By: Will Sorg

Andrew Nieman is a freshman in college at the most prestigious music conservatory in America. He plays the drums with a passion and intensity that makes the instrument sing. He wants to be great, in fact he wants to be one of the greats. A jazz legend like Charlie Parker, Jo Jones or Duke Ellington. All that stands in his way is his own limits, and a man named Terrence Fletcher. This is Damian Cazelles’ Whiplash in the simplest terms. However, there is far more to it than that.
Whiplash explores the volatile relationship between an intense student and a teacher whose only goal seems to be to make that student’s life a living nightmare. Terrence Fletcher, portrayed masterfully by J.K. Simmons is the kind of teacher that every student is terrified of. Fletcher is an abrasive, manipulative, emotionally and physically abusive tyrant that treats his jazz group like a military platoon in the middle of an active warzone.
His on-screen presence is captivating and every moment is dripping with tension. You never know what he will do to torture Andrew next. If it weren’t for the small moments outside of the jazz group where you see him interacting with non-students you would almost assume that he is a supervillain. Instead, you are able to see that he is a truly terrible person, yet he only shows his true colors when he knows no one can hold him accountable.
Through this antagonist of Fletcher, Andrew Nieman finds a strange motivation. He needs to prove that he is up to Fletcher’s impossible standards. Nieman, played rather convincingly by Miles Teller, is single-minded in this quest and very rarely does he ever stop to think about how much this metaphorical battle with Fletcher is costing him. This theme is echoed throughout the whole film: how much is greatness worth? By the end of it all, will practicing so hard that your hands start to bleed be worth it? Will losing chances at making real human connections with people who might truly care for you be worth it? Nieman doesn’t care about any of those questions. All he needs is to prove Fletcher wrong and become the perfection he is searching for.
This movie is a kaleidoscope of chaos and intensity. I have yet to see a movie that portrays the performance of music in such an electric way. Quick cuts between the various instruments as they blare out high-energy jazz and the ever-present force of Fletcher as he conducts, waiting for a mistake to be made. Perhaps the best shots in the movie are of the drums. Each hit of the sticks to their targets are so wonderfully framed. When Nieman performs during the major concert scenes of the movie, the lighting and shot composition gives us the feeling that there is nothing in the entire world except him and his drums.