Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, his debut film Whiplash tells an exaggerated story of Chazelle’s own drumming experiences in a hyper-competitive high school band. But, the film itself goes beyond the band, jazz, and drumming as a whole, instead focusing on the dynamic between the films core relationship, which is that of the relationship between student and instructor.
Andrew Neiman is an ambitious, disciplined, and talented drummer with a real sense of purpose in his life. Most importantly, it’s something he can achieve and center his career and life around as he’s a first year, 19 year old jazz drummer at the most prestigious music school in the country.
For millions of adolescents across the world who are either endlessly pressured into becoming something financially successful as quickly as they can by their parents, friends, or teachers, stuck in path or career that they find unfulfilling or meaningless, or simply wondering what the hell to do with the rest of their lives, the life Andrew Neiman lives in this film can become deeply alluring and idolized by many of its viewers.
Which is why, beyond its brilliant cinematography and writing, Whiplash has become one of the most watched and praised films of the twenty-first century. It is a symbol of hope, allure, and fantasy for those chasing their dreams. It gives its dreamers a pathway towards achieving the life they want through what Neiman undergoes, which can be summed up by the phrase, which if you’ve been involved in talk about this film you’ve likely heard before, “suffering is the soul of greatness.”
Andrew Neiman undergoes intense physical, verbal, and psychological abuse at the hands of his instructor, Terrence Fletcher. He is pushed to the point of drumming until his hands bleed, slapped each time he counts off tempo, has a chair hurled at his face, but most importantly, is made to believe all this is necessary and in fact needed if he wants to be great.
And most of the audience are convinced of this as well, which is done due to the fact we are placed into a subjective point of view. Throughout the film, we never leave Andrew’s mind. We see everything that he sees, discover everything as he discovers it, and feel everything that he feels. Each time we see Fletcher, it’s from Andrew Neiman’s perspective, which is an intentional choice by director Damien Chazelle and his crew. When explaining why he deleted a scene in which we see Fletcher, alone, in his apartment, “It’s also that question of subjectivity, that ultimately we decided this needed to be Andrew’s movie and that any glimpse we see of Fletcher, even if emotional, would be from Andrew’s point of view.”
Moreover, the film juxtaposes itself. Director Damien Chazelle desired to have Neiman undergo this intense suffering to ultimately set up his thematic point at the end of the movie, which is that Neiman and the mentality that he adopts causes him to lose at the end, even though he is victorious in his goals of being one of the greats, due to the road it will lead him down. However, most of the audience views Neiman’s victory at the end as precisely that due to the endless amounts of suffering he undergoes throughout the movie. When a character undergoes real sacrifice and loss throughout their story, it turns the audience on their side, hoping that, like in their own life, it is not all for nothing. So when a particular group of people in the audience, those like Neiman at the beginning of the film, young, desperate, hopeful, obsessive, and ambitious for achieving their dreams are given a mindset to do just that, they are unintentionally tricked into believing in, or adopting that mentality in their lives.
But Andrew Neiman is a monomaniacal, self-obsessive, self-destructive, insecure, socially awkward, and isolated kid with dreams of becoming a drummer. Terrence Fletcher is an emotionally stunted, temperamental, insecure, self-obsessed, and callous instructor who centers his whole life around an exaggerated story revolving around Charlie Parker and Jo Jones.
By not showing the objective view that Andrew sets himself on a path to never get the one thing he drums for, love, whether it be through Nicole’s point of view or his fathers (other than a look that can be misinterpreted as awe) and instead placing us in the shoes of someone who thinks they have finally triumphed and won, dreamers, seeing themselves in Neiman, believe what they so desperately want to believe, leading themselves down the same path of self-destructiveness and isolation.
However, to clarify, I am speaking from my own experiences as an isolated, ambitious teen who fell in love with this film, along with the viewpoints that I saw in my friends, family, and discourse online involving this film, and the thematically similar Marty Supreme, that Andrew Neiman won in the end.
Ultimately, this misunderstanding of the film speaks as much to monomaniacs as it does to a need for better film and media literacy. Ten years after Whiplash, many people online have fallen ill into the same thinking with Marty Supreme, becoming inspired by Marty Mauser’s self-destructive tendencies rather than deterred or horrified. But isolated, and ambitious dreamers will forever exist in the world. Whiplash fuels these dreamers’ individualistic and self-centered desires and sparks those struggling to find a sense of purpose or direction in their lives. The trick is not in the subjectivity but in the individual desperate to be fooled themselves.
The Fashion Suits the Film. 5/5 stars.
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