Drumming drama Whiplash is one of the years best films

May 2024 · 2 minute read
Movie review

Whiplash

Running time: 106 minutes. Rated R (profanity). At the Union Square and the City Cinemas.

‘Why do you suppose I just hurled a chair at your head?” an imperious bandleader asks his cowering new drummer, Andrew, as the boy checks to make sure his head is still attached to his body.

The answer: Because Andrew might have what it takes to go all the way. But only if he is pushed.

“Whiplash,” a thrilling and propulsive drama about excellence and its enemies, reimagines a music conservatory (a fictitious one in Manhattan) as a boot camp, with an incendiary J.K. Simmons ruling the screen as Terence Fletcher, the domineering, maddening, abusive, pitiless, borderline criminal band conductor who urges young jazz drummer Andrew (Miles Teller, also first-rate) to surpass his limits.

Charlie Parker didn’t become “Bird,” we learn, until drummer Jo Jones threw a cymbal at him. Hence the airborne chair, and the exhilarating weight it carries: Fletcher actually thinks Andrew could be the Charlie Parker of the drum kit.

Someday someone will collect Fletcher’s commentary on Andrew’s playing in a single, exceedingly rude clip: “Do I look like a double f–king rainbow to you?” “You are a worthless, friendless, f—-t-lipped piece of s–t.” “Pathetic pansy-ass fruit-f–k.”

I could go on. Fletcher is cruel, he’s brutal, he’s rageful, he’s…inappropriate. And he’s the kind of man for whom boys would walk through fire, always have.

The brief, dismissive appearance of a girl in the cast — Melissa Benoist is perfect as the cutie with whom Andrew has a few dates before he decides romance would interfere with his quest — underlines the bold masculinity of “Whiplash.”

Rarely do manly virtues and methods receive such invigorating understanding on-screen.

Even the other man in the cast, Andrew’s limp washcloth of a father (Paul Reiser) is a walking illustration of why this motherless boy is so in need of paternal discipline.

“There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job,’” Fletcher says, delivering the final two syllables with expert loathing.

But this bull in a black T-shirt is a figure from another era, and the excellence he represents is opposed by an even more powerful force: the quicksand suck of political correctness.

Dramatizing all this evocatively, and making it heave with energy, is 29-year-old writer-director Damien Chazelle, in just his second film.

“Whiplash” (named for an especially difficult tune) is intense and driven, as exciting as a youthful glimpse of genius in the distance.

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