I started writing on this blog back in 2013, at a time when I was shooting for one hundred posts in ten different categories. Times have changed. After writing two posts in 2014, in 2015 I started getting into writing about movies, which I needed to do because I didn’t know how to do it, and which I also needed to do because I didn’t know anything about movies. I don’t disavow everything I’ve written from 2015 and before; there are a few things here and there that I’m not actively down on. What has changed for me as I’ve written more and thought more and, of course, watched more movies is that I’m not susceptible at all to what other people think about a film.

In 2015, I understood that Whiplash was a really exciting newish film, one that was announcing a significant talent in Damien Chazelle, and that I should be on board with it. Thus I wrote a review of the film in which even my initial hesitations about the film are sublimated to the praise that other people gave it. Whiplash is a childish film, written childishly, edited childishly, conceived childishly. Given that Damien Chazelle wasn’t even thirty when the movie was released and had just one other feature under his belt, I’ll grant that “childish” is a little mean. It’s simply an obvious movie, one which does not want to be read at any level beyond the most basic one available, which is to say the level it’s made at.

What works in this movie is not Fletcher mouthing off about the unimpeachable power of Charlie Parker or throwing the chair. What works is this line, a line so perfectly dangerous that it’s uncomfortable just to read it. The Fletchers of the world aren’t really threatening because they’re in better physical shape than the other people their age. Their reputations precede them, but everyone’s had an experience where someone they thought would be imperious and terrible turned out to be a pussycat. (Or maybe we’ve all just seen Annie.) People throw chairs sometimes or have temper tantrums, but a person in a position of authority who needs chairs or tantrums to maintain that authority is as weak as balsa wood ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Fletcher is a paper tiger, and while the movie never really wants to reckon with that reality, the threat lies in his power to do a single thing. He can be disappointed. The kind of kids who populate the school in Whiplash live not merely for acceptance but for adulation. They are used to high praise and anything short of that is a wound. Fletcher’s verbal displays of disappointment, especially when they’re almost polite, are special. They’re like that first awful moment where you’re cutting vegetables and realize you’ve nicked yourself with the knife.