Whiplash. Whew!

J.K. Simmons is a gem of an actor. He deserved that Oscar, if only for turning his film, television and public image of "the nice guy" on its head. And, his intensity was, to me, attractively masculine, and hard for me not to admire.



But this movie just plain disturbed me. No, not exactly that, exactly this:  It put me in a two hour state of cognitive dissonance.  There is no way in  H-E-double sticks that this sort of so called teacher would be allowed to function anywhere in the twenty first century. Maybe he would have fit nicely, and even then it would have been a stretch, into the form of authoritarianism, a nice word for "abuse" that existed prior to the revolutions of the 1960s. He is not merely manipulative of his charges, young men who wish to be jazz musicians like the greats of days gone by, like Charlie Parker (aka "The Bird"), but he is verbally and physically beyond the pale. I mean, he is just one step away, and a very short step, from making these kids "assume the position" and using a cane. He slaps students. He calls them names that were schoolyard cruel even before the enlightenment of political correctness. He throws chairs (in emulation of an apocryphal story about Parker). Oh, he does get fired, but it takes a great long time and he remains a well regarded role model for the kids that were terrified of him.

I had heard only good things about the film and I wondered if what I was feeling had been the subject of any comments by internet reviewers.  It was. And, some pointed out that the ending, where the student finally conquers the wall of pain imposed from within and without to perform flawlessly, was simply ridiculous.

If this type of teacher is working anywhere in the United States in any kind of program for any kind of skill intellectual or manual, I want to know where he (or she) is.

Why does the character have to be so--vicious-to get the point across? Tour de force of acting for sure, but something in me winced throughout, alternating with the desire to punch the guy in the face. In the real world, this emotional terrorist wouldn't have one person in his class. Except a masochist.

Not that the student, who given his often bleeding hands from practice, was such a prize. He is the perfect masochist for his idol. I guess we have a movie of dueling narcissists, one of whom has the power, and the other of whom does not.

I suppose we could think of this movie as a kind of "Karate Kid" except without one ounce of heart.

The movie put me in mind of my brief music career, albeit hardly as overtly traumatic.  I had two teachers during it. The first was a nun, Mother Regina, herself a creditable pianist, who took me from age 9 to about age 14 through the basics of a baby grand, one each in about four rooms in the old convent portion of my Bronx girls' school. I liked her a lot. With her as my guide, though practice always came hard to me because of my perfectionistic impatience, I thought that maybe it would be a lifelong activity. Then she retired and I became the pupil of Mrs. Cullinan, who along with my mother, had plans of my becoming a virtuoso, whether that was my plan or not. Perhaps it is my imagination, but I seem to remember her mentioning Julliard as a possibility for me. By now, teenage angst had been added to all the childhood angst and practicing became even less attractive. Every year there was a recital and until I was 17 I managed to make a reasonable effort not to embarrass anybody. But that last year, I told Mrs. Cullinan and my mother that I did not wish to participate in the recital because I simply had not practiced enough and, since we had to play without the music in front of us, I was not satisfied I would remember the pieces well enough. My mother apparently deferred to Mrs. Cullinan and Mrs. Cullinan was not going to relieve me of the public appearance.

The Mount Auditorium was pretty well full.  It was probably the second or third of the pieces that it happened. I could not remember the next portion of the piece. Some poor little girl was tasked with bringing me my music so I could make the best of a now shameful moment. I remember to this day the click-click-click of her heels as she made her interminable journey to me. I never looked in her direction. Had I done so I would have run from the room.

The prim and proper Mrs. Cullinan, whose teaching talent I will admit today did not seem to match that of my prior nun-instructor, ended the proceedings by thanking the gathered and noting pointedly that it was clear who had practiced and who had not. I was defeated. There was the coup de grace. I might as well have gone in without telling her I hadn't practiced and asking to be relieved since I received the same level of remonstration. I don't know what my mother thought of the comment, but my father was outraged. One of Mrs. Cullinan's adult daughters apologized to him for her mother's action. That was the last time I played in public. A fear of making mistakes became a full blown phobia. Over the next years my finger memory faded on pieces I had known, and my desire to learn new ones became perfunctory at best.  I cannot imagine what I would have ended up doing had I a teacher like the one in Whiplash. Oh, I take it back, I can imagine. I'd be the student off stage that committed suicide, just like in the movie. 

The film posits the question of whether what J.K. Simmons character does is valuable, or efficient in weeding out the truly brilliant from the rest, the competent, the barely competent or the dilettantes? The truly gifted and driven will push through it all is one view. Another view is that a sensitive, though gifted, would simply stop doing what he or she loves because of the soul murder. The really sensitive, or psychologically disabled, will kill himself.

But on a less dramatic scales, even when Mrs. Cullinan upbraided me, purportedly anonymously, although I was the only student who forgot her piece, did she contribute to my final decision not to continue taking piano lessons?  From my utterly subjective point of view, she did indeed. Perhaps she saved the world from more mediocrity. But to me, whether it be a character or a real person, an adult took advantage, with good intention or ill it does not matter, of the fragility of a child's or young adult's still forming ego.

Maybe in the Marines, where the youngster is going to be going to war, that makes sense. There a life, many lives, will perhaps be saved by separating the worthy from the unworthy, but in matters of culture, or taste, or talent is discipline to be equated with carving up a psyche?

You might not believe it from this reverie, but a part of the cognitive dissonance in watching this movie is that I was also mesmerized. I was mesmerized by the couple of pieces that got played in part or in whole. I was in awe of the idea of such profound talent at young ages. I have always had this little attraction to the drums and I loved the manic riffs. I wondered why I don't listen to jazz more. I used to when I was younger.  I actually thought about buying an electronic 88 key piano. I am still thinking about it now. (As you know my childhood piano which I had brought from place to place without using it bit the dust).

This is a movie I will watch again. So something seemed good in it. Interesting in it. Something sparked in me. But kid, if you meet a teacher like the one in this movie, run. Or call the police.