Whiplash is a powerful movie. Period. It’s the eye of the storm and the destruction that it causes. It’s the unmaking of a character and his making. Done in an unflinchingly brutal manner, the movie portrays a natural impulse, an inner voice, that exists inside each one of us. I see Fletcher as an embodiment of that voice - that tells us that we’re not good enough; that we need to try harder, work harder, and come the closest we can to perfection. Because being anything of “enough” is simply unacceptable.
The movie cradles the relationship between Andrew and Fletcher in more ways than one. Each time Andrew and Fletcher step into a frame, it feels as if you’ve stepped into another world. It’s the perfect crime that the director, Damien Chazelle, has created for them. And it remains breathtakingly accurate inside and out. To watch it is to feel the ethos of personal upheaval and the destruction of the self crack the surface of the earth.
Does what goes on inside an artist’s mind ever fully requited? As if hope has finally crawled into the body of fear and bled it to death. Whiplash has invented such a malignant breed. With soul-crushing acting, the movie weaves itself into a fabric so real and impassioned and unreasonable that it shows every bit of skin.