One World Cinema

“Whiplash” was screened to a sophisticated audience at Alice Tully Hall as part of the prestigious New York Film Festival this past Sunday night, and received a standing ovation. It has also been shown at Sundance and Cannes, 2014.

Terence Fletcher, played by actor, J.K. Simmons, is a jazz conductor, who makes the nuns who used to hit their students with measuring rulers when they misbehaved in Catholic schools during the 1950’s, seem like angels.

As a music instructor at Shaffer Conservatory of Music in Manhattan, the top music school in the country, Terence Fletcher is authoritarian, militaristic, demanding, unconventional, violent, sadomasochistic, and downright, abusive towards his musical orchestra and students who are preparing for competitions around the area. If the student was lagging behind, he would often get close up to a students face, and violently remark, “I will NOT have you screw up MY band!” If the student didn’t know if his instrument was out of tune, he was sent home. If a student wasn’t performing to Terence’s satisfaction, he would replace them with another eager musician. Terrence would also often remind his class of a jazz teacher who threw symbols at his students to demand the best out of them, and one of them went on to become a jazz legend.

Fear and dread were on the faces on many of the students, but one jazz drummer, Andrew Neyman (played by Miles Teller), was determined to see it through with the hopes of being the next jazz great. Putting aside things that most college aged men enjoy (parties, sports, and girls), he practices non-stop and keeps going even through every obstacle.

Will he make it through the cruelty, and bloody palms and knuckles?

One World Cinema
http://1worldcinema.com

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