By Paul Attard ’15 | Staff Writer

Bang the drum slowly, and you don’t get the part. Instead, bang it loud enough for everyone to understand. That’s the logic that flows throughout Damien Chazelle’s second feature, “Whiplash.” It’s electric nature of fast-paced drum action serves its purpose, but how it is achieved comes off as more toxic than determined.

Drummer Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) strives to be one of the best musicians at Shaffer Conservatory, the best music school in America. He is “mentored” by abusive teacher Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) who consistently pushes Neiman to his limits, no matter the physiological or physical damage that may result from these actions.
So begins this student-mentor relationship cliche that is redundantly prominent in other films such as “An Officer and A Gentleman,” but with some added cheap emotional tricks to keep the audience on edge.

Both Teller and Simmons are excellent in their role. Simmons, however, steals the show whenever he is on the screen. He isn’t even a character, but more of a force of nature who appears out of nowhere in the film’s opening to frighten Neiman. Given the material he has to deliver, he never makes Fletcher into a caricature of what many actors would want to do.

The music in the film works incredibly well also, having (of course) a heavy jazz score that helps elevate most of the scenes from good to sometimes great. The final scene (while being somewhat ridiculous, but won’t describe for spoilers sake) had my full attention with how effortlessly the film blended high stakes emotion with some incredible drum playing.

There are also plenty of scenes that fall completely flat because of some rather ridiculous scenarios. Take, for instance, one where Fletcher throws a case at Neiman’s head while he’s playing. That action, like a lot of Fletcher’s torture, is meant to be played as both comedy and horror. But the homophobic and sexist vitriol spewed by Fletcher in other scenes is not remotely funny, and as horror it works about as well as a jump scare from Freddy or Jason.

This relates to the major problem with the movie: the film supports bully culture, promoting the terrible actions Fletcher uses and justifying them by saying he’s simply “pushing” Neiman. Fletcher at one point mentions the two worst words in the English language are “good” followed by “job.”
The movie seems to say that In order to achieve the best, it doesn’t matter what you do to someone or how you treat them. As long as they are still motivated to achieve the goal, nothing else matters. Many can look at this as saying Neiman is just “determined” while Fletch is an obstacle, which I would accept if the film wasn’t so persistent in idolizing Fletchers tactics.

The film has all the nice trimmings, the actors deliver and at times I really got into the jazz playing, but the overall core feels rather rotten, too much so for my tastes.