A Good Look at Bad Teaching

For a former teacher, what is most alarming about the recent American film Whiplash is that it is based on the experiences of writer-director Damien Chazelle with his jazz instructor in the Princeton studio band. Initially the film seems to be following the tried-and-true formula of a martinet who is hated by his charges at first, but really has their best interests at heart. But Whiplash—the title refers to a piece of music played in the film—turns this expectation on its head.

The narrative is told from the perspective of Andrew (played by Miles Teller) a freshman at Shaffer, “the best music school in the country”, who is recruited by Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons) to join his elite studio band. We first see Andrew practising on a drum set at the end of a long corridor. It is late evening. The camera tracks up to him. Cut to Andrew’s point of view, and Fletcher emerges from the shadows to ask a few elliptical questions and briefly listen to him play. Later we find Andrew playing with a second-rate ensemble at the school when Fletcher stalks in to recruit players for his band.

Fletcher is authoritarian and demanding but it is clear he presides over an excellent group of musicians. His teaching methods, however, are appalling. A musician will play a passage and a clenched fist will go into the air, “Not my time!” “Are you or aren’t you out of tune?” Fletcher bellows at one player. After a friendly exchange with the conductor during a break, Andrew finds his confidences shouted back at him as Fletcher abuses him in front of the whole orchestra. “Are you rushing or are you dragging?” he yells. These are brilliantly realised but disgusting scenes for any teacher because they degrade the whole profession. Worse, these antics are based not only on the behaviour of Chazelle’s jazz instructor but also on the conduct of famous band leaders such as Buddy Rich. It is all too true.

Whiplash is a tautly structured film that explores the abusive relationship between Andrew and Fletcher. Like all great villains Fletcher is charismatic and fascinating. The idea for his alarming costume—black T-shirt and pants and heavy shoes—came from Simmons himself. It was Chazelle who directed him to push his yelling and outbursts of rage beyond any kind of limit. There are moments when the character shows a gentler side, but as far as Andrew is concerned they are a trap. Fletcher’s tearful speech about a talented ex-student who has died in a car accident is followed by a brutal audition session in which three musicians compete for the position of core drummer. The only “encouragement” the conductor gives is to exert pressure. At the same time we are never allowed to forget Fletcher’s mastery of his profession.

J.K. Simmons is a trained musician, and as far as I could judge his conducting was spot on. Certainly it was better than the dramatic arm-waving actors playing maestros have usually employed in the past. Miles Teller as Andrew gives a finely etched performance, deftly registering the character’s satisfaction when he wins his place in the band over another player and his cold detachment when he breaks off with his girlfriend because it would interfere with his drumming. Indeed, Teller’s embodiment of the intensity of the effort required in top-class drumming is one of the best things in the film. Teller was a rock drummer but learnt jazz drumming for the movie.

Whiplash does not concentrate exclusively on the school. A few tightly written scenes sketch in Andrew’s relationship with his father, played with gentle understatement by Paul Reiser. In a nice touch he is made a high school English teacher of whom Andrew is slightly ashamed—he first tells Fletcher his father is a writer—but the man is formidable. There is an allusion to his being made teacher of the year and he supports a move to get Fletcher dismissed.

After one last twist of the screw Andrew has attacked Fletcher and been fired from Shaffer. They are approached by a representative of the family of the musician to whom Fletcher had paid tribute. He had hanged himself because of the anxiety and depression that had afflicted him after being in Fletcher’s class. “He’s not going to get away with what he did to you,” Andrew’s father exclaims. The young man agrees to testify.

The resolution seems to be a fantasy the director had when being persecuted by his jazz instructor. Andrew abandons his ambition to be a drummer. For him this is both a tragedy and an escape from an addiction. He encounters Fletcher playing in a bar. Over drinks the now ex-teacher reveals he is no longer at Shaffer. Fletcher tells the poker-faced Andrew that he had tried to push his students beyond what they thought was possible. As he is leaving Fletcher asks him to join a professional ensemble playing at Carnegie Hall.

It is another trap. “I know it was you,” the conductor hisses before starting a number for which he has not provided the music. Humiliated, Andrew leaves the stage, then returns and goes into the drum solo of “Caravan” (one of the pieces they had played in the studio band) and cues in the ensemble. “What are you doing, man!” shouts Fletcher. Grudgingly he begins to conduct.

When Andrew finishes with a spectacular solo in the style of Buddy Rich, Fletcher shows him how to shape the fall and rise of the drumming. At the end he nods his approval. The student-and-teacher relationship is not resolved but it is one of the nicer touches in a film full of good moments, that Fletcher is at last doing what he should have been doing all along—teaching.

I chose to review Whiplash not only because it is a well-made film but because it raises important issues about teaching itself. Most of us have heard the stories of the great conductors—Toscanini yelling at his orchestra during rehearsals, the younger Klemperer’s rages and Furtwangler slapping his musicians. But this behaviour has no place in a classroom of any kind. All the character in the film knows how to do as a teacher, at least until the final scene, is screw up the tension. Some commentators on the film have argued that at least he creates good players. An antidote to these ideas is to watch Daniel Barenboim’s master classes collected with his Complete Beethoven Sonatas on DVD. Certainly, a conversation between one of the great interpreters of Beethoven and a talented young pianist such as Lang Lang is not the same as working in a classroom or lecture hall. But the great strength of Barenboim’s commentary is that he does not impose his interpretation but gently suggests options.

Of course, insistence on students’ personal discipline and inculcating high standards are vital in teaching at all levels. Touches of eccentricity by a teacher can be helpful too, but it should always be a game in which the student is respected.

Fifty years ago I served under an over-anxious headmaster who gave bombastic tirades at nearly every assembly (“If you can’t use the lavatories properly you can do without them altogether”). According to the school counsellor most of the emotional problems in the school were caused by the headmaster’s discipline methods. So the dangers of a monster like Fletcher are only too real.

We can be grateful to Damien Chazelle that he has crafted such an effective cautionary tale. For a young director—twenty-nine when the film opened—it is extraordinary that he and his cinematographer Sharone Meir were able to create such an assured classical style with tightly-framed two-shots for the confrontation scenes intercut with beautifully timed reaction shots by real musicians in the film’s studio band to the drama unfolding in front of them. The jazz sounds splendid and the climactic concert is superbly cut by Tom Cross and timed to the music. Whiplash did not get much of a run theatrically and deserves to be sought out on DVD.