Unsolicited opinion time...
Saw Whiplash instead of going to see fireworks and I’m really confused by all of the glowing reviews of this movie. Well directed and acted, certainly, but the thesis was absurd to me. I felt like it idealized “genius” and creation as this reductive, confrontational, exclusively male act that can only be “awakened” by extreme solipsism and rage. The two major musical performances - supposedly the ultimate display of some elite “ensemble” - are instead literally framed like wild and bloody fisticuffs between two singular men. To frame an elaborate dick-measuring contest within the context of an “ensemble” felt ludicrous, at least to someone who has been a part of (and loved) the creative collaboration of many ensemble musical acts. Someone who admires how collaborative “genius” often is, even outside of musical performance. How the idea of the half-mad, solitary genius is usually a big damn lie invented after the fact, not the reality for most artistic people. The movie lumped “mediocre” people into a single gross, unimportant mass, and only the truly singular can claw their way out of mundanity, apparently, and it involves literally so much sweat and blood. If you’re not sweating and bleeding for your art, you're a pleb, and also some kind of homophobic slur, probably. Like… ugh. I had so many problems with this movie, and I’m stunned that only the Christian Science Monitor’s two-paragraph dismissal seemed to back me up on this at all?
