Brandon Balbin Essay Whiplash

Whiplash is a film about about first year student, Andrew Neiman, who is attending the Shaffer Conservatory, a renowned music school, in hopes to improve his skills and become a virtuoso in jazz drumming. While in school, he meets Terence Fletcher, an infamous professor known for his grueling and often times abusive teaching methods. Fletcher invites Andrew to come to his studio as an alternate for his core drummer. Andrew arrives and begins practicing the song, “Whiplash”, with the rest of the band, however, he struggles to keep up and Fletcher throws a chair at Andrew’s head while performing, and berates him in front of the rest of class.

While at a jazz competition, Andrew loses Carl’s music sheet, the core drummer, music sheet. Unable to play, Fletcher is on the brink of breaking down on the whole band, but Andrew tells him he can play the songs from memory. After a successful performance, Andrew is promoted to core drummer. Soon after however, Fletcher recruits a lower level class drummer as core drummer which infuriates Andrew because he’s much better than him. Andrew goes to extreme lengths to prove that he’s the better of the two, and practiced until his hands would bleed. Fletcher invites the two drummer to the studio to see who can out perform the other. After a lengthy and grueling drum off that lasted until 2AM, Andrew is finally promoted to core drummer.

Andrew and the rest of the band are invited to perform at another competition. While Andrew is on the way to the competition, he gets into a huge car accident, but that doesn’t stop him from rushing to the venue. Andrew is bleeding and clearly unfit to play, but he attempts his best to perform. Fletcher becomes furious at Andrew’s underperformance and berates him. Andrew then begins to attack Fletcher in front of the crowd, and because of this, is later dismissed from Shaffer Conservatory.

It later told that one Fletcher’s former students committed suicide due to his teaching methods, and Andrew is asked on the behalf Casey’s parents to testify against him. Andrew agrees and Fletcher is fired from Shaffer Conservatory.

Months after Fletcher’s dismissal, Andrew finds him playing with a band at a local bar. Him and Fletcher have a talk, and he explains to Andrew the reason why he’s so tough on his students is because he felt any other way only made people okay players and he wanted to push people to the point of greatness. Andrew his later invited by Fletcher to play with his band at the JVC Jazz Festival, an opportunity only offered to the best players. Andrew agrees.

When Andrew is performing, he realizes that Fletcher lied about the songs they were going to perform, and he tells him he knows that he testified against him. As a way of revenge, he wanted Andrew to fail in front of the audience so ruin his career. After a terrible start, Andrew begins to play Caravan while Fletcher is talking to the audience, and he cues in the rest of the band to follow his lead. Realizing that Andrew is excelling, the movie ends with Fletcher guiding him to the end of the performance.

Promising, Tough, Extreme, Push, Greatness

This movie is about the relationship between a promising student and his tough teacher, and the extreme lengths at which someone is willing to push another so that they can become great and excel at their craft.