'Whiplash'

I played piano for many years in elementary and middle school.  While I enjoyed it, I was never particularly good or noteworthy.  I took lessons once a week and practiced as often as I felt like. People said I was good, which made me happy. But I was never pushed harder. I was never pushed passed just being 'good.'  What happens when any of us are pushed past our most basic comfort zone?  In Whiplash, Damien Chazelle's second feature film, this point is driven home with a ferocious intensity that you leave, breathless, wondering how you could apply this need, this desire, to break boundaries in numerous aspects of your life.  How do I become the best?

Miles Teller stars as Andrew, a first year music student at the acclaimed Scaffer Music Academy in New York City.  He's a jazz drummer, loves drumming, and wants to be be one of the greats. One way to do that is to join Terrance Fletcher's Studio B class.  Terrance (JK Simmons) will push you to where he feels you should be. He will push you to tears, to agony. He will push you to see that you are both great and a failure in the same minute. Terrance does not have time for excuses. He won't make time for mistakes. He will make time for perfection. Andrew learns all of this the hard way, his ego and passion both a blessing and a curse. 

While Andrew is blissfully unaware, Terrance regularly uses his environment against him - fellow classmates, new material, and distance all prove roadblocks for Andrew to overcome. Or not, Terrance isn't looking for attempts. There is passion in Andrew. This comes out on his practicing, his constant love of drumming, and breaking up with a girl over concerns she'll hold him back.  But passion isn't everything.  Obstacles will get in your way. But, do you let the obstacles get you down?  Do you let them destroy you?

Whiplash is an electrifying, tense, and pulsating film. Miles Teller can play the drums and his performance is both hopeful and heartbreaking. Andrew is not just relatable to only those who play the drums, but to anyone who has a passion for something and saw it fall short because they never had that final push. In this era of consummate reward, a teacher like Terrance appears unhealthy and destructive. But is he?  While the affirmative argument is made in this very film, it also deftly tackles the opposite.  Terrance is a tough as nails teacher, striving to bring the best out in his students - seeing them for who they are and not who they think they are.  There is no automatic reward from him. Andrew's reward is proving to himself he can play the drums. And isn't that better then a medal?

Damien Chazelle, who also wrote the film, is a steady and confident filmmaker who has crafted a dizzyingly intellectual movie that will challenge your ideas of art and creativity. With its lean running time, the film rarely falters and the sleekly paced music sequences are so well crafted you can not wait to return to them.  It's only in scenes involving Andrew outside of drumming that allow you moments to breathe. However, it's not long before you want to see more drumming, you want the unnerving presence of JK Simmons, and you want to see if you can push yourself that far too.