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.