“Whiplash,” July 15, 2015 (2014), DVD. Written and directed by former music student Damien Chazelle. Three Oscars and many other awards. This is the powerful if contradictory story of Andrew (Miles Teller), a precocious drum student at an elite NYC music school, who manages to gain entry to the world of Fletcher (JK Simmons) an obsessed, demanding teacher whose vision is to create the great jazz musicians of the future by proving they can handle and overcome his brutality and abuse. A vision shaped by reading too much Nietzsche?. Conflating the experience of someone like Charlie Parker into a general rule?. Along the way, of course, he destroys many more young lives than he redeems, and that’s part of the point. But the film is, in the end, of two minds on this because while Andrew initially falls apart under the pressure, he eventually triumphs and becomes the very genius that Fletcher is trying to create. He becomes the musical ubermensch (all right, my spelling here is probably way off). So is Fletcher right in the end?. Not if you count the bodies, but the film is not simple in this way and I’m not sure if Chazelle is himself of two minds. I saw a couple of interviews with him, but he wasn’t asked this question. Simmons won a much-deserved Oscar for his brilliant work as Fletcher. He has a background as a music student. Teller did his own drumming. He drummed in rock bands before this and took jazz drumming lessons for three weeks before the shoot. Filmed in 19 days. I’d love to hear what professional drummers think of the work that, here, is used as testimony of his “arrival”. My friend Rod, a professional jazz trombonist, insisted we see this film. It’s really worth watching. I’d be tempted to pair it with Tom Armstrong’s excellent film “The Visitor” for a different take about the power of drumming.