Summary
Andrew goes to the gig at the JVC festival concert. While the other musicians warm up, Andrew looks into the lobby of the venue, a very nice building. His dad walks by and Andrew smiles. Fletcher calls the musicians to assemble, telling the newcomers that “tonight could change your life.” He elaborates that a lot of important people will be in the audience, and that based on tonight’s concert, the musicians could book really prestigious gigs in the industry. “On the other hand, if you drop the ball, you might be looking for another line of work, cause another thing about these cats is: they never forget,” Fletcher says.
The musicians take the stage to applause. Andrew sits down at the drums and looks over at the music on his stand, “Whiplash.” Fletcher comes out to conduct, but first makes a stop at the drum set to tell Andrew that he knows he is the one who got him fired. Andrew looks confused as Fletcher goes to the microphone and announces that they’re going to play a song that Andrew doesn’t know.
Andrew panics as the band prepares to play, realizing that he doesn’t have the sheet music. He begins to improvise something on the drums, but it doesn’t quite work. The bassist asks him, “What the fuck are you doing?” and everyone looks at him skeptically. When the song is over, Fletcher goes over to him and says, “Well, I guess maybe you don’t have it.” As the band begins the next song, Andrew runs offstage, as Fletcher watches, smirking.
As he approaches the door backstage, we see that Andrew’s father has come backstage in the middle of the performance. He gives him a hug. Suddenly Andrew has a change of heart and goes back to the drum set, taking his place for the next songs. As Fletcher announces the next song, Andrew interrupts him to play an impressive groove on the drums. He tells the bass player that he’ll cue him in, and they begin to play “Caravan.” The whole band joins in.
As they play the song, Fletcher walks over to the drum set and tells Andrew he’s going to gouge out his eyes, but Andrew hits the cymbal in such a way that it hits Fletcher in the face. Andrew continues to play, and soon enough Fletcher is smiling about his playing. The lights go down and the song ends, but Andrew keeps drumming. “Andrew, what are you doing man?” Fletcher says, coming over and trying to stop the wayward drummer, but Andrew simply says, “I’ll cue you!” Fletcher nods.
Andrew continues to play, more and more ferociously. From backstage, his father peers through a door, in awe of his son. Fletcher walks over to Andrew as he plays and nods affirmatively. Fletcher then conducts Andrew through an especially impressive fill. Andrew is bleeding on the drum set, Fletcher looks at him and smiles, and they finish the song.
Analysis
The beginning of the final section of the film plays more like a nightmare than a narrative. While real events are taking place, they feel allegorical, larger than life, a distillation of the tension between student and teacher, between amateur and jazz cat. When Andrew goes to the JVC concert, he soon learns that Fletcher knows he is the one who turned him in, and that he is intent on sabotaging the young drummer to get revenge. What Andrew thought was a huge professional opportunity is in fact planned as a moment of humiliation, and he struggles through a song he does not know, before storming off the stage in embarrassment.
Just when it seems like Andrew will lose it all, his desire for vengeance on Fletcher takes hold and he fights for his rightful place at the drum set. As his sympathetic dad hugs him backstage, Andrew realizes that he is not done trying yet, and runs back onstage. Out of his humiliation and sheepish defeat, Andrew accesses an inner righteousness and a pure sense of purpose that he has never yet been able to reach. In this way, Fletcher’s desire to cultivate the next Charlie Parker by humiliating and denigrating his students has really, finally worked, and Andrew is only further motivated by being knocked down so low by his teacher.
The way that Chazelle shoots the final drum solo centers the song around Andrew’s playing. At first, the entire band is playing, but the camera keeps its focus on Andrew, and he effectually dethrones Fletcher as bandleader. So forceful is Andrew’s charisma and skill as a drummer that over the course of the song, he even wins over Fletcher, his greatest detractor. One moment, Fletcher is threatening to gouge Andrew’s eyes out, and the next he is smiling with glee at Andrew’s virtuosic skills. Through music, Andrew is able to triumph.
Indeed, Andrew’s inner fire and desire to drum perfectly spills out of the bounds of the performance and he continues to drum even after the song has ended and the lights have dimmed. So strong is his desire to play and to come out on top that he cannot find an ending for the song. Thus, it is by playing into the margins of the concert, by differentiating himself rather than blending in, that Andrew is able to prove himself as a drummer and as a true jazz musician. His competitive drive kicks into high gear, and jazz becomes an athletic act as much as anything, one that takes stamina (and a dose of mania) to keep going.
Andrew’s drumming at the concert becomes a symbolic act, a moment in which he rises to meet a paternal challenge and proves himself worthy in the eyes of his male mentors, both his father and his instructor, Fletcher. The story of Charlie Parker’s rise to prominence is a story of self-motivation and self-belief in the extreme, in that he came to triumph even after being publicly humiliated. Andrew finds his own crazed inner motivation and self-belief in the final scene, and Fletcher can finally respect his grit and insistence on being the best.
