Like the slow rhythmic tapping on the drumskin, Damian Chazelle’s exhaustively brilliant drama begins as a quiet character study, slowly works in its astonishing acting components as an accompanying beat, before exploding into a bloodied knuckle crescendo of a finale which ranks as one of the very best performed, edited, and emotionally stimulating scenes in recent memory.
So very much more than a percussion heavy Rocky or an exercise in battle-of-the-bands predictability, Whiplash is a psychological war between student and teacher, one which pushes both to the very limits of physical and emotional abuse.
Andrew (Miles Teller) attends the premier music school in America in the hope of becoming the next Charlie “Bird” Parker. A quiet student, he finds it hard to integrate with his peers and bandmates, with his social life reduced to movie nights with his dad (Paul Reiser), or cripplingly shy half-chats with the girl who sells the popcorn (Melissa Benoist).
The reason the school is held in such high regard is that lurking through frosted glass classroom windows or dimly lit corridors is the equally driven, spittle fuelled figure of bottled rage that is Mr Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), for whom it is considered an honour to be selected as one of his core players.
