Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Shared madness: thoughts on Whiplash as a brilliant non-inspirational film

As longtime readers will know, I often make shrieky noises about the tendency to watch films in conditions that are not optimal for film-watching: on small laptops or cellphone screens – and worse, in lighted settings with distractions all around. Of course, some types of viewing experiences are more easily ruined than others. As the long, hypnotic final sequence of Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (a concert performance that begins with deep-rooted antagonism between two men but then turns into a manic collaboration, even a jugalbandi) unfolded, I was thinking: the ONLY way to watch this scene is in a darkened hall, with eyes and ears fixed on the screen from start to finish.

Okay, I’ll amend that a bit: it doesn’t have to be in a theatre, on a very large screen; it can be on a good-sized TV at home. But the room should be dark, cellphone off, no idiot whispering into your ear or tossing popcorn at your head from the seat behind, etc. Failing this, you lose most of the scene’s power, and all of the film’s point. **

“Keep quiet and pay attention,” this movie seems to be telling its viewers anyway, from the very opening scene where a young jazz student practicing on drums alone at night has his first encounter with an overbearing conductor-teacher. Whiplash’s most intense scenes – set in music rooms where training sessions turn into a battle for the soul, with the abusive Fletcher as a version of Mephistopheles, offering 19-year-old Andrew a glimpse of immortality (defined here as the opportunity to be an all-time great like Charlie Parker) – are claustrophobia-inducing in ways that make even Birdman seem like it was shot in a sunny lawn.

But this is what I thought most intriguing about Chazelle’s film: though its story and narrative arc resembles that of the inspirational, will-to-win, triumph-of-the-underdog tale (a category that is crowded with sports movies as well as other subgenres, such as stories about people overcoming physical disabilities – even the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything could fit here), I don’t think Whiplash is essentially any of those things. I didn’t see this as a film that offers generalised lessons about life or art or talent or hard work. I saw it as a razor-focused story about two very specific people in a very specific situation, one of whom serves as a sort of distorting mirror for the other (and eventually pulls him across to the mirror’s other side); a one-point study of obsession, with no larger “message” about whether such obsession is Good or Bad.

So I was surprised to hear that there has been criticism based on the idea that the film endorses violent, cruel teaching as a way of getting students to realise their potential. I didn’t see it that way (and I think I’m in a fair position to judge: I wouldn’t myself have lasted more than an hour in any sort of class with a Fletcher-like teacher, and I would be hyper-sensitive to any film that appeared to
be celebrating his methods. My fingers ached so much just from watching Andrew’s labours that I thought I wouldn’t be able to type for a week. Ringo Starr’s “Ah gaat blisters ahn mah fingers!” sounds like a toddler’s wail compared to some of the stuff this young man goes through).

Yes, there is some seemingly inspirational-philosophical dialogue about Charlie Parker’s transformation into “Bird” – with Parker being used as a symbol of someone who was pushed into legend terrain by a teacher who could smell the real potential in him. But the person telling that story is a man with a ferocious need to be a legend-maker himself. And the argument that the film approves of Fletcher’s methods falls through pretty quickly if you consider the key plot point that one of his earlier students (someone whom he himself tearfully describes as a real achiever) killed himself because of the strain, and that Fletcher – quite reasonably – ends up losing his job because of the physical and emotional violence he directs at students. (When the film was over, I joked that this might well hasten the demise of classical jazz – how many youngsters would voluntarily pursue it as a career after watching this?)


So what is this film really? Maybe it's just a love-hate-love story between two people who are surprisingly alike in many ways, despite the power equations that encourage us to see one as the bully and the other as the victim. The camera, often standing in for Andrew and the other students, regards Fletcher with dread from the start. Physically distinctive to begin with, and photographed to seem even more imposing, he is so often its centre of awed attention, easily picked out even when he is doing nothing more than gently playing the piano in a corner of a dimly lit nightclub. The comparisons with Svengali are obvious, and more than once I was reminded of the Powell-Pressburger classic The Red Shoes (the scene where Fletcher apparently shows a vulnerable side while talking about his recently deceased student reminded me of the barely controlled hysteria of Lermontov while making his announcement at the end of The Red Shoes). That Fletcher is the one in control, a puppetmaster, is also emphasised by his conducting gestures; you can almost see the strings reaching from his hands to the arms and fingers of his students.

Given the overwhelming personality of this man, it’s easy to miss that Andrew himself is much more than just a victim or a foil. Sure, he’s a likably awkward and vulnerable young man in some obvious ways (at age 19 he still watches films with his dad, he finds it hard to sustain eye contact with people, he has chosen an artistic calling), but he also has a hard edge that we see glimpses of quite early in the film; in the smug little smiles that briefly spread across his face when someone else’s misfortune allows things to go his way, or the swiftness with which he converts defence into offence during a dinnertime altercation with acquaintances who are doing well in more glamorous, “macho” fields like football. As the story progresses, his almost frightening competitive streak comes into clearer relief. And maybe this is being presented as something to admire; but the context also makes it clear that there are very, very few people like that – which in turn means that this film can hardly serve as an inspiration-manual for most people.


Inspirational movies aren’t usually this dark and soaked in despair anyway; they don’t make triumph seem SO hard and ugly that you can’t be sure whether it counts as any sort of triumph at all. And even when they unflinchingly chronicle a very tough struggle, they tend to finish on a clear-cut note of affirmation, with cheering audiences and friends, and a sense that having negotiated the worst of Mordor, the story can now return to where it began, to the warmth of the Shire. They don’t close with a shot where a man who has been a sadistic villain through most of the film smiles approvingly at the hero, and the hero smiles back, and we see that he has found self-worth and affirmation in that moment, and that the two men are now of one mind and one heart, united by a shared obsession. (A Frodo does temporarily become a Sauron, but the moment passes and he is saved. Not here.)

In other words, that last sequence is one of the most exhilarating things I have seen in a movie hall in a long time – but it is not exhilarating in the particular way that a cheerier movie in this genre would be. Instead it is spellbinding because we see a world and everything in it being reduced to an echo chamber; everything else has been stripped away, and in the end there are only these two people performing this madman’s duet for themselves. (We don’t even get any reaction shots of the audience applauding – a standard trope of this kind of scene – or the other musicians giving so much as an approving nod. There is a passage near the end where the camera swish-pans back and forth between Andrew and Fletcher with such speed that what lies between them – the rest of the orchestra – is completely blurred out.)


Basically, this is a magnificent Folie à deux. At the end Andrew finally matches Fletcher’s “tempo”, but the effect is a little similar to that of the Grim Reaper’s followers falling in line behind him for the Dance of Death in the last shot of The Seventh Seal. I wouldn’t be surprised if both Fletcher and Andrew, having reached this grand culmination, went and stuck sharpened drumsticks through their throats in their respective homes later that night. Where else is there to go?

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** Speaking of distractions: DT Cinemas in Saket really must do something about their acoustics. For a while – a short while, mercifully – during the early scenes in Whiplash, we could hear a song sequence from Badlapur, playing in a nearby hall. This sort of thing has happened before at the same venue

13 comments:

  1. 'the scene where Fletcher apparently shows a vulnerable side while talking about his recently deceased student '

    That for me was the trickiest scene of the film, seems like there was more it to than what appears.
    Fletcher says Sean casey (deceased) died in a car accident but later we find out that he actually hanged himself to death due to anxiety and depression.

    Fletcher categorically stating the cause of death and lying through his teeth when he is so vulnerable and emotional makes me wonder what exactly is running through his mind.

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    1. Yup. There may well have been some sort of double-think going on there, with Fletcher having lied to himself first, and convinced himself of an alternate story. And it could be a foreshadowing of what might happen to Andrew, since it is indicated that Casey "made it" on at least some level before his death.

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  2. Brilliant review, as always. I didn't quite see the Seventh Seal connection, but completely agree that this wasn't meant to be an inspirational movie. I thought Fletcher saw himself in Andrew towards the end, and maybe vice versa.

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    1. Thanks Madhav! The Seventh Seal reference was just an incidental one - didn't mean to harp on it. (Though JK Simmons's wiry baldness does put me in mind of not just the Reaper but also many Devil representations in cinema.)

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  3. Off topic, but are you looking forward to 'The Buried Giant'? Would love to know your thoughts on it as and when you get a chance to read it.

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    1. Yes, want to read it very much but it may not be possible for another month or two...

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  4. Thought Miles Teller was brilliantly cast. he's made his space in portraying slightly off centre characters who are either driven to the point of madness of maddeningly self absorbed. His body language seems to just fit in effortlessly with these types of persona. I'm not sure he's a good actor.

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  5. I liked the film well enough for a few reasons. However, when I polled conservatory students (Peabody, Eastman, NE Conservatory of Music, Royal Schools of Music), I found they ALL hated the film. Each said something to the effect that it did not echo their music school experience at all and/or they didn't want the lay public to think it was a fair representation of what went on in conservatories. Just saying.

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    1. Not surprised at all. And I think I implied as much in the review - that I didn't feel like it was meant to echo the general experience of music students, or to be "representative". I can understand people who are part of that world feeling defensive and annoyed about the possibility that viewers will take this film literally. At the same time, saying "but this wasn't my experience" - and therefore, by implication, "this cannot happen" - is very flimsy grounds for judging anything.

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  6. Two of the musicians--one, a drummer--cited Fletcher's excessive tempo complaints (example: "too fast" "not fast enough" etc) to be bogus, and thus the fatal flaw of the film. This is the kind of thing the lay public doesn't consider. We assume the professor's tempo assessment/judgement to always be correct. I liked the film for the performance and JK Simmons' hotness.

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    1. We assume the professor's tempo assessment/judgement to always be correct

      I didn't assume that at all. Even as someone who doesn't know anything about the inside workings of this world, I know that it isn't so simple as there being a quantifiably perfect pitch which, if you reach it, makes you a great musician. It isn't an exact science - all creative work, to some degree or the other, is enhanced by improvisation or by the crazy, unplanned moment.

      And even Fletcher repeatedly says "my tempo" - he is playing God and on his own trip, but I don't think the film sees him as someone who is always dead right and holds the single key to musical genius.

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  7. "... there being a quantifiably perfect pitch which, if you reach it, makes you a great musician".

    Now you've lost me.

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  8. This movie called me out. I'm not a musician in any professional sense, but I know a thing or two about being laughed off stage. My "Charlie Parker moment" came during student teaching when I was kicked out of the classroom and prevented from completing my teacher preparation program. It was humiliating, and instead of hunkering down and finding a way to pursue my dream of being a great teacher, I quit.

    Whiplash is for everyone who ever had their one shot and blew it. We'll spend the rest of our lives in the shadows of others. Like Andrew's father in the film, we'll be watching from the sidelines while our friends and loved ones have all the success they deserve, because they won and we lost.

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