Whiplash: An Exploration of Greatness in Two Dimensions

Whiplash
**
by Tom Johnson

Whiplash is a movie about greatness and the pursuit of greatness. It takes as its canvas the world of jazz and jazz drumming and uses to illustrate the particular point a drum student (Miles Teller) and his fascist teacher (JK Simmons). It is a film with razor sharp ideas distilled to near purity. It is tidy and linear and technically accomplished. As an impressionist piece about the pursuit of greatness, it is a marvel. As a movie about two human people with thoughts and feelings and emotions, it is disappointing.

One of Whiplash’s myriad Oscar nominations is for best adapted screenplay. The Academy’s rules for what is adapted and what is original are arcane, at best, (I will never forget that Borat’s lone nomination was for adapted screenplay) but in this particular case, the distinction serves to highlight a flaw with the film that seems particularly relevant. Whiplash’s screenplay is considered adapted from director Damien Chazelle’s own short film regarding the same name, conflict, and subject.

That Whiplash is an adaptation of a shorter work seems relevant. Because as in short fiction in opposition to novel-length work, short fiction succeeds greatly in two dimensions – things happen, but there is little expectation of characters to be full and vibrant and breathing – short fiction is concerned with conflicts, with episodes, not with characters. In transitioning the film from short form to long form Chazelle fails to turn his work from two into three dimensions.

For sure, the fundamental conflict is gripping. Every standoff between Simmons and Teller is utterly compelling, but it feels ethereal and dream-like, scarcely human. It is a horror-story vision of the pursuit of greatness – what it costs and how to get it. And it succeeds as such, but never does the film offer any explanation of either characters motives – what drives them in their respective pursuits – they seems simply to exist for these two express purposes and little else.

This failure to provide crucial character development leaves much of the films actual plot points feeling hollow and peculiar if not outright unbelievable. Every scene not immediately regarding Andrew’s megalomaniacal pursuit of greatness and Fletcher’s adamantine refusal to expect anything less than perfection is almost universally unsuccessful. Andrew and his girlfriend fails to hit home because we know nothing of this character other than that he wants to be great. It feels tangential at best. The same applies to a peculiar dinner scene the film feels we need to see. It confirms what we already know about the character and little else. The willing suspension of disbelief has reared its ugly head particularly hard this year and it comes on aggressively in Whiplash, with a bizarre third-act car crash hurtling towards a totally perplexing final quarter of the film. The film’s final scene isn’t non-triumphant but it fails to make up for the abject weirdness of the movie’s closing half hour.

The film is technically accomplished with some slick cuts and editing particularly in the jazz ensemble scenes and in the practice room where we see Andrew practicing until his hands bleed. It is an impressive feat, elevating music into the visual pantheon of sports-physicality (even if it pushes this a bit hard – honestly, it’s a little weird to see the cymbals soaking wet in every scene – if that’s supposed to be sweat, how did it get there and how did one human body produce so much of it?). And then, of course, there is the acting. Simmons and Teller carry the movie even when the script otherwise lets them down. They go all in on their characters. There isn’t much depth, but there is certainly fury and they deliver it in spades. Their scenes are compelling if unbelievable, which is as much as can be reasonably asked. Simmons feels like safe money to take home the hardware come Oscar Sunday.

I have reservations about Whiplash. It is a frustrating film, particularly on the back end, but it is an impressively wrought meditation on the pursuit of greatness, and it is occupied by two eminently compelling performances. It is folly to judge a work in terms that it does not ask to be judged by. With a charitable readjustment of expectations, Whiplash could be a great movie. Without them, it is a frustrating movie with some great moments. Moments that may yet be worth the price of admission.

Regarding Inherent Vice

Regarding Inherent Vice
Or: How Forgettable Would the Big Lebowski Have Been if Every Scene Was Five Minutes Longer?
**

By Tom Johnson

I suppose at this point, it should be difficult to be disappointed by Paul Thomas Anderson movies. We should have learned long ago that disappointment is incongruous with PTA. PTA makes whatever movie he wants and sometimes they can be a source of awe and that should be about as much as you think about that. Being disappointed by a PTA movie is like being disappointed by not winning the lottery that one time.

And yet, what are you left with at the end of Inherent Vice, aside from a distinct impression that the movie was decidedly less than it feels like it should have been. Less fun. Less sharp. Less beautiful. Less of everything other than run time, really. Certainly less than the sum of its parts – to be certain it has a laundry list of pretty impressive parts, some of which are absolutely fun in the moment, but taken as a whole, they fail to really hit the mark.

Inherent Vice’s fundamental sin is its pacing. PTA films are known for their ponderousness, often approaching if not exceeding two and a half hours. But rarely does he deal with such obvious levity, and the last time he did – and with great effect with his Punch Drunk Love – he did so in just over ninety minutes.  Here, the glacial pace drags the film irreparably down. There is plenty in the film that suggest that it’s a comedy, but the end result is a comedy with an utter disregard for comedic timing. Indeed, Inherent Vice seems almost like a master class in how not to pace a comedic film, and the importance of pace and comedic timing particularly against such peers as the Big Lebowski or the Coen Brothers' Best Picture Victory Lap, Burn After Reading. There is no better way to understand why a joke falls flat instead of soars than to watch these three in succession.

It’s a peculiar effect Inherent Vice has. It seems to hit all of the notes that PTA wants to, it just lingers for several minutes too long in almost every scene and there are too many needlessly talky scenes that disrupt all of the often great slapstick. The performances are almost universally delightful, particularly the comic turn by continually underrated Joaquin Phoenix. Most of the endless string of cameos hit their mark. I was charmed by Joanna Newsom’s voice over work. And yet, what does it all add up to? Certainly not as much as I had hoped. And yet, it’s hard to call it disappointment. It’s simply the work of Paul Thomas Andersen.