WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!
Whiplash (2014) – 9/10 – Captivating & inspirational story of grasping your dreams with grit & grind
What a movie. What an enchanting experience! In my review, I will focus on the philosophical and human perspectives.
I didn’t think I would enjoy it when I first saw the plot tagline, but it’s about much more than drumming. It’s a deep, subtle movie about one mentor using crazy tactics to push his pupil to greatness. To me, it shows you need to fail in life before you succeed, and you need stubborn grittiness. You have to be extremely stubborn each time you fail and to triumph over each challenge you face in life. You might sweat, you might bleed, you might lose sleep, you might even lose some of your humanity in the process, but damn it give it everything you have. Figure out what drives you, inspire yourself, work at it, be passionate, believe in yourself when nobody else will, fight for your dreams because no one else will. Only you can take the bull by its horns, as the saying goes. You might stumble, you might fall but walk if you can’t run, crawl if you can’t walk, bleed if you must, sweat if you have to, but damn it, don’t ever give up on your dream..
As for the ideas in the movie, I want to focus on the music teacher’s controversial approach and the philosophy behind his teachings.. I think the issue was he felt the ends always justified the means. He employed extreme measures to find and build greatness. He became an obsessed jerk to where he lost his own humanity to inspire another. You constantly see anger, passion, jealousy, rage, powerful emotions from a flawed human being. It was almost madness how far he went to fulfill that goal of building greatness.
Was his intention right? I think so, but his path and style were wrong. As we noticed, a former student of his killed himself because he felt he would never amount to much. As a teacher, you can’t pressure your students to the point where it’s either reach greatness or give up altogether. You have to inspire greatness rather than forcefully manufacture greatness if there is no desire to be had from the pupil. His approach was certainly not without significant flaws.
What was his belief? Well, his world view, whether we liked it or not, was that greatness can only be built if you put your heart, mind and soul into some talent and push yourself to the absolute limit. Only by surpassing that limit can you reach the pinnacle of greatness. You should never stop ‘there’ but continue to push yourself beyond ‘there’.
He used a few examples – he mentioned Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, a couple of other elite musicians, etc. What if they had just stopped ‘there’ and not pushed themselves even further? They would still be good musicians, sure, but not all-time legends. It’s all about not selling yourself short. Everything else in life, to him anyway, was superficial and simply something that must be tossed aside. I disagree with that, but not entirely. He has a completely valid point – if you enjoy doing something and want to pursue that craft, don’t just pursue it to be good. Pursue it to be GREAT! Don’t ever accept mediocrity from yourself and push yourself constantly to be even greater.
My issue was with how he approached it. He was very much demeaning and dehumanizing. You could see his students bleeding and in severe pain at times. He didn’t care and kept pushing them to the edge of sanity.
Powerful movie once you reflect on it and the ideas it portrays. The music teacher was a jerk, but you can tell he had the right intentions. I was silent and shaking at the end when everything came together at once. Spectacular movie that I feel tells you more about yourself than the drummer. Did I mention it only had a $3 million budget?
