WHIPLASH
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast:
- Miles Teller as Andrew Neiman, an ambitious young boy aiming to become the best drummer.
- K. Simmons as Terence Fletcher, a ruthless band leader
- Paul Reiser as Jim Neiman, Andrew’s father
- Melissa Benoist as Nicole, a movie theater concessionist, Andrews’s girlfriend.
Genere
Motivational, Drama
WHIPLASH
“Damien Chazelle”
I was feeling down lately due to work stress from office and some personal problems. There was nothing that was driving me to move forward. Whenever I feel like this, I go to Shwetabh Gangwar’s YouTube channel and watch his motivational videos. For those of whom who do not know who Shwetabh is, you can check his Youtube channel “Mensutra”. Shwetabh was a young Indian boy just like me a few years ago, but things changed when he started uploading motivational videos in Youtube.
His motivational videos are entirely different from any other motivational videos I have ever seen in my life. This person gives logical solutions to almost every problem a teenager faces, whether it be relationships, career, education I mean he is very intelligent. His videos are not limited to teenagers; they cover lot of other topics as well.
You can subscribe to Mensutra here
I was going through one of his videos where he was recommending inspirational movies, which he personally liked. From here, I came to know about the movie “Whiplash”. Shwetabhs view on Whiplash was that this movie shows the cost of becoming great in life.
Story:
Whiplash tells the story of a young drummer Andrew Neiman who has a great passion in drumming right from the child hood and he aspires to become the greatest drummers of all time. He is a first year student of the famous Shaffer Conservatory in New York. One evening when Neiman was practicing his drums, Terence Fletcher noticed him. Fletcher is the bandleader of the Shaffer Conservatory band. Fletcher invites Neiman to join his band. As a first year student Neiman gets excited as he gets a direct invitation from some like Fletcher to be a part of his team. “Terence Fletcher” runs a band that represents Shaffer Conservatory and take part in many competitions.
Neiman practicing his drums noticed by Fletcher
Once inside the studio Neiman really came to know the real Fletcher. He is someone who abuses students emotionally, verbally and even physically to achieve certain standards. The story progresses from there showing the audience the pain and suffering Neiman faces to become what he wished.
Review
This movie is not actually about drumming and not even a mentor student relationship; just two different people and their commitment to achieve the best results by going to any extend.
Andrew Neiman
He just want to be the best and for this, he sacrifices everything including the relationship with his girlfriend Nicole. Neiman practices daily without rest and you see him hurting his hands at many scenes from the movie. When Neiman meet with the accident and walks down to the competition stage is when we realize how badly he wants to become the best. Neiman has one goal in his life and that is to be the best drummer.
Neiman meets with an accident and gets badly hurt on his way to the competition
Neiman drumming on stage with his injuries even after the accident
Terence Fletcher
A dedicated instructor with a strong vision in his mind and that is to make sure that all his band members perform more than what is expected from them. His method of achieving such a thing is by abusing students in the extreme way possible. Fletcher strongly believes that his training style molds the best performer out of any one and he has no remorse in what he is doing. He just want to make sure that the students who graduate from Shaffer conservatory under his guidance are tomorrow’s legends. In the movie, he even justifies to his actions by saying to Andrew about the insult faced by Charlie Parker the famous Jazz saxophonist that made Charlie to become the best and never to be humiliated again. Fletcher believes that if he ever say to his fellow students that they have done a “good job” then that is the end of their career and says that those are two most dangerous words of English language.
When it comes to acting, personally I felt J. K. Simmons role as Terence Fletcher was the best. It does not mean than Miles Teller as Andrew Neiman was bad but I just loved J.K. Simmons performance more. I mean he was very much involved in this character as Terence Fletcher. His performance made me feel as if he was a professional bandleader. The scene where he throws a cymbal to Neiman make us feel scary and even feel sympathy to Neiman. I do not know how Miles Teller shared many such scenes with J.K Simmons.
We all know it is just acting and once the director say cut then everything comes to normal. Honestly, I felt anger towards Fletcher as an audience when he was shouting at Neiman in many scenes. I think that it is an actor’s success here; if J.K. Simmons made me feel angry towards him then it means that his acting was very much natural and convincing.
Cinematography
“Neiman standing in the middle of a street intersection in a low angle frame with the huge building stretching left and right” – The best frame of Whiplash
Conclusion
This movie is not the usual inspirational movies that I have seen in the past. This movie in detail shows how much struggle one has to put to be the best or in other words “the cost of becoming great”. Some of those scenes portraying such struggles really disturbed me when I saw them. I realized that even I had faced similar situations in life. The scene where Neiman gets his journey interrupted on the day of the competition reminded me of the situation where I had my car broke down on my way to an important University exam for which I really studied hard (Fortunately I was able to write that exam, but could not get the scores as I expected). Another scene where Neiman realizes that he forgot to take his drumstick from the Rent a car place, reminds me of being in pressure and attending an urgent client meeting without the presentation and Minutes of meeting papers in my hand (this happened very recently to me). There are so many other scenes within this movie that we all can relate to, that might have happened in our life but may be in a different way and not exactly like in this movie.
I feel director of this movie Damien Chazelle is a brilliant person. I really liked the way he ends the movie that never really shows what the actual outcome of Neimans final solo performance with Fletcher.
But we all can guess what will be the outcome.
The young drummer “Andrew Neiman” has become great.
Author: Aromal Anil