A Review of Whiplash: Double Crosses, Triple Binds, and the Search for Aliveness

M arquis de Sade stand down! There’s a new dom in town. His name is Terrence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons), and his brutal savagery finds expression in the role of jazz conductor at the legendary Shaffer Academy, the fictional premier music conservatory in the country. His submissive mark and obedient player is first-year student, Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller). Their complementary and complex relationship cracks, snaps, and jerks its way throughout the turbulent action of Whiplash, a film that’s a riveting tale of multiple implicit and explicit narratives. On the surface the manifest story is a mentor/mentee drama depicting the murky line between instruction and abuse that all too often is evidenced in teaching practices rampant in the performing arts. As such, the film is a lightening rod galvanizing wide debate on this arresting topic. Yet beneath the obvious, this film exists provocatively and juicily as so much more, for ultimately this is not a film about controversial teaching methodologies, or about jazz for that matter. Rather, in its deepest recesses, it’s an exploration of two men engaged in a sadomasochistic, master/ slave, doer and done to search for developmental growth and enlivening selfhood. As the film opens in a long-shot, we encounter Andrew in isolation, down a dark, narrow corridor urgently drumming to no one in particular. The fierce, maniacal energy has captured Fletcher’s attention as he slithers out of the shadows, head to toe garbed in black, suggesting a man who has already had all the joy drained out of him. “Do you know who I am?” he intones. “Do you know I’m looking for players?” It’s not really a question, but a command, a compulsory invitation to lock and load this duo into their mutually consigned destinies.