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The Most Conservative Film I’ve Seen in Years
I saw Birdman. Interesting movie. Michael Keaton was terrific. I never need to see it again. The first thing I did after watching Whiplash was to buy the Blu-ray.
What makes Whiplash so superb is that it doesn’t take the stock, convenient approach to its characters—the approach that a lesser film might have taken. A Whiplash in which J.K. Simmons’ Terence Fletcher is purely an evil, sadistic taskmaster and Miles Teller’s Andrew Nieman is simply the sympathetic underdog could have been a decent movie. Forgettable, but decent.
***Obvious spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen Whiplash, don’t read any further***
The reason Whiplash is a great movie is that Nieman isn’t a one-dimensional, by-the-numbers protagonist. He’s a warts-and-all fledgling genius. The audience roots for him early on because there’s an awkwardness about him as he tries to navigate life at the Shaffer Conservatory. He also gains sympathy because of the abuse he takes from Dr. Fletcher.
Those sympathetic feelings are complicated when it becomes plain that Nieman can dish out abuse of his own.
He’s not just a scrappy kid who stands up to an overbearing authority figure. He’s a prodigy who callously dumps his girlfriend because he foresees her future interference with his ultimate goals. He’s a band member who alienates and distances himself from his fellow players on a regular basis. He’s a family member who belittles his cousin’s football accomplishments because they’re achieved at the Division III level.
In fact, I think a dinner scene that includes the mockery of his own relatives might be the key scene in the movie—or at least the key scene that doesn’t involve Dr. Fletcher.
That dinner includes a moment in which the plot could have veered off into vanilla storytelling, where Nieman’s discussion of his own accomplishments gets drowned out by the bravado of his cousins and their proud parents. Instead of continuing down that well-worn cinematic path by having Nieman sheepishly resign himself to being a tortured, under-appreciated genius, he speaks up. He then goes several steps further, taking his confidence into arrogance territory and causing the viewer to rethink who the “good guy” actually is in the scene. Moreover, Nieman makes some cruel yet compelling points about the nature of true success, largely at the expense of others at the table.
Cruel yet compelling: That’s the fascinating Dr. Fletcher. Like Nieman, he appears fairly one-dimensional at first blush. Black, not gray.
He ostensibly personifies much of what contemporary society hates. He verbally, psychologically, and, on one occasion, physically abuses Nieman. He’s Bobby Knight in a tight, black t-shirt. He berates his students constantly, using personal information against them, questioning and mocking their sexuality, and hurling ethnic slurs and folding chairs with equal dexterity.
He is, in short, that most lamentable, contemptible, irredeemable creature in twenty-first-century American life: The bully.
The essence of the movie is Fletcher’s philosophy, revealed to us in explicit detail during a scene late in the film. Fletcher, now fired by the Shaffer Conservatory thanks to Nieman’s anonymous testimony, explains that there was a very deliberate aim in his abrasive, caustic style:
I don’t think people understood what it was I was doing at Shaffer. I wasn’t there to conduct. Any [expletive] moron can wave his arms and keep people in tempo. I was there to push people beyond what’s expected of them.
I believe that is an absolute necessity. Otherwise, we’re depriving the world of the next Louis Armstrong. The next Charlie Parker . . . Parker’s a young kid, pretty good on the sax. Gets up to play at a cutting session, and he [expletives] it up. And Jones nearly decapitates him for it. And he’s laughed off-stage. Cries himself to sleep that night, but the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And he practices and he practices with one goal in mind, never to be laughed at again.
And a year later, he goes back to the Reno and he steps up on that stage, and plays the best [expletive] solo the world has ever heard. So, imagine if Jones had just said: “Well, that’s okay, Charlie. That was all right. Good job.” And then Charlie thinks to himself, “Well, [expletive], I did do a pretty good job.” End of story. No Bird. That, to me, is an absolute tragedy. But that’s just what the world wants now. People wonder why jazz is dying.
Emphasis mine.
In the final scene, Nieman realizes Fletcher’s abuse isn’t over. After being humiliated when Fletcher conducts a song for which Nieman has no sheet music, Nieman runs offstage, greeted by the warm embrace of his loving father. Again, a lesser movie probably continues along that trajectory, with the father and son leaving together after the son realizes that, hey, music’s not the most important thing in the world!
But this movie doesn’t do that.
Nieman returns to the stage, of course, and takes over. And he doesn’t do it to spite Fletcher. He does it to prove himself, once and for all. He does it to ascend to that first rung of genuine greatness—not against an angry Fletcher’s wishes, but in collaboration with an ultimately ecstatic Fletcher, who has finally discovered what he’s sought his entire career.
Here’s the crux of it . . .
Fletcher is a monster.
Fletcher is dangerous.
Fletcher is right.
I found myself nodding and agreeing with Fletcher as he explained his central thesis to Nieman in the bar. Like many people probably did, I had the “but it can go too far, right?” thought just as Nieman raised that same point with Fletcher. Fletcher explains that a Charlie Parker would never be discouraged by an imaginary line being crossed, because a Charlie Parker would never get discouraged, period. Nieman instantly recognizes the truth of that statement.
What we’re left with as viewers is the reality that, despite the seductive nature of an easy life free of conflict or stress or rejection or failure, it is precisely those conditions that extract greatness from us. The Fletcher character presents the most extreme form of that philosophy possible outside of a military setting, and he still winds up validated. Whether it’s worth crushing a thousand pieces of coal into dust in order to find that one, perfect diamond is a value judgment the viewer has to make for himself.
With all the talk/hand-wringing about American Sniper being a “conservative” film, I was amazed when I watched Whiplash that I hadn’t heard more commentary in that vein about Damien Chazelle’s story of Andrew Nieman and Dr. Fletcher.
Maybe it’s because the notion of man-made hardship maximizing potential has fallen so completely out-of-favor that it isn’t even recognized as an idea with a political label. It’s not “conservative,” or even “old-fashioned.” It’s not even “passe.” It’s merely “bad.”
The ever-expanding definition of “bullying” is so toxic as to silence those who might think some version, at least, of Fletcher’s methods have value. Today, anything we might call “bullying” (and there’s no doubt that Fletcher’s tactics correctly fall under that heading) is immediately dismissed as purely destructive and without value. There was a time when most of society accepted the opposite proposition.
Now, we’re left with a lot of people like Jim (Paul Reiser), Andrew’s father. Jim Neiman is the opposite of Fletcher: He’s kind, fun, supportive, understanding, and compassionate. He encourages his son to testify against Fletcher so that Fletcher can’t intimidate anyone else ever again.
Jim has a lot of positive qualities that we would want in a friend, a coworker, or an advocate. He’s a “modern” father, but he actually more closely resembles a traditional mother figure. On the other hand, Dr. Fletcher is quite obviously Andrew’s true father figure.
I was shocked when I came to the conclusion that Jim is very subtly the villain of the film.
Jim’s support of his son leads to Andrew Nieman putting his drum kit away. He gives up on his dreams because pursuing them was very difficult, both physically and emotionally. This is the easy path of which I spoke earlier. This is the path of dates with pretty co-eds from Fordham. This is the path of watching movies and eating popcorn with your dad. This is the path of normalcy.
But it is not the path of greatness.
Look at Jim’s life: He’s a high-school English teacher who fancies himself a writer but has never gotten anything published. He is who Andrew Nieman becomes if Andrew never talks to Fletcher again after leaving Shaffer. We can imagine it easily—the dusty drumkit that only comes out of storage when Andrew Nieman’s 1.5 kids start asking questions about it. Nieman finds a perfectly content, normal life, possibly as a middle school bandleader or as a high school music teacher or an insurance salesman who plays an odd gig here and there.
He and the world would never know what they were missing.
A tragedy.
Fletcher, the monster, extracts this greatness. In the end, he’s a hero—albeit a nasty, mean one.
This is why I was surprised I hadn’t heard Whiplash bandied about as a movie that’s “too conservative.” I think it’s the most conservative critically-acclaimed film I’ve seen sinceThe Incredibles. The very important principle in Whiplash that is arguably the take-home message of the film is that, sometimes, we need nasty, mean people to do nasty, mean things to make us—and society—better.
That’s the contradiction that’s so difficult for many to admit, much less embrace. Those things that hurt our feelings, make us cry, enrage us, frustrate us, and—gasp!—lower our self-esteem in the short run can also sometimes make us the best version of ourselves that we could ever be in the long run.
Sometimes, in other words, the monster is the hero.
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(Note: A version of this review originally appeared at my blog, here.)
Published in General
I agree with this about the utilitarian calculus. If you think that a moderate number of lives ruined, and one destroyed, is a worthwhile trade off for one somewhat talented drummer becoming a still more talented drummer and thus lending a some quantity of added pleasure to the lives of the relatively few Americans who listen to contemporary smooth jazz with the focus required to appreciate the difference, then the gamble would appear to have paid off. I find it slightly hard to relate to those priorities, but then I’m not particularly musical. If the subject had been about medicine, war, science, law, or politics, I guess I’d have found it easier to understand the benefit of the tradeoff.
I think that harsh conditions could often be helpful, and they provide good drama, but I don’t think that they were widely held to be necessary. There were plenty of musicians widely perceived to be at the top of their game 30-60 years ago who were perceived to have lived pretty pleasant lives.
I agree that triumphing over adversity is something conservatives celebrate in America today. I think you’ll also find it on the left; read Daily Kos for a while, or Salon, and you’ll find all sorts of stories about that sort of stuff, probably more than you’ll find in the conservative media. Their war hero politicians are more likely to be disabled than ours, for instance, because that stuff appeals to them more. It’s true that their struggles against adversity don’t generally include a lot of praise for the deliberate creation of that adversity, but I don’t think many conservatives do, either.
Compared to Kingsman, for instance, in which leftist ideas are explicitly attacked (the youthful recruit is shown to be ignorant and foolish in a number of ways, one of which is his opposition to Thatcher; the genocidal environmentalist ambitions of John Holdren form the central plot, Hollywood and (predominantly) leftist governments are portrayed as populated by terrible people, etc. etc. etc.), this seems like at best a bipartisan celebration of a good idea rather than a condemnation of more typical music study environments. Incidentally, the higher levels of musical academia tend to be pretty intense; I don’t think that Fletcher’s fellow teachers are awarding prizes for participation. Fletcher’s not properly compared with a kindergarten teacher, but with a demanding but not homicidal professor.
Good review. There are some things that require a very high level of skill. For those things even a self-motivated kid needs to be pushed, prodded, kicked and taught to pick himself up after being knocked down. A good teacher/coach of a kid with the natural ability to be among the best will know what buttons to push. It may or may not seem abusive to someone not at that level, but it’s not.
If you’re just going to be very good, then it’s probably not necessary for the teacher/coach to make this much of a commitment to excellence. But if the potential for greatness is there, then the teacher is derelict if he doesn’t do everything he can. It has always been true and always will be.
I’ve been wondering about this one. I put it in my Netflix queue before it came out on dvd intending to see it soon. Then looking at the reviews on the site there were quite a number of them who didn’t like it, and basically described it thus: “the performances were really good, but so what? The message seems to be that that kind of abuse is okay because it made someone perform better.” The next day I mentioned this to my friend, not knowing he had just seen it, and he said the same thing.
Now I think I should see it just for my own opinion and maybe to read this whole post, most of which I had to skip.
I really recommend Locke, my favorite movie of 2014, so far. A great, novel idea – the entire film takes place in a car ride with a series of phone conversations – with a great performance from Tom Hardy, and really good moral themes.
It’s much more ambiguous than that. I don’t think the movie ever endorses Fletcher’s approach, and even the question of Andrew’s success as a result of it is left as an open question.
So, in other words, Fletcher redefines talent to include “enough arrogance to put up with any amount of abuse without being discouraged”? OK…
It’s not the weirdest thing to think. After all, a person with great talent who is easily discouraged is at serious risk of never making anything of that talent (yet even putting it that way suggests that talent and “not being easily discouraged” are in fact separate things). Unfortunately, becoming discouraged in the face of discouragement is eventually the rational thing to do. We have a name for people who never get discouraged, no matter what kind of discouragement reality throws at them: delusional.
I’m only a moderately talented amateur in the musical world, but I have had the pleasure of occasionally working with a few teachers who’ve also nurtured great talent. Sure, they’ve had a reputation for being demanding and even severe at times – but also kind. One in particular improved his teaching style over time by becoming less passive-aggressive, not more. (Even his most professional students noticed the improvement.) I get suspicious, therefore, when cruelty or unkindness is held up as proof of how demanding a teacher is.
I will note, though, that there may be a gender difference at work here. As the best conductor I ever worked under observed after long experience conducting separate men’s and women’s choirs:
“When I yell at the men, they always get better. When I yell at the women, they always get worse. Men have unwarranted self-confidence going for them, but with women, it’s unwarranted self-doubt.”
I think this movie’s message might resonate with a lot of conservative men because conservative men are even more confident than the average man. No wonder such men recall the teachers that busted their balls the most fondly – a teacher that busted their balls is exactly what they needed. That doesn’t mean it will work for every talent, though.
I loved this film. I would never subject myself to the kind of treatment Fletcher doles out. But then, Nieman did volunteer for it. This band was not a requirement to be at that school. He knew Fletcher’s reputation. He came back day after day even after witnessing some incredibly cruel treatment of others, even after Fletcher insulted Nieman’s family in the most graphic and personal ways.
Ultimately, the treatment, sadistic and bullying as it is, is not meted out to a captive audience as in a public school, or as it would be to draftees in the military. If you ask for it, it is hard to justify complaining about it.
I thought the movie was pretty good, have mixed thoughts on the pros and cons of aggressive training such as the film lionizes, but definitely found Nieman’s character… not at all likable. That doesn’t necessarily make the movie bad, but the character really did seem like a jerk, and I didn’t see much moral growth in him throughout the movie. He cares about personal success and not much else. Discouragingly, he doesn’t even seem to have that much dispassionate love for music per se.
Whether Nieman ought to complain is less the issue than whether we ought to admire Fletcher. There are plenty of people who get themselves into abusive relationships that sound a lot like this. We don’t have to demand that the relationship be banned to say that we don’t admire the abuser, even when the victim is consenting.
Just a quick correction: I meant “sadist,” not “masochist.” I got my depravities mixed up.
kylez: I haven’t seen Whiplash yet either, but I have seen Locke, and I thought it was great. I watched it on John Podhoretz’s recommendation from the GLOP podcast.
Wow. Seriously? I thought that was appalling. Here’s my synopsis: “This breakup really has nothing to do with you, it’s about me. Because if I stay with you you might want me to think about something besides me, and when you’re me, there’s nothing more important than me. In conclusion, me.”
You care more about your musical career than about romance? Fine. Maybe you could pretend to care about somebody else for a good three to five minutes, long enough to break up with them gracefully?
I think you’re missing the point. Yeah, the kid has no social graces & it seems it’s because of the way he was brought up–just look at his father. Notice the absent mother. It’s true he does not seem able to love or to be loved. If you think that’s the crucial thing for people, you might not appreciate the story, I guess. Being human seems to mean doing something great for the kid. & he knows he’s got it in him. That possibility is threatening to take over his life. Thinking of people as vaguely inhuman or not really worth the time or bother seems to be implied in all thinking about greatness. It is always leading up to inegalitarian politics. The circumstances picked for the kid are there to show that development without any social graces to conceal it.
I’m curious about this film. What dissuades me from watching it (for a price) is the apparent agreement that not a single main character is actually likeable.
Just watch the trailer–that’s about as much fun as it gets. I guess people have seen it because it’s not a story one sees often. I think there is a thrill to the teacher’s aggression–these days everyone always says, be nice, but people get a sense that that cannot be all there is…
I wasn’t surprised to see mention of the military in Tom’s review and the comments, as Whiplash immediately recalled for me Lou Gossett, Jr.’s also Oscar-winning performance as Gunnery Sergeant Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman. Though the protagonists have different goals (Zack Mayo never expressed a desire to be the greatest Navy pilot who ever lived), they were both poised for success (getting into Shaffer Conservatory or OCS isn’t easy), but easily discouraged, and needed to be pushed, harshly, into realizing their potential.
Tom’s exactly right that harsh treatment of young adults, be they college students or military recruits, is often necessary to turn them into high-achieving adults. I’ll bet people with experience could confirm that professors at the Juilliard, coaches at Division I schools, or instructors at top law schools push their charges in similar ways to Fletcher.
As a graduate of Navy OCS myself, I saw a lot of verisimilitude in Foley’s character, and could immediately identify with what Fletcher was trying to achieve as well. Both movies teach that real achievement is hard and requires overcoming sometimes painful adversity. It’s a sad comment on our “participation medal” culture that this could be construed as a conservative sentiment, but I agree that it is.
Well that’s one way to see it, but that wouldn’t be a reason to *applaud*, for Heaven’s sake!
I see what you’re saying, but again, it was particularly damning in my mind that the guy didn’t even particularly seem to love the music. There was no real sign that he took joy in it. Greatness was more of a formal property for him. Which to me shows he doesn’t even have that much appreciation of why human greatness is, well, great.
I’m not applauding, I’m just trying to understand why people–I’d say, especially men–like this. & I remember enough Nietzsche to be more than a little interested, more than a little worried.
I don’t think you’re right about this. You’re talking about a kid who seems always to be listening to music & to be practicing incessantly, who in fact loves doing it so much that he becomes reckless. I have no idea what you mean by formal here. This kid may be living in a fantasy, but it is one of desire, not reputation or theory or what have you.
I would say this, he clearly does not think about music. No Plato nor no contemplation here.
I’d add a thing–I have thought about this movie rather more than I usually do, because it’s a movie about a young man who needs a hero, & all he’s got’s a dad. I like writing about movies that appeal to manliness & education. I think the way the story is written is supposed to show you in the character of the teacher something inchoate in the soul of the student.
Maybe you should ask yourself if you see a lot of fun in a boxer’s face in the fight, or in fact in any kind of terribly intense striving. I think the kid is thinking, being is striving.
I agree that he is shown tolerably well to be trespassing unwritten laws in his social intercourse–but I think he goes much farther. It’s interesting that this should happen in liberal America. That that teacher should be at what some might call an elite institution.
Do you know how kids are always told, kids are the future, you’re tomorrow’s leaders? This kid maybe never heard it, but he believes it.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I, like Titus, find your expectation that joy should be the inevitable result of love a bit odd. Inevitable in the course of eternity, when we are purged of all shortcomings and see God face to face, OK. But here on earth it is not inevitable.
It simply isn’t all that odd to find musicians who appear to take no joy in their abilities, even though they desperately love music itself. They take no joy in their own talents because they realize their talents do not yet express the music perfectly. They cannot forgive themselves for falling short of the perfection they sense the music could be.
Now, I make no claim that this level of perfectionistic despair in the face of one’s own very real talents is healthy, admirable, or even productive. It’s not. It’s a character flaw and a recipe for burning out an outstanding talent before its time. Whatever short-term fire might be lit under someone by appealing to hypercritical perfectionism, the human heart is not built for endless self-disappointment. At some point, if you can’t tell yourself, “Good job!” when you’ve actually done a good job, you’re just setting yourself up for failure.
Nonetheless, even if we recognize the problems with perfectionism, I think most of us ought to be able to sympathize with it, especially where desire to serve a beloved discipline (like music) is concerned. Most of us must know that, “Dammit, I was two cents flat on that high note. Now the recording is ruined. Ruined!” is the kind of reaction a sensitive musician might have. Not a productive reaction, but a real, human one.
Ma’am, I treasure this rare, unexpected agreement. I have reason to fear you will regret it later, but I cannot help either the now or the later.
When we are moved or moving ourselves with purpose, we have an unforgiving standard of judgment. When we act, seeing what is around us is no longer sufficient, we want success & dread or contemn failure. This kind of pragmatic attitude requires a great focus. Much is lost & many are damned thereby, I daresay. But without it, achievement of any great thing may simply be impossible.
When I play my own music, I don’t look particularly happy or excited about it. It’s not because I don’t enjoy it or because I’m thinking how imperfect or mediocre the song is (though that too, sometimes). It’s simply that my face becomes less expressive the more I concentrate on something; and because my relationship with music is rarely flippant.
This makes sense. Being only an amateur myself, I perform with the best musical expression if I “turn off emotion”. This is not ideal in terms of showmanship – in fact, my showmanship stinks. The typical audience member expects to see a performer, not a musician, and if you can’t connect with the audience, sell them whatever beauty you’re capable of creating, that’s a grave defect.
But the luxury of being an amateur and not having to make a living at it is being able to focus on what you can do to approach excellence (if only fleetingly) rather than must do to attract attention. I am fortunate, given my limitations, to have any opportunity to brush excellence, however briefly. Someday, perhaps, I might learn to make music personal again, giving those willing to listen to me the “human interest” element they expect from performers, without that personal element wrecking everything. But for now, the less the music I perform is about me, the better – even if it’s my own composition.
John Tavener once marked a piece “without emotion”. Not “allegro” or “maestoso” or anything like that. Just “without emotion”. It was quite a relief to see that marking in a widely-published piece!
You are easy to play Devil’s Advocate with ;-)
I don’t expect to regret the agreement. Disagreements are easier to find, but it would be shocking if we didn’t basically agree on a lot of stuff.
I urge you to see it. Maybe the characters aren’t likable in the usual cinematic sense, but the movie is powerful and unforgettable. It is truly remarkable that this movie was made. A musician (I’m not one) should find it even more meaningful. It is a study of character and character flaws. It gives one a whole lot of food for thought. The fact that neither of the main characters is entirely the “good guy” makes for a much more realistic story.
The acting, by J.K. Simmons as the teacher, Terence Fletcher, is easily the most affecting performance I’ve seen in years. Rarely does an actor inhabit a role so convincingly.
Finally, by not going to see it soon you run the risk of finding out too much about it before you do see it. That would be a real loss.
Well, how can I reject the advise of so many different Ricochetti? Okay, I’ll see it.
There is no way to break up with someone gracefully. While I do think you can have your cake and eat it to, I think at the character’s age he was making his best decisions. Relationships at that age tend to be a waste of time, unless she would be in it for the long haul and then she wouldn’t have let him go so easily.
I don’t get this. It costs like 3 -5 bucks to rent the movie. Why do characters need to be likable? This isn’t a comedy.
She’s just a nice girl. The future is not a plan or design for her. In the story, she shows you the difference between democracy & whatever the kid wants. She wants to be free, she has no planned future, & senses that commitment to one thing takes away freedom. Not knowing what to do with one’s life is the democratic way–it allows so many different things to come & go.
Even Schindler’s List has characters to root for.
Do you know the old Rex Harrison quip, The sound of music was the only time he rooted for the Nazis?