Philosophers on Film

Whiplash is about Andrew Neiman, a drumming student at Schaffer Conservatory, who is called to join Terence Fletcher’s studio band. Fletcher is a legend, and success in his band means success in the jazz world, but his methods are monstrous. Fletcher asks the impossible, and berates his players when they fail. Andrew is forced to play until the kit is covered in blood. Later, he runs from a serious car crash in order to be on stage on time. Andrew cannot play, of course, and when Fletcher tells him “you’re done,” Andrew breaks, tackles Fletcher, punching and yelling “I’ll kill you!” In the aftermath, Andrew is expelled and Fletcher is fired. They later meet by chance in a jazz club, and seem reconciled: they bond over their shared admiration for greatness, and their shared disdain for the merely very good. Fletcher invites Andrew to play with the pro band he’s conducting at Lincoln Center. But it’s a set-up: Fletcher begins with a song Andrew does not know, humiliating him. Andrew walks off the stage, destroyed, but then returns, sit at the drum kit, and takes control of the band himself. The movie ends with a dazzling solo, the antagonism between Andrew and Fletcher reverses, and they work together to bring the song to a dazzling conclusion. Is this comedy or tragedy? Is Fletcher right that “the two most harmful words in the English language are ‘good job’”? I went on Cows in the Field, a podcast hosted by Justin and Laura Khoo, to discuss these and other questions about the film. Here are some highlights and footnotes.

1. Besides Andrew and Fletcher, the film contains only two other significant characters: Andrew’s father, and Nicole, who is briefly Andrew’s girlfriend. Is Andrew’s dad a good dad? Justin observed, rightly, that

he is an extremely patient and forgiving and loving parent … his son is constantly making these, from what he sees, mistakes, and he's there to just help him again and again without judgment for the most part.

While I can’t disagree with that, I think the film presents Andrew’s dad as in some ways too weak. I find this signaled in an early scene, set in a movie theater, where someone walks down the row behind Andrew’s dad and bumps him with a tub of popcorn. In response, his dad—the one who’s been wronged, if only mildly—apologizes. Fletcher might be taken as a competing model of the mentorship that fathers (one might think) are meant to provide; and Fletcher would never have apologized. In the podcast I mention that,

if you look at what ideal fatherhood looked like in various different historical epochs and cultures, there are some where the ideal father is like Fletcher and where Andrew's dad is a complete failure.

Here’s an interesting assignment: compare this film to Catch Me If You Can, where Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) also turns away from his real father to an antagonistic mirror-surrogate, in this case Agent Hanratty (Tom Hanks), who is out to put him in prison.

2. I’m fascinated by the use of color and light in the film:

At least for the first half of the film, everywhere Andrew goes, is dark or is lit by this sickly green lighting or this very harsh light, so the band he's in [before he joins Fletcher's], the entry level band, it's just harsh white. Only the studio band rehearsal room has a warm, welcoming palette to it.

[The film is] set in New York, right? ... Many movies filmed in New York are sort of love letters to the beauty of New York City. And this is a movie that makes every part of New York City that you might go to outside of Fletcher's rehearsal room look just awful, disgusting.

What are we to make of this? Does this contrast signify (using a technique that I’ve discussed before) only how Miles thinks about those locations? Or does it reflect an endorsement, by the film itself, of the superiority of Fletcher’s studio, as the only place where true excellence is pursued and appreciated?

3. For Fletcher, any performance (even in practice) that is not perfect, is crap, and a reflection of the performer’s inadequacy as a human being. Andrew is often on the wrong end of this judgment—but he agrees with the principle. When Fletcher brings in another drummer to compete with Andrew, and praises his performance, Andrew is indignant, and shouts “what? That shit?” This arrogance—or refined taste, if you like—seems a not uncommon disposition among up-and-coming artists. When John Singer Sargent was eighteen his family moved to Paris. (His father thought living and learning in the artistic capital of the world a needed step in his son’s artistic education.) Sargent visited the Salon, but pronounced it “disappointing,” with “lots of miserable pictures.”

4. About the ending, Justin asks,

it ends on this triumphant note, but how should we interpret that triumph?

I suggested that

It was like Neo realizing he's the one. Fletcher can't hurt [Andrew] anymore because now he's he's found whatever he needed to find in himself.

Justin’s perspective was the opposite, and his interpretation was one I’d never considered: maybe

Fletcher is the devil and [Andrew’s] dad is the angel, and [Andrew’s] really fallen by the ending of the film. This is actually a deeply tragic ending.

Listen to the whole thing.

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See also: Hitchcock / Van Gogh.