`Mama-dada rolls' WHIPLASH a film review

My first drum tutor was forever sympathetic and encouraging, teaching me the rudiments via onomatopoeia. Thus a double stroke roll (right right, left left) became a `mama, dada’ roll.

In Damien Chazelle’s Oscar tipped jazz drama Whiplash JK Simmons plays a conservatoire tyrant and bully personified, determined to push drumming prodigy Miles Teller to his limit at any cost be it violence or exploiting what he discovers of his young charge’s parents. 

Whiplash (the title refers to a jazz standard providing a musical motif throughout) opens with Andrew Neiman (Teller) practicing a single strong roll rudiment that accelerates as our narrative will.  Fiercely focussed but with few friends, Neiman is a student at a top New York music school his only other diversion watching movies and sharing popcorn with his devoted Dad who is as supportive and non- prescriptive as Simmons character Terence Fletcher is cruel and critical.     

In his fitted black t-shirt Fletcher leads the school’s first band and is notorious for his vicious perfectionism, ejecting musicians from rehearsal without mercy. Following a chance encounter Neiman is invited to join the band and so begins a thrilling confrontation between the two.

Shot in just over two weeks, director writer Chazelle makes excellent use of dimly lit subterranean basement rehearsal rooms to lend claustrophobia to the story. At first Fletcher seems reasonable and almost cuddly as in previous hit Juno, coaxing Andrew as he sits eager to please on the drum stool with `not quite my tempo’.  But as quick as the changes on the musical score he segues into a psychopath.

A relationship begins in parallel or maybe that should be paradiddle (apologies for another rudiment reference) providing Andrew with a conflict. He takes his girl on a date to a pizza joint but his idea of conversation is to name the personnel on the record in the background. Somehow though, she’s charmed. 

If there is a single problem with the film it’s that we don’t see this relationship really develop so when Andrew inevitably ends it as a distraction, we are as invested in it as he has allowed himself to become.   

With a brilliant soundtrack and central performances arrived at through method acting (Teller took intensive drums lessons and plays for real in the film) Whiplash considers the rage against mediocrity and asks if it is ever justifiable to push so hard or sacrifice so much.