After two hopelessly bland films
and two reviews that are so angry they may even verge on unfair (apologies)
here finally comes a film that left me in awe. Whiplash is a film about
emotional abuse, the student-teacher relationship and about the suffering of
the artist as a young man, but it is also a film that defies easy
categorisation. Not because it has a story that takes in all of these tropes
and more, but because it is so well directed, edited and scored that it feels
almost unique. It is also apparently 107 minutes long, but it flies.
Andrew (Miles Teller) wants to be
one of the greats, a drummer who can keep any tempo and can go harder and
faster than anyone else. He also wants to be noticed by the highly influential
music teacher Fletcher (J. K. Simmons). Fletcher is tough verging on abusive,
though they both believe that it was the cymbal that nearly decapitated Charlie
Parker that made him a great, so they are evenly matched. This kind of
obsessive ambition and a gruelling self-imposed practise regime leads to a
several tense confrontations.
Like many of the best films, the
appeal of Whiplash is difficult to put into words – so bear with me,
I’ll try my best. There have been jazzy films before, films whose aesthetics
mirror the discordance and unpredictability in the changing tempos of jazz,
though it is difficult to think of a film that is as sustained a riff as Whiplash.
A bout de soufflé comes close though it is more interested in varying
its speed, as does Shadows though it is more interested in the people in
front of the camera. Whiplash starts with a drum roll over black. The
drums get louder and faster until it is almost unbearable and when the film
starts, it doesn’t let up. Even simple scenes that could have been used to give
the audience time to breath like a sequence in which Andrew walks home from
class keep the tempo going. Which is what makes the film so exhilarating. What
makes it great is that writer-director Damien Chazelle never lets it feel empty
or repetitive.
The characters are fully realized
and the fast editing and fancy camerawork does not get in the way of the
performances, which are indeed excellent. The film is very physical, rare
enough for American cinema – it is tense because you really do think that
people could get hurt here and suddenly, unexpectedly. Simmons owns the space
around his character and you watch him and look for every movement of his face
and every gesture because it is always significant. Teller is great too. He is
quieter but his performance is never overwhelmed by Simmons’. The suspense never
lets up and every scene moves at a rapid pace and, best of all, the film’s ends
without diluting any of what went before. It doesn’t slow down and yet it never
seems to be shrill or overbearing (…maybe the car crash…) and it is never
boring. Where a lot of recent cinema is about good scenes packaged together
into a compilation, Whiplash does not allow a tired scene – it doesn’t
stop to explain or rest or consider. It is a sustained, fast-paced, jazzy film
and one of the most complete and fully realized films in recent years.
It is easy to forget that a film of quick cutting and
fast pans (the final scene has some great pans) can still feel innovative. A
bout de soufflé can still feel fresh, but watch Hot Fuzz again and
it already feels kind of old. Chazelle shows a remarkable awareness of where to
put a camera and how to frame a shot and cut a scene and his film is very
effective, but he also never loses sight of the performances and the drama and
the tension. There isn’t a shot or a cut here that feels unnecessary or
pointless. Chazelle knows exactly what he is doing and Whiplash is a
very thrilling and rich film because of that. The final sequence in particular
is one of the best in recent years, though to get the full effect, you need to
see it where it was intended to be seen – in a cinema and turned up loud.
Masterful.
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