I honestly can’t believe this film is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (or for Best Supporting Actor, for that matter). I can’t believe that critics are falling over themselves to praise it. Whiplash is worse than a really bad movie. It’s a sick, deeply offensive movie, a movie with a black heart. It’s one of those movies that makes you honestly wonder if you should give up on current cinema altogether. It’s a disgusting, stupidly manipulative piece of absurdity – there’s no better way to put it.

Let’s begin with the fact that the entire premise of this movie, and everything that happens in it, is completely untenable and ridiculous. Any band teacher at a major music college who behaved like the drill sergeant in Stanley Kubric’s Full Metal Jacket  would be instantly destroyed. This is not the Marine Corps, and the victims are not jar heads who are being paid to be abused. It’s a college, and young people nowadays are way too pampered, way too entitled, way too connected to information, and way too socially and legally aware – there is no way any of them would put up with this shit for one second. Either someone would film an HD video of this asshole and put it up on YouTube, or someone would go straight to the administration and report “my band teacher called me a cock-sucking faggot, threw a chair at my head, and told me to get my boyfriend’s dick out of my mouth and start playing better.” Either way, the teacher is fired the next morning, and there’s no need for this ridiculous movie. It might also be the case that before either of these eventualities happened some student simply beats the fucking shit out of the guy, right in the practice room, and the whole thing winds up on Worldstar.

So these filmmakers are clearly living in some sick fantasy world where colleges are run like the Marine Corps or the Mafia. They’re also living in a fantasy world where for someone to be a top-notch jazz drummer they have to leave their drum kit drenched, drenched, in their own blood – blood dripping off the cymbals, blood smeared all over every drum head, blood dripping onto the floor, blood splattering onto fellow band mates – I’m talking Texas Chainsaw Massacre blood! They also want us to believe that jazz drummers practice until they’ve worn their hand-flesh straight through to the bone. But this is all completely absurd. People don’t attend jazz clubs to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre – they’d probably throw up, and the band would be fired. And as for practicing until you’ve worn your hands straight through to the bone, no one would ever do this for one simple reason: it’s counter-productive. No one is going to achieve the subtle improvements in their technique necessary to progress from good to great if they are in blinding pain and ripping themselves to shreds! (This film approaches musical technique like Rocky in Rocky IV.) I’m sure they get blisters occasionally, maybe even bad ones – hell, I got blisters occasionally as a semi-serious guitarist – but no one behaves like these suicide-drummers in this film. The film’s one line to try to convince us otherwise is the story of how young Charlie Parker messed up a gig, some band mate threw a cymbal at him in disgust, and as a result he started practicing really hard to get better. Fine, I’m sure he did. But I’m also sure that he did not drink his own blood out of his saxophone every night after practice. Again: counter-productive.

To all this, you may say “what’s the problem with having a film that is not totally realistic – it’s a movie, after all.” I would respond that it might be okay if the film is a comedy, which this film is most definitely not. This is a serious film with a serious message, and the absurd and highly manipulative story must be judged in terms of the message the film is selling. This is where we enter the dark heart of Whiplash. The message of this movie is a defense of the sadistic teacher and his violent, destructive methods. Its premise is that the teacher is right to carry on this way, because he might accidentally beat someone into becoming Charlie Parker. It seems to believe that this is how great musicians are created – some belligerent asshole thrashes them into greatness. And indeed, at the end of the film we are clearly supposed to believe that the teacher’s methods did in fact turn Miles Teller into a Charlie Parker. But his methods did not create a Charlie Parker, of course, because the studio musician that played that awesome drum solo for Miles Teller in the climax scene is probably a fairly normal guy with a wife, kids, a mortgage, a dog, a cat, a timeshare in Disneyland, and all that crap. And you can bet that he does not practice until his hands are exposed bone and he’s shed a pint of blood on his drum kit. “Why?”, you ask? Because it would adversely impact his ability to earn a living, and feed his fucking family, that’s why!

Nevertheless, violence and sadism, we are told, are the wellspring of talent. There’s this one scene in Whiplash where the teacher makes the three drummers compete against each other for six straight hours, playing a full-out double time riff over and over and over, just to earn the right to play a certain song in a concert – in the end there’s so much blood all over the place it looks like a fucking slaughterhouse! I’m reminded of the scene in the film Jack Reacher where the Russian mafia king makes an underling chew off all the fingers on his left hand to prove his commitment and worthiness and desire to be part of the “chosen few”. This is basically the intellectual and moral level of Whiplash.

So what does it say that critics (as well as the Academy, and virtually everyone I have met) are falling over themselves to praise this film, and what little dissent they dare to put into print is so pathetically muted and noncommittal? Are they all so jaded, so disconnected from reality and from artistic virtue that they simply accept anything they are told at face value, if its told in the trappings of serious art? Are they so in love with violence and sadism, and at the same time so dazzled with the concept of “greatness”, that they watch Whiplash and are actually impressed by its toxic, idiotic message? Do they like JK Simmons’ performance just because he’s dressed like Darth Vader, is disturbingly buff, and spends the whole film yelling obscenities at people and acting like nasty fucking prick? Or are they just bought and paid-for whores to the industry that makes their pampered careers possible? I honestly don’t know – probably all of the above.

My wife and I agreed we would have walked out of this film ten minute in, if it hadn’t been 7 degrees outside in New York City. Whiplash is a rotten, worthless movie, complete trash. My strong recommendation is that you avoid it, unless you really want to rot you mind and blacken your soul with perverse, evil shit.