Summary
We hear a snare drum playing, faster and faster. At the end of a dimly lit hallway, a young man, Andrew, sits at a drum set practicing furiously. Suddenly, an older man, Terence Fletcher, comes in and asks Andrew his name and what year he’s in at the school. He’s a first-year. “So you know I’m looking for players,” Terence says. When Andrew says he does, Terence simply says, “Then why did you stop playing?” Andrew immediately starts playing again and when he finishes, Terence makes fun of him for playing like a “wind-up monkey.” Terence then asks Andrew to play various drum variations and fills one at a time, before leaving abruptly. Text on the screen tells us that we’re at the Shaffer Conservatory of Music in the fall semester.
Andrew leaves the practice building and walks down a city street. A movie theater advertises a movie called Rififi and Andrew goes in and shares a flirtatious moment with the girl at the concessions stand. In the theater, Andrew sits down next to his father, Jim, and tells him about the fact that Terence Fletcher saw him play, and that it didn’t go that well. As the lights dim and the movie begins, Jim tells Andrew that once he’s older he’ll have perspective.
Andrew goes home to his dorm, walking past a college party to get to his room. The next day, Andrew takes his seat to rehearse for an ensemble. He sees a classmate nearby kissing his girlfriend and an expression of sadness and envy passes across his face. The other players greet one another, including another drummer named Ryan. Their instructor enters and wishes them a good morning. They begin to play a song called “Billy’s An.” Suddenly some of the players notice a silhouette in the doorway, which seems to be Terence Fletcher.
Later, Andrew is walking down the hall and looks in the room next door, where another ensemble is rehearsing. As he peeks in, Terence Fletcher, who is directing the ensemble, looks back at him. That evening, Andrew practices more, looking up at a poster of Buddy Rich, a famous drummer. While he is listening to a Buddy Rich CD, Andrew looks over at his drum set with a serious expression.
The next day Andrew plays with his ensemble, but his leader stops them and switches in Ryan for Andrew. All of a sudden, Terence bursts into the room and takes over conducting, listening to each part play. He has Andrew play a double-time swing, but stops him quickly. When he has heard what he needed to hear, Terence asks Andrew to come with him. “Room B16 tomorrow morning,” Terence says in a hushed voice. Andrew sits and smiles to himself.
Later, at the movie theater, Andrew goes up to the concessions stand and asks the girl working if she wants to go out with him. “Please go away,” she says, seriously, and Andrew becomes very embarrassed. As he starts to walk away, she laughs and tells him she’s only joking and introduces herself as Nicole. They arrange for him to pick her up at 7 on Monday to go to pizza, and Andrew leaves, giddy.
The next morning, Andrew oversleeps and rushes anxiously to the room that Terence mentioned. When he arrives, no one is there. When he checks the sign on the door, he sees that Studio Band doesn’t start until 9 and feels confused. A few minutes before 9, students begin to file into the practice room, filling in around Andrew. As an alternate in the band, Andrew is expected to help other musicians. Suddenly, one of the students yells “Milk the cunt” and all of them begin tuning. At 9 o’clock sharp Fletcher comes in the room and all the students stand. He takes his place at the front of the room and opens his music as everyone looks down solemnly at their own. Fletcher glibly introduces Andrew to the rest of the band, then they begin playing a song called “Whiplash.” The drummer yells at Andrew to turn the page. Suddenly, Fletcher stops them and says to one of the trombonists, “That is not your boyfriend’s dick, do not come early.” They begin playing again, but Fletcher stops them when he hears an out-of-tune instrument. He invites the out-of-tune player to identify themselves, but they do not. “Whoever it is, this is your last chance,” Fletcher says, before having each section play individually. When he locates the out of tune trombone, he asks the student if they think they’re out of tune. “Yes,” says the student. “Then why the fuck didn’t you say so?!” Fletcher screams at the student, abusively. Yelling, he sends the player out of the room, eliminating him from Studio Band. When the student has left, Fletcher says, “For the record, he wasn’t out of tune. You were, Ericson. But he didn’t know, and that’s bad enough.” He dismisses them for a break, saying that Andrew will play when they come back.
Analysis
The first shot and scene sets us up for the main thrust of the film’s plot. We hear the drums before we see them. Suddenly, with a cymbal crash, the camera is oriented on a long and dark hallway. At the end of it, Andrew sits practicing. The camera’s orientation at a distance from the room establishes the loneliness of Andrew’s life in conservatory, the single-mindedness that he must possess in order to be a drummer. While everyone else seems to be done for the day, Andrew remains, lit only by stark overhead lighting, just a boy and his drums.
This passion and single-mindedness is recognized not long after. Terence Fletcher, an intimidating instructor at the school, finds him in his solitary practice room and asks him mysterious and manipulative questions just to see if he will respond. As a figure, Fletcher is at once calm and caustic, speaking in a smooth low voice. A true jazz cat, Fletcher is collected and confident, but a tremor of intensity thrums just below the surface. No sooner has he arrived in the practice room than he has moved on, leaving Andrew to wonder what he could have possibly done wrong.
The trajectory of the story is simple, in that it follows a young aspiring musician on his journey to become a better and better drummer. In the beginning, Andrew shows a lot of promise, but has a sometimes-messy style. Fletcher plucks him from his ensemble and invites him to join the Studio Band, a much more high-pressured and prestigious group, which will put Andrew’s skills to the test. Because of this simple narrative structure, the viewer is aligned with Andrew’s plight and invited to take on the priorities of an ambitious young conservatory student. The plot is such that we care about whether Andrew does well, whether he impresses his instructors and his peers.
The calm and caustic attitude of Fletcher is not only the affectation of his mysterious jazz cat persona, but also an abusive structure that he creates in his ensemble. His meanness and abruptness are evident in his first interaction with Andrew, but it is not until the Studio Band rehearsal that we begin to see the true scale of Fletcher’s wrath and power. After he stops the rehearsal and kicks a student out of the ensemble—allegedly for being out of tune—before announcing to the class that the student was not in fact out of tune, we see that Fletcher manipulates and deceives the players to keep order in his ensemble. Clearly, he does not lead through encouragement, but rather through fear-mongering.
The visual style of Whiplash is crisp and cool. The lighting schemes in the various shots are often the impersonal shades of institutional lighting. Whether he is in a practice room, lit by white light from above, or at the movie theater, lit by the concession display case, Andrew finds himself wandering through a public world rather than a personal one. These locations and visual schemes further highlight the ways that Andrew’s role as a musician is to work, to serve a function, and to fit into a group, not to stand out as an individual. At the conservatory, he is replaceable, as indeed everyone is, and he must prove his mettle by fitting in with the dominant ethic, or else he will sink.
