Whiplash is a movie about a college student who has pretty much dedicated his life to drumming. The main character’s name is Andrew and the story follows his journey to getting to where he wants to be in his music career and how far drumming can take him. He goes to a college that has a very big music program and is in the band there. One day as he is practicing his drums a music teacher by the name of Terrence Fletcher walks in. He is a very big name in the town and everyone who knows music knows who he is. Fletcher is the teacher of a Jazz band that is the best in the college and as he walks in and hears Andrew playing he invites him to come practice with the band. When Andrew gets there the next morning he very quickly realizes how harsh it is gonna be because Fletcher is a very very brutal teacher and says a whole bunch of terrible things to his students. He does whatever he can to break them down emotionally because he feels that it helps strengthen them as musicians and pushes them past the limit they want to go. This only motivates Andrew to work harder and he pushes his body way past the limit to make sure that he gets the spot as the lead drummer. There is a scene in this movie where all three of the drummers can’t quite get the tempo right of the song they are playing so Fletcher calls off the rehearsal to the rest of the band until one of the drummers gets it right. He uses very foul language and makes them all work very hard to just get the note down. It ends up taking around three hours and by the end they are all exhausted and sweating and can barely play anything anymore without rest. Andrew gets big cuts in his hands from holding the drumsticks for so long and he bleeds all over the drumset. Fletcher is furious about the whole situation because he thinks that none of them are good enough so he throws the drums and starts breaking stuff. Later on in the movie the other two drummers quit and Andrew and Fletcher get into a very heated argument that ends up with him being kicked out of the band. Andrew’s dad is upset about how he was treated by his music teacher so he sends in a request to have Fletcher fired from teaching the jazz band at that college. The movie then jumps a month and Andrew one day stops by a bar that has live music and Fletcher is playing the piano there. They have a conversation after and they figure out what happened and Fletcher says that he got fired due to a parent complaint and he is now teaching a lower level band and he invites Andrew out to it. At that concert Andrew finds out that Fletcher had set him up for failure and told him lies about what they were playing. Andrew decides to go off the rails and just play the drums for the crowd without anyone else in the band playing. He starts playing and has been going for a while when Fletcher is impressed by it and at this point starts directing him. The movie then cuts off leaving the viewer with the impression of how hard Andrew had to work before he finally got the approval of a very well known teacher. This movie can be compared to a lot of sports movies. Most sports movies show an athlete having to work extremely hard to accomplish their goals and that’s exactly what Andrew had to do. This movie is just different because it was music instead of a sport. When recently rewatching this movie I had to look deeper into it on how it related to my college experience and one thing that I picked up on was how far the teacher went to make sure that the student would succeed. Most of my college professors go to extra lengths to make sure that the students do well in the class and it has been clear to me that they care about what they are teaching. That is something I saw a lot less of in highschool and Fletcher in the movie almost symbolizes the mindset of a passionate professor or teacher in college.
