by drummer Jo Jones (of the Count Basie Orchestra) when the 16-year-old Parker couldn’t keep up during a live jam session. I say semi-apocryphal because, according to many sources, the event did happen. Except in the movie it was said the cymbal came at Parker’s head nearly decapitating him, when in fact it landed safely at his feet with an embarrassing clang. Following the tossed cymbal was the laughter of most if not all the patrons and musicians in Kansas City’s Reno Club that night, which provided Parker with the motivation to hole himself up and practice until he could come back a year later and blow everyone’s socks off. Which he did and in doing so changed the nature and the direction of jazz forever.

It’s from this story that Fletcher derives his ability to convince himself that there are no boundaries in his world. Nothing is forbidden so long as the result is musical greatness. His unshakeable belief in this would normally make him a wooden, two-dimensional character but not in the hands of Simmons. Few actors, especially big stars, are willing to turn themselves inside out in an effort to create a truly dislikeable character. Had this been any other actor the picture would have fallen flat on its face.

Two other elements of Whiplash set it well apart and above other, trite teacher/student, David/Goliath movies. The first is the student’s devotion. Neiman is willing to do, not “just about anything,” but anything at all for his art. He never really needs convincing. He’s on board from day one, even if it is torture he endures. His devotion even includes standing up to Fletcher in a manner you normally find toward the end of lesser films. Here it happens early and (creatively) without success.

The second and most important element is the ending, which was essentially perfect (you really should have stopped reading at this point if you haven’t seen the movie):

With both Fletcher and Neiman kicked out of Shaffer (Neiman expelled because of Fletcher, Fletcher dismissed after a supposedly anonymous complaint filed by Neiman of which Fletcher is fully aware), Fletcher invites Neiman to play in a band he’s conducting at a Carnegie Hall festival. Emphasizing the importance of the musical talent scouts in the audience, Fletcher sets Neiman up to fail by changing the set list on him. Unable to play the first number, Neiman skulks off stage and into the loving arms of his father (Paul Reiser) who is ready to take him home.

At this point we think Fletcher has won, and that Neiman will learn a valuable lesson about betrayal and how to find meaning in his life in something other than music and maybe come out a stronger person for it. But the movie is better than that. Neiman turns around, walks back on stage, and starts to play, essentially taking over the band. It now becomes a duel between the teacher and the student, status shifting back and forth until Neiman launches into a (no kidding) nine-minute drum solo during which the two men become synchronous.

As we sit there and watch him play we think back to all the abuse and pain issued forth by the teacher and all the monomaniacal, alienating behavior of the student. Two people obsessed with the same objective, the only difference between is them is that one is the master and the other the pupil. You see Fletcher as a young musician getting the same abuse from a former teacher, and you see Neiman in the future throwing his own cymbal at some other saxophonist who can’t hack it. It’s in these nine minutes that you realize this isn’t a movie about a mean teacher and the student who gets his revenge; it’s nothing as petty as that. This is a movie about the probable necessity of insanity and self-destruction for the sake of musical genius and the pursuit of great art, the pursuit of jazz.

And that ended up being so much more interesting.