Whiplash

Whiplash (2013) is the perfect fusion of theme with form:  a film about an insanely manipulative and dishonest band leader is, itself, wildly manipulative and dishonest.  That said, the film delivers on its meager premise:  it's compelling and shamelessly wrings every last bit of emotion out of its one-note, single track plot line.  A young man wants to become a great drummer.  (Query:  is there such a thing?  And, if so, would anyone want to hear him play?)  He attends a music school in a big city; the school is probably modeled on Julliard.  At that school, the young man is tormented relentlessly by a sadistic band leader who invokes, as a justification for his savage harassment, the ancient wheeze:  I'm just trying to make you the best drummer (or martial arts practitioner or Marine or jet pilot or dancer or football player) that you can possibly be.  The band leader subscribes to the Vince Lombardi/Lee Ermey school of motivation:  he shrieks at his hapless band members, taunts them with homophobic slurs, derides their families, and physically abuses them.  (The film's music school is curiously devoid of female performers -- this is necessary since, of course, the crazy band leader's vicious and unremitting obscenity would not seem so appealing if heaped upon a girl trombonist or lady saxophone player; the cruelty in the film is, more or less, acceptable because imposed on a drummer, a species of musician that most people regard as little more than brute animals to begin with.)  J.K. Simmons performance as the monstrous band-leader, Terrance Fletcher, is so over-the-top as to be comical, but it's the kind of bat-shit crazy showmanship that gets awarded acting prizes.  The picture is wholly unrealistic -- in today's politically correct world, Fletcher's rants and physical abuse would get him fired within minutes of his outbursts.  Furthermore, Simmons' fanaticism is weirdly inconsistent:  he repeatedly remarks that he doesn't want poorly performing bad members to make him look bad, but, at the movie's climax, humiliates our poor hero in Carnegie Hall, totally wrecking the jazz band's first number, and, then, seems content to continue the show with an ensemble sans drummer.  Of course, the plucky hero (who repeatedly performs with lacerated hands or broken fingers) returns bravely to the stage and the movie climaxes with a frenetic performance of the jazz standard "Caravan" that includes a lengthy, virtuosic drum solo -- in this sequence, the camera "whiplashes" from Fletcher to the perspiring, flailing hero and the racket goes on and on and on until the movie ends.  (I was hoping for a reverse angle shot showing that the unfortunate audience had left the auditorium in protest at the self-indulgent antics of the hero -- in my experience, an extended drum solo is the time to go outside for a smoke or to visit the toilet or concession stand.)  The movie contains nothing but the clash between mentor and mentee, but this is so melodramatically staged that you can't look away from the mayhem.  Unfortunately, the writing is poor -- Fletcher just repeats the same old insults again and again:  he denounces the hero's dad about seven times, using pretty much the same slur, and his insults and threats don't have the baroque ingenuity of stuff engineered for Cable by, for instance, Armando Ianucci in Veep.  The interesting stuff in the film relates to creativity and, whether the lethal strategies of Fletcher produce artists or just snuff out the creative impulse in kids too sensitive to endure the boot-camp theatrics:  Fletcher says that he is trying to turn the boy into Charlie Parker; the kid wonders if taunting and humiliating students doesn't deprive the world of more nascent geniuses than it creates.  To this observation, Fletcher confidently replies with a variant on the comment that there are "no mute inglorious Miltons" -- if you are Milton, by definition, you can't be "mute and inglorious"; that is,  Parker could not be deterred, Fletcher argued, because he had the iron will to succeed.  But, of course, carried to its extreme, this argument also implies that throwing cymbals at the heads of student musicians is also idiotic abuse that achieves nothing -- the Charlie Parkers of the world will become great regardless of their teacher:  in the end, they teach themselves.  (This is the lesson of Sonny Rollins retiring from music for a year to play nights by himself on the Brooklyn Bridge and, then, returning to the jazz world as a "saxophone colossus").  The film is repetitive -- at least, three times the drums get smeared with blood drizzling from the wounded hands of our hero and the persistent homophobic sexual abuse seems suggestive:  does Fletcher want some sort of sexual connection with his sullen but handsome disciple?  (Of course, in the end, they end up in a kind of embrace, grappling on the floor of the rehearsal hall.)  The director stages everything in dismal gloom -- the rehearsal spaces are unrealistically dark:  how do the people read their charts?  There are overt references to Scorsese, a director whose films have often featured drumming -- in one shot, we get a reprise of a famous slo-mo scene in Raging Bull in which Jake LaMotta bathes his wounded fist in ice water.  Here's the scoop:  you'll like this movie, despite yourself.