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Simmons, doing some of the best work of his career, keeps you hanging onto Fletcher’s every word even when you know his goal is to chisel away at Andrew’s self-assurance. Director Chazelle often shoots Andrew as an isolated figure surrounded by negative space, emphasizing his enforced solitude, but Fletcher is far more dynamic. Simmons is always clad in a tight black T-shirt that emphasizes his build when we first see him conducting the studio band, he raises a hand in the air and the camera swings around him, as if at his beck and call. But as Fletcher begins to grind away at his confidence and sanity, Andrew withdraws further, breaking up with his girlfriend in robotic fashion and behaving more erratically until suffering a mini nervous breakdown.įletcher is a terrifying, commanding figure throughout the film. He struggles with dinner-party conversation. At the beginning of the film, he’s obsessively driven and introverted, but relatably so he works up the courage to talk to a girl he has a crush on, and kindles a brief, if awkward, relationship with her. Great art, or at least a great rendition, has been achieved, but at the total cost of the teen’s humanity. But there’s also no question, as the audience watches its hero furiously bang out Fletcher’s perfect tempo, that Andrew’s spirit is broken. It’s a powerful moment, despite the wringer the audience (and Andrew) has endured the whole movie. He leads Fletcher’s band into an incredible rendition of the song he was prepared to play. It’s a final cruel ruse orchestrated by Fletcher, who wants to humiliate Andrew publicly by cueing him up to play the wrong music.īut then Andrew turns the tables. In the final scene, Andrew ends up at Carnegie Hall subbing in for Fletcher’s concert band. He eventually washes out under the extreme pressure and, at the urging of his concerned father, anonymously gets Fletcher fired for abuse. In Whiplash, Andrew, a jazz drummer, endures a brutal, sustained campaign of bullying and abuse, both psychological and physical, at the hands of Fletcher, the conductor of his conservatory’s prestigious studio band. And the troubling thing, for viewers, is that he might be right to. He would undoubtedly exit the film and congratulate himself on a job well done. Simmons), over the previous 100 minutes.Īt the end of the film, Fletcher clearly thinks Andrew’s success is due to his approach of teaching as psychological warfare.

That’s a daring choice from the young director and writer Damien Chazelle, because Andrew, a student drummer, has been subjected to elite jazz-training hell by his tyrannical instructor, Fletcher (J.K. Centered on a rousing musical performance given by the film’s protagonist, Andrew (Miles Teller), the scene is filmed and presented as a triumph, if a costly one.

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The ending of Whiplash offers one of the most electrifying movie moments this year.

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