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| Bryan to himself: I kind of miss drumming. |
This review is about Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, but before that, two sentences
from the novel Percival Everett by Virgil
Russell by Percival Everett:
That I then, you then, I now, could imagine such
hell was hell enough. (213)
I could be writing you could be writing me could be
writing you. (216).
I mention these lines from Everett’s very
postmodernist text because this blurring of the lines between subject and
object, between creator and created, between teacher and student, is at the
heart of Chazelle’s film. And yet, Whiplash
arrives at this hyphen without the appearance of either gimmick or
contrivance, which is what separates it from both Inarritu’s Birdman and Linklater’s Boyhood.
Not only have Oscar ballots been cast but they have
been announced. This conversation is old. Birdman
won. And fans of every other film, but mostly Boyhood, have tweeted and blogged the ending of the world in accordance
with such awful tragedy.