'Whiplash' a short film review

Short film review “Whiplash” 2013 by Damien Chazelle





The first scene of the film starts with the main character Andrew Neiman entering an empty silent studio. Right of the bat you can tell that he is a new student as he arrives earlier than everyone else, he is also very curious you can tell that as he is very touchy and observes everything in the studio.  

 

We then see all the other students arrive and instantly there is no more silence in the scene as everyone is moving around, setting up their instrument and taking to one another. During that moment Andrew feels a little overwhelmed as he becomes clumsy. At this very moment the camera cuts to the clock and zooms into the arm ticking, with the ticking getting louder and the zooming of the camera it gives a sense of unease making you think something is about to happen.





As the clock hits 12 the room goes silent and the Bandleader Terence Fletcher walks in, with the silence of the room and the harsh footsteps of the bandleader the scene becomes very tense. All eyes are on Terence which exaggerates the scene that much more. If feel like this was a really good way to introduce the new character as a lot was shown in the students’ actions and emotions.







Terrance stops the band mid play, as soon as he realises that one the of the players are out of tune which could potentially mean that he is a perfectionist. The scene is very tense bus as he starts calling out people to figure out who the out of tune player Is, the tension builds very quickly. When terrace finally figures out who it is, he snaps and kicks the terrified kid out of the band in a very harsh manner which show that he is very short tempered and rude.





When Terrance talks to Andrew during the break the tells him there is nothing to worry about what happened which was a way to show comfort and whilst they are having a conversation Andrew is still nervous as he stutters and makes up little lies to impress the bandleader. As Andrew enters the room, he is a lot more confident as he in not clumsy as he was at the beginning and he is actually smiling for the first time which brings a sense of comfort to the scene. When he starts playing, he is very good however when he gets a compliment from the bandleaders, he becomes too confident and starts to mess up which is pointed out several times during them playing which started to stress out Andrew there was a lot of suspense  and eventually Terrance lost it once again.



When he did, he chucked a chair at Andrew which was the tension being released this shows Terrance’s short temper and that he is very aggressive, this also further shows he’s perfectionism as mentioned earlier. As Terrance spoke to Andrew and could not get the right answers, he started getting physical so Andrew should know what he was doing wrong which is a very wrongful way of going about. This caused Andrew to become emotional and that’s was the point where the scene ended.       









Comments

  1. Harry MacerNovember 8, 2020 at 4:35 AM

    This review is great, I thought that the analysis and understanding each scene was done well. Also the screenshots also bought out more of an example of what you were talking about. Especially the chair throwing scene with J.K. Simmons looking angry.

    Now some “critical feedback” I would recommend including the time stamp in cohesion with the screenshots in order to develop more of an understanding of the analysis.

    You could maybe also look at more of the subtext and what the characters motives are. I.e. what is the obstacle stopping the character from getting what they want?

    In conclusion, the review was great, with the analysis and screenshots! 😁

    ReplyDelete

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