Whiplash incites emotional response

Whiplash, a film directed by Damien Chazelle and starring J.K. Simmons and Miles Teller, tells the story of first-year percussion music student, Andrew Neyman (Teller) and his tense relationship with his teacher, Terence Fletcher (Simmons), who pushes his jazz band students to their limits by intimidating them both physically and psychologically.

Andrew becomes so consumed with his desire to become a great musician that his endless practicing is to the detriment of other important aspects of his life, including his relationship with his girlfriend. As the film continues and Mr. Fletcher pushes Andrew further to his musical and mental limits, the audience begins to question the psychological state of both teacher and student. The unfolding of the student-mentor relationship is both invigorating and strenuous to watch as an audience member. It is one that quickly becomes intimate, vacillating constantly between fierce, vehement interactions and frigid, callous ones.

This constant oscillation raises the question of whether Mr. Fletcher’s teaching methods and Andrew’s resulting attitude are beneficial or harmful to Andrew’s future as a musician and to his overall psyche. Like Andrew, viewers become torn between their desire to see him succeed as a musician by following the harsh guidance of Mr. Fletcher, and their recognition that the obsessive behaviors Andrew begins to exhibit are abnormal and that he should remove himself from the unusual mentorship.

Whiplash highlights the drive to perfectionism many musicians experience, and the characters’ extreme focus on achieving precision seems to supersede the internal connection one would hope professional musicians experience with music through its sound and emotion. By the end of the film, the sound of the drums incites visceral anxiety in the audience. It also, however, gives the film a unique energy, driving the plot forward by representing the chaos of the events.

In an interview with A.V. Club, Chazelle acknowledges the importance of rhythm in his film.

“I wanted the dialogue to feel really musical and percussive and rhythmic,” Chazelle said. “So it’s definitely something that I’ve thought about. When someone is playing drums, they aren’t actually moving around a space, they’re just moving their arms and limbs. They’re stuck behind the drum set. So to film someone playing the drums and make it feel as kinetic as a car chase or a shootout or a battle scene was the challenge... I was just trying to think as musically as possible — to make a movie the way a musician would.”

While Teller may have achieved the mastery of technique he craved, the film probes whether this manic mindset is necessarily the key to becoming a “great.” The film received the 2014 U.S. Grand Jury Prize for dramatic film as well as the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film. It will be playing through the Nov. 27 at the Charles Theatre.