Summary
During the break, Andrew takes some notes on his music in preparation. In the hall, Fletcher pulls him aside and asks him whether his parents are musicians. Andrew tells him that his father is a high school teacher and a writer, and that his mother left when he was a baby. Fletcher tells him, “You know, Charlie Parker became ‘Bird’ because Jones threw a cymbal at his head, see what I’m saying?” Fletcher tells Andrew that he needs to relax and not worry about “what the other guys are thinking,” and tells Andrew that he’s there for a reason. He makes Andrew say, “I’m here for a reason.”
Andrew returns from break and takes his place at the drums. They play “Whiplash” again. “Just do your best,” he tells Andrew and they begin to play. For a moment, Fletcher really praises Andrew’s playing, but when they hit a spot that he cannot quite play, Fletcher stops him and they play it again. Andrew cannot get the tempo and Fletcher has him stop and start many times until it seems like Andrew finally gets it. Suddenly, Fletcher throws a chair at Andrew, but he dodges it.
Fletcher asks Andrew whether he was rushing or dragging, and yells at him to start counting. As Andrew counts, Fletcher slaps him in the face every 4 beats. “Now, was I rushing or was I dragging?” Fletcher asks Andrew. When Andrew finally tells him that he was rushing, Fletcher screams, “So you do know the difference! If you deliberately sabotage my band, I will fuck you like a pig.” Fletcher continues to berate Andrew, calling him a “retard” and asking him to read the tempo correctly. When Andrew begins to cry, Fletcher makes Andrew tell the whole band that he’s upset, louder and louder. Fletcher walks away, telling Andrew to practice harder. The other drummer sits at the drum set and they play the song again.
As he sits in a room at school, Andrew looks down at his phone as his father calls. He does not pick up, but goes and practices his music. We see him practicing, then lying on his mattress on the floor listening to “Whiplash.” At the end of one of his practice sessions, Andrew looks down and realizes his hand is bleeding. He plays harder and faster than before, bleeding even more.
The scene shifts and we see Andrew having pizza with Nicole. Andrew comments on the song that’s playing in the pizza place—“When I Wake”—and the couple laughs awkwardly. “You know, whenever I saw you at the theater, your eyes were glued to the floor,” Nicole says to Andrew. When Andrew tells her that his father often says that he has trouble making eye contact, Nicole commiserates by telling him that her mother always criticizes her “big chin” and that her mom wanted to be an actress when she was younger. Andrew asks Nicole what she wants to do professionally and she tells him she goes to Fordham and doesn’t have a major yet. As Andrew presses her about why she chose Fordham, Nicole gets prickly and asks him why he chose Shaffer. “It’s the best music school in the country,” he says, plainly. There is an awkward silence, and Nicole tells him that she doesn’t like Fordham very much, that she feels out of place because she’s from Arizona. Andrew can relate, and tells her that he doesn’t think anyone at Shaffer likes him very much, but he doesn’t care.
“I feel really homesick sometimes,” Nicole tells him, before adding, “It kind of pisses me off when people pretend that they’re not, in college.” Andrew laughs and admits that he still goes to the movies with his dad, as Nicole lightly presses her foot against his.
The scene shifts to the “Overbrook Jazz Competition.” Andrew stands at the edge of the room as his bandmates prepare for the competition. Looking out into the hall, Andrew sees Fletcher talking to a man and his young daughter. Fletcher is kindhearted and gentle as he talks to the girl, asking her if she’ll play piano in his band when she gets older. As Fletcher comes into the room, he yells at the band members, calling them “cocksuckers” and berating their playing.
The band assembles onstage at the competition. When Andrew is slow to set up the music stand, the other drummer tells him to “hurry the fuck up.” We see the judges in the audience as Fletcher takes his place at the conducting stand. The band plays, and Fletcher walks over near the drums.
After they have finished, the drummer hands Andrew his sheet music and tells him to hold onto it for the second set. After putting the drummer’s music on a chair, Andrew buys a soda from a vending machine in the hall. When the drummer comes over and asks for the music, Andrew looks down at where he put it, but it’s gone. When Andrew can’t find it, the drummer becomes livid, screaming at Andrew, calling him a “dumb fuck.”
Back in the practice room, the drummer tells Fletcher what happened, and Fletcher berates him for ever entrusting his music to Andrew before telling him to go onstage. “I can’t go onstage, I don’t know the charts by heart,” the drummer says. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Fletcher says, but the drummer doesn’t know it. “I can,” says Andrew, suddenly, and Fletcher lets him play.
They play the song for the judges and Andrew has improved a great deal. Shaffer wins first place in the competition.
Analysis
In Fletcher’s eyes, his abuse of his students is all in service of their getting better, and is part and parcel of his deep commitment to and love of jazz. In the hall before Andrew’s first rehearsal, Fletcher mentioned a time when a bandleader threw a cymbal at Charlie Parker’s head, claiming that that was what made Charlie Parker such an iconic jazz musician. In Fletcher’s eyes, the abuse that he spews at his players is all part of his plan to make them better at their craft. He believes that only through anger will he convince his players to reach their full potential.
As we see in that first rehearsal, however, Fletcher’s attitude is not just “tough love,” but a calculated drive to unnerve and exert power over his proteges. Minutes after building Andrew up, giving him some encouraging words, and telling him not to worry about what other people think, Fletcher throws a chair at his head and launches into a screaming homophobic and misogynistic monologue about Andrew’s ineptitude and hopelessness as a musician. Not only that, but he makes reference to the family dynamics about which Andrew just opened up in the hall, talking about Andrew’s parent’s divorce and his father’s failed career as a writer.
In humiliating Andrew, Fletcher tests whether Andrew is really invested in becoming a better musician. By referring to and emasculating Andrew’s father, Fletcher takes his father’s place, becoming a surrogate paternal figure for Andrew to impress. Interestingly enough, it works, and Andrew declines a phone call from his father in favor of practicing his music until his hands bleed. Rather than feeling crushed by Fletcher’s attitude, Andrew opts to take it as a challenge, which in turn means neglecting some of the fixtures of his personal life.
In the midst of Andrew’s improvement as a drummer, he goes on his date with Nicole, and they find some common ground as well as some incompatibilities. When Andrew mentions that his father has commented on his inability to make eye contact, Nicole confides that her mother is critical of her chin. The two young people share the experience of feeling needlessly criticized by the adults in their lives, but Andrew doesn’t dare mention the abuse he has suffered from Fletcher. Indeed, part of what separates Nicole and Andrew is his single-minded ambition. In contrast to Andrew, who wanted to go to Shaffer simply because it was the best, Nicole has not picked a major and feels adrift at her college.
While Andrew and Nicole can connect about the fact that they both can feel homesick and out of place at their respective colleges, Andrew approaches the challenge with gusto when he offers to play in the band competition. Having lost his fellow drummer’s music, Andrew offers to sub in for his peer, as he knows it by heart. Fletcher is skeptical that Andrew has improved, but takes a leap of faith and lets him play. Triumphantly, Andrew proves that he can improve, plays admirably, and the band wins the competition. In the face of mistreatment, Andrew gets better, rising to the challenge and working harder than anyone else.
