In every man exists a desire to succeed, and the room for personal interpretation and realization in this pursuit is undoubtedly a great driving force in many of society’s greatest accomplishments. However, the visibility and collective appreciation of these accomplishments hinge on how such interpretations and realizations intersect with the definition and understanding of success. No movie investigates this idea as profoundly as Damien Chazelle’s 2014 American drama film Whiplash, in which jazz drummer Andrew Neiman seeks to learn exactly what success means to him. 

While Andrew may be the main character of Whiplash, he is not a source of philosophical conflict in the film but rather the object through which this conflict is observed. In fact, almost every other character exists to support a given philosophical framework, and the combined forces of these frameworks simultaneously converge on Andrew, creating the central conflict as a whole. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the most fundamentally compelling character of the film, Terence Fletcher.

Terence Fletcher is the conductor of the Shaffer Conservatory studio band, the top big-band jazz ensemble at a prestigious music school, and his interactions with Andrew serve to communicate a thematically important understanding of success. Fletcher views success as explicitly quantifiable and objective: success is not to simply be good, it is not to be great, it is not to be happy or content, but it is to be the best, to the detriment of all else. Fletcher lives to experience the mastery of craft and to reach impossible perfection; through his work at Shaffer Conservatory, he aims to inspire that drive in his students, no matter the cost. The unfortunate output of such a belief system? Abuse. Fletcher routinely yells at, insults, degrades, humiliates, and even physically harms his students. The scenes of Fletcher’s abuse can be, at times, hard to watch. He pushes unrealistic expectations on Andrew, along with everyone else in the studio band, and punishes them immediately and harshly upon their expected failures. Midway through the film, it is revealed that one of Fletcher’s former students had died in a car crash, only for it to later be explained that he had actually committed suicide, citing emotional distress that began during his time as a student; Fletcher had lied about his cause of death. The conductor’s behavior is understood to be overwhelmingly harmful to those who experience it, to the extent that even Fletcher himself acknowledges this fact. His attitude towards success is portrayed as explicitly damaging to those around him, and Andrew’s attempts to appease him and his eager pursuit of validation serve only to cause more harm.

Those around Andrew exist in a very different world from Fletcher. His dad is a failed writer turned high school teacher, and his girlfriend is an undeclared major student at a local college. The movie portrays both characters as embodying normality, juxtaposed with the grandeur of Shaffer Conservatory and Fletcher to represent mediocrity in two distinct ways. Andrew’s dad had dreams and aspirations but failed to achieve them. He did not reach the vague measure of success required of him and resorted to a calm and quiet living. Andrew’s girlfriend, on the other hand, does not have desires or aspirations, at least not yet. She does not know what she wants and has no clear direction or ambitious goals set. Fletcher’s manipulative pull serves to isolate Andrew from the outside world and move him away from the normal, the mundane. Throughout the film, he views his father as weak, complacent, and as the failure the movie outlines him as. He breaks up with his girlfriend as he views her as unimportant, an object merely impeding his dreams. Andrew not only suffers psychological, emotional, and physical abuse, but his drive to prove himself to Fletcher becomes a monomaniacal pursuit, pulling him away from every aspect of his life that is not drumming and every person that is not Fletcher.

The movie ultimately ends in a scene of glorious release as Andrew, against all odds, displays absolute mastery of his craft for all to see. It is a beautiful moment of triumph punctuated by a shared smile between Andrew and Fletcher in the final moments of the film. This indicates that Andrew has not only achieved the ambiguous goal of “success” as Fletcher described it but that he finally understands and appreciates Fletcher’s methods. Then, the credits roll.

Hold on. Surely, the movie is not directly endorsing Fletcher’s ideologically motivated systematic abuse of those whom he holds direct power and authority over. Right? How can the movie condemn the damages of an obsessive pursuit of success while celebrating the success that comes out of that exact pursuit? This contradiction is no accident. Damien Chazelle stated that when writing the film, “the ending had always veered a little more on tragic than triumphant” and that it surprised him to find that audiences saw the ending as more triumphant than he had intended. Whiplash was never meant to end with the answers to the questions it posed but to land somewhere in the middle. The story of Andrew Neiman is simultaneously a tale of triumph and tragedy. It is a tale of absolute success and utter failure. 

Ultimately, Whiplash portrays the battle between two different understandings of success. Fletcher will berate and abuse hundreds of musicians in order to find the perfect specimen and is willing to discourage all who step foot in his band from ever playing again in order to find he who will not be discouraged. His ideology is most succinctly explained through what is, perhaps, the film’s most famous quote- “There are no two words in the English language more harmful than good job.” On the other hand, everyone else in Andrew’s life questions his motives, urging him to value the people around him and to understand what Fletcher is doing to him. In a family dinner scene, he tells his father, “I think being the greatest musician of the 20th century is anybody's idea of success,” to which his dad replies, “Dying broke and drunk and full of heroin at the age of 34 is not exactly my idea of success.” This is in reference to Charlie Parker, the famous jazz musician and most direct real-life comparison to Andrew. In another interview with Damian Chazelle, he imagines that after the events of the movie, “Andrew will be a sad, empty shell of a person and will die in his 30s of a drug overdose,” a mirroring of the tragic story of Charlie Parker himself.

Whiplash tells a story of the ultimate cost of reaching legendary success. The question left unanswered is, “Was it worth it?”. Would you rather die drunk and full of heroin at age 34 and be remembered forever, or die at 90 surrounded by all of your friends and be forgotten? 

I highly recommend anyone reading this go watch Whiplash for yourself. It is an amazing movie through and through, and the ending scene is easily one of the most memorable bits of film I have ever seen.

Written by Nathan Brooks, Photography: Rayan Syed, Social Media: Kate Puckett, Videography: Antonio Gutierrez