excessively success-driven story...so little about feel and art...

Rating: 2/10 (29 December 2015)

I'm one of the few who found this movie captivating, but terribly WRONG in terms of concept, approach and, let's say, philosophy...and, by the way, I am a drummer myself. In Whiplash, it's all about success, about ambition, about manic ambition, and very little about feel and art. I hate the fact that music is stripped down to the almighty American cliché of "working hard in order to succeed", the "no pain no gain thing", in a excessive and inappropriate hardcore manner, I would say. My friends, music is art and art is about feel! When I see Whiplash, I tend to see no difference between succeeding as a lawyer, as an economist or whatever, and succeeding as a musician, namely a drummer. I fear that young drummers who see Whiplash will understand that if your hands are not full of blood after you exercise, then you're not doing it right... The terrible drive to succeed creates a young drummer who is not an artist, but a maniac and near-monster. He rarely speaks with other musicians, he rarely improvises, he rarely "lets loose" of his feel, he just has to play "faster, faster, faster" and identically like in famous jazz numbers like "Caravan". When his pathway to success is cut down by his violent conflict with his teacher, a conflict that turns physical, he even denies his passion for drumming and takes his Buddy Rich poster down...something I would describe as a "sacrilege", as a treason to art and a slavery to success. He doesn't find peace and pleasure in just drumming on his own, in developing his own "thing", whether it be slower or clumsier than Buddy Rich's...he exercises to bleed, to be faster, to correspond to other people's criteria and value systems, so TO SUCCEED, which is a thing that has to do with the outside world, with some artificial things, with ego, with stardom. The boy has little feel, he is so small as an artist and so big as a fighter, and he has a very weak artistic conscience: he has to be pushed by his teacher in order to get better, he has to be motivated in a hardcore way...The teacher himself dismisses the self-motivating artistic ego, because his philosophy is to force the boy to do better, even if the ways are brutal. And we are talking about JAZZ, a musical genre where people find grace, elegance, generosity, improvisation and pure love of music (in terms of sound). There is no grace in Whiplash, just manic drive for becoming a better "drumming robot", and a successful drummer, of course...The boy becomes "motivation beast" when, at the end of the movie, he finds out that a guy from Lincoln Center will be in the crowd, giving him exposure for a possible job in Wynton Marsalis' Big Band Orchestra. He unleashes a terrific drum solo but destroys the band's performance, so he can be noticed...it's all about him and his drive to succeed...music is always in the background. This approach would be better suited for, I don't know, more visceral genres of music such as punk or heavy metal but, in my humble opinion, is not suitable to jazz. In fact, I see it as a disgrace to the values of jazz music. On the other hand, I am not a jazz musician but just a music enthusiast and free-time drummer, and I fear that the reality may actually be close to what can be seen in Whiplash...and that would be very sad for music. I myself value more personal, artistically- driven and feel-based music, a display of the artist's sensibility and ability to improvise...ahead of the showoff in terms of pure technical skill, and the endless chase for more beats and actions per minute. Steve Gadd is a great example (in drumming) for what I'm saying here. Whereas in guitar, I think that Whiplash would create another Steve Vai, whereas David Gilmour, Eric Clapton or Mark Knopfler would have probably quit teacher Flether's "military service".