Whiplash

Andrew is nineteen years old. He wants to be a great jazz drummer. He studies at a famous music school. One day, a teacher called Fletcher lets him join the school's best band. Fletcher makes amazing musicians, but he is also famous for being very cruel.

In Andrew's first rehearsal, he cannot play at the right speed. Fletcher walks over calmly. Then, suddenly, he shouts at Andrew, throws a chair at him, and laughs at him in front of everyone.

After this, Andrew practises alone for many hours, until his hands bleed. His family thinks his cousins' sports trophies are more important than his drumming. Andrew has a girlfriend, Nicole, but he pushes her away. He decides that nothing can be more important than becoming a great drummer.

Fletcher becomes even more cruel. He makes three drummers compete for one place in the band. Andrew practises so hard that his hands bleed. Then, on the night of a big competition, Andrew has a car accident on the way to the concert hall.

He is hurt and bleeding, but he still wants to play. His hands do not work properly. He makes many mistakes, and in front of everyone, he attacks Fletcher. Soon after, the school sends Andrew away.

Some time later, a lawyer visits Andrew's family. A different student of Fletcher's, called Sean, felt very sad and afraid because of Fletcher's teaching, and later died. The school wants to know if Fletcher's cruel teaching caused this. Andrew agrees to talk about what happened to him. Because of this, the school removes Fletcher from his job.

Months later, Andrew is not drumming anymore. He goes to a jazz club and sees Fletcher playing there. They talk, and Fletcher says he really believes that only very hard, cruel teaching can make someone truly great. He invites Andrew to play with his band at a big concert. Andrew says yes.

On stage, Andrew understands that Fletcher knows he was the student who told the truth about him. Fletcher gives him music he has never seen before, so that Andrew will fail in front of everyone — including his own father. Andrew fails, feels terrible, and walks off the stage.

But then Andrew comes back. He sits down at the drums again, without permission, and plays an incredible, powerful solo that he creates himself, right there. At first, Fletcher is angry. But then he starts to help Andrew, guiding him through the music. The film ends with just a look between them — the audience must decide what it means.

Fletcher's hero is a real person: Buddy Rich, a famous and brilliant drummer who really was extremely strict and often cruel to the musicians in his band. This is true and well documented.

But Fletcher also tells a famous story: that a drummer called Jo Jones once threw a cymbal at the head of a young musician called Charlie Parker to shame him, and this made Parker practise and become a genius. This part is not quite true. In real life, in 1937, Jo Jones threw the cymbal onto the floor near Parker's feet — not at his head — as a way to tell him to leave the stage. And Parker did not become brilliant because of that one moment. He became brilliant because he practised for years afterwards, very hard, all by himself.