whiplash - romantic comedy

(A note: I have deliberately neglected this blog of mine on behalf of a much more regular one—The Groundhog Day Project. If you have not been following that blog and somehow still follow this one that I haven’t updated in a long ol’ time, well for a year, I watched Groundhog Day every day and blogged about it. Then, after that year was up, I continued the blog, switching movies every week—i.e. generally, I’ve been watching each movie seven times, blogging about that a well. There was an exception—in October, I watched a different slasher film every day. This past month—December, in case you’re reading this sometime in the future—I’ve been watching Christmas movies (Home Alone, Black Christmas, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and, starting tonight, A Christmas Story). It’s been a useful exercise in structure for my life and there’s been a therapeutic aspect to it as well—I’m working on a Master’s Thesis on that very subject, actually, using my own blog as one of my primary examples. The thing is, since I’ve been writing about first Groundhog Day every day and then other movies every day, I have neglected newer movies, when I have previously written reviews here and writeups about Oscar nominees. I’ve squeezed other movies into my Groundhog Day Project blog, even new ones—obvious ones like About Time or Edge of Tomorrow and less obvious ones like The Fault in Our Stars and her. I’ve squeezed older movies in, TV shows, books, and a whole lot of articles from periodicals and scholarly journals.

I would like to change all that. I don’t want to stop the other blog, but I would like to write in this one from time to time, write about new movies as well as older ones.)

Starting with Whiplash.

(Another note: I spent a month watching romantic comedies (When Harry Met Sally..., Moonstruck, The Mirror Has Two Faces and Pretty Woman). You’ll see why this matters in a moment.)

Whiplash is not a film for everyone. J.K. Simmons’ band leader is a complex mix of violence (mostly boiling just under the surface but occasionally coming up for air) and caring. Miles Teller’s drummer is a guy willing to give up just about every aspect of his life to be great—his ambition pushing him to the edge of unlikable. Both performances are amazing. Aside from the material—music and obsession—not being for everyone, there really isn’t anything wrong with the movie. Or there doesn’t seem to be. Someone who knows music better might see some discrepancies here or there between what is seen and what is heard, but I couldn’t tell if there was a problem there.

There are two things worth noting specifically in regards to Whiplash: visuals and structure.

Regarding visuals, during band performances there are the expected cuts to closeups of instruments playing, back and forth from player to player to band leader. The usual stuff. But, it is remarkable how the camera movements outside of those scenes also follow musical cues. During an early montage of shots of the city, for example, the camera pans down a building and as the music speeds up the camera speeds up, as the music slows, the camera slows. The cuts from cityscape shot to cityscape shot match the beats.

Structurally—and keep in mind that Whiplash is about an emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive band leader and a college student who wants to be one of the great drummers—the film is like a romantic comedy. Fletcher (the band leader) and Andrew (drummer) meet when the former happens upon the latter playing drums. Andrew quits drumming abruptly and Fletcher asks why he quit and he starts up again. Stops and Fletcher asks if he told him to start again. The dynamic is established quickly with the mismatch of power, but it also works just like the “meet-cute” in any modern romantic comedy. We can see, not just because we’ve probably seen the trailer for the film or read about it if we’re bothering to watch it but also because the scene makes it clear, that these two men are supposed to work together. They are meant for each other.

Fletcher pushes Andrew and pushes Andrew, throws a chair at his head at one point. SPOILERS ahead. Andrew practices intensively, his hands bleeding, because he wants to reach the levels Fletcher is pushing him toward. Meanwhile, a couple other things are happening. Andrew’s father worries about him putting too much energy into his music and some other relatives don’t seem to value Andrew’s field—there’s an amusing (and, I think, insightful) dinner scene involving Andrew’s cousin who plays college football and what success is.

(The basic point Andrew makes it that he’d rather die young and be remembered than grow old and have no one know who he is. Charlie Parker died in 1955, only 34 years old, but they’re still talking about him (and he comes up throughout the film). Andrew sees that as success and argues that anyone would.)

Andrew has also asked out a girl who works at the movie theater he goes to sometimes with his father. When it seems she is attending a college she happened to have gotten into and doesn’t really know what she wants to do with her life, it becomes clear (even before Andrew tells her outright that they cannot be together) that Andrew looks down on her. He’s too ambitious for his own good. Plus, he just can’t be with Nicole because, per the film’s structure, he has to be with Fletcher.

In blogging about romantic comedies back in September, I often cited Hinnant’s (2006) “Jane Austen’s ‘Wild Imagination’: Romance and the Courtship Plot in the Six Canonical Novels.” Hinnant details seven romantic setups from Austen that we see in various romances (dramatic or comedic) then and since. One of those is one that begins with “an atmosphere of bitter animosity.” The first day Andrew plays for Fletcher’s band, he gets slapped repeatedly to make a point about tempo and he gets a chair thrown at his head. Yet, we know he has got to eventually play to Fletcher’s liking. That is the kind of story Hollywood sells. Another one of Hinnant’s scenarios involves “close friends... where one is older... a mentor-pupil relationship [and] the pair is unaware of the depth of their feelings for one another. The film also comes close to the usual “Cinderella” story, which Hinnant also covers.

Another often cited piece when blogging about romantic comedies was Dowd and Fallotta’s (2000) “The End of Romance: The Demystification of Love in the Postmodern Age.” Dowd and Fallotta write about “the presence of a serious obstacle” in the classic romance—and of course, the same extends into modern romantic comedies. In the case of Whiplash, Fletcher’s demands as well as Andrew’s father’s worries get in the way. And, just when Andrew seems to be pushing back, events outside either his or Fletcher’s control get in the way (in the form of a truck). This is the breakup, the inevitable second act breakup that necessitates a third act struggle to get back together.

But, in comparing this drama to a romantic comedy, I’ve got to wonder if maybe every film just has the same structure, the same story. So often lately, I’ve found various movies (not slasher films, much, but so many other movies) that end with some semblance of the theme of togetherness or belonging. Characters don’t quite fit the roles they have in the beginning, and in the end, they come closer with the help of another character. The final band performance of this film is like that last ditch effort to rekindle the flame of romance in any romantic comedy. Imagine the guy running to catch up to the girl, to profess his love for her, to beg for forgiveness for his transgressions, to repair everything at all costs. But, here in Whiplash it is Andrew drumming, first trying to keep up with Fletcher’s abrupt change of music, then getting ahead of Fletcher’s lead to prove he’s got the stuff Fletcher is looking for. Leftover anger turns gradually into something like respect, this film’s version of the love you see in a romantic comedy, as Andrew does indeed prove he’s got what Fletcher wants.

(Now, I must return to The Groundhog Day Project to get to the usual blog. I will try to return. There are plenty of movies to write about.)

And, for the record, Simmons deserves his Golden Globe nomination and his SAG nomination and his Spirit Award nomination—he also won Best Supporting Actor from the New York Film Critics and the Boston Society of Film Critics—and I’m glad Whiplash was nominated for Best Feature and Best Editing (as I mentioned the editing above) at the Spirit Awards. Whether he or it wins or not, that ain’t up to me, but he and it should definitely be on the list.

Works Cited

Dowd, J.J. & Fallotta, N.R. (2000). The end of romance: The demystification of love in the postmodern age. Sociological Perspectives 43(4), 549-580.

Hinnant, C.H. (2006). Jane Austen’s “wild imagination”: Romance and the courtship plot in the six canonical novels. Narrative 14(3), 294-310.

and so it begins, the groundhog day project

I’ve never written a review of Groundhog Day, as far as I know. But, I’ve seen the movie many times, and I used it in nearly every round of impromptu when I was doing competitive speech and debate in college. That last one—that’s because you can use the movie to cover just about any theme. Phil Connors is not only a great central character for a good comedy like this—not that there are many comedies like this—but he works as an everyman and he goes through all the emotions we all do every day of our lives. There is time in the film (not to mention the many parts of his journey we don’t see on screen) for joy, for sadness, for arrogance and humility, silliness and seriousness, flippancy and philosophy.

The trailer for the movie gets a lot out of the idea of “living life like there’s no tomorrow.” That is perhaps the central idea to the film. But, for Phil, it’s not just a question of doing anything and everything; he starts out arrogant and self-centered, so his early attempts to live like there’s no tomorrow are shallow and simplistic. He manipulates his way into a date, to get money, to eat a lot of junkfood… put simply, he does what any of us might do if we had the opportunity to repeat one day over and over. But, there are consequences, not the least of which is boredom.

There is a telling moment early on in the film, when Phil asks Gus and Ralph, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” Ralph’s response: “That about sums it up for me.” Most of our lives are already repetitive. Day in, day out. We work our day jobs and spend our nights watching television—not all of us, certainly, but it seems the case that most of us simply cannot live life like there’s no tomorrow. We’ve got responsibilities: school, work, family, friends. Maybe the reason the film works so well is that, despite deeper philosophical themes, there’s an absurdist fantasy at the heart of it; it’s not that we want the chance to repeat a day, though fixing some mistakes could alter our lives completely, but we want the chance to spend a day doing whatever comes to mind. We wish that we could operate by our whims and whimsy. We could dress like Clint Eastwood just to go to a movie. We could eat without worrying about weight gain. We could even drive on the railroad tracks.

Or, maybe it’s just funny.

What makes Groundhog Day a good comedy, regardless of larger themes? Is it Bill Murray’s ability to play a loveable scoundrel? Is it the remarkable balance between comeuppance and growth that Phil experiences? Is it the one liners? Is it possible the subject of repeating a day, though it has been done for dramatic effect—notably, I liked ABC television’s Day Break, but it did do poorly in the ratings that maybe it proves the following point—works best as comedy because of the way comedy works, the way jokes work. Comedy often is about the subverting expectations. The classic, and obvious, example is, Why did the chicken cross the road? We want an answer that gives us insight into motivation and maybe even the human condition (well, maybe not with the chicken, specifically). But, the classic response both subverts expectation and gives us just what we want, a real answer. The chicken did cross the road to get to the other side. Sure, we might want to go a few more steps up the list of causality, figure out why the chicken wanted to get to the other side, but comedy doesn’t work that way. In an interview with The Weekly, emmy-winning comedy writer and producer Ben Karlin had this to say about the challenges of writing comedy:

I think the challenges of writing comedy differ from person to person. For me, it’s always a struggle to find something interesting to say, to find a unique point of view or a way of expressing something that hasn’t been said before. Comedy is about subverting expectation and audiences are so sophisticated. They have read and watched and experienced so much that the biggest trap you can fall into is writing something that has been done before – and often done better.

Groundhog Day not only plays with the usual tropes and expectations of comedy but presents us with a plot built entirely on repetition, not only doing what’s been done before, but doing it again and again and again, providing us clear expectation in repetition then subverting that repetition. Sure, it’s a giant fantasy about living without consequences, and it’s also about seeing just how crazy Phil Connors can be in that situation, just how much can he get away with—we live vicariously through Phil and often the simplest comedy in the film comes from the subtle and not-so-subtle (Phil punching Ned Ryerson, for example) differences from day to day. Mostly, it’s played broadly, but then deeper points gets injected. For example, in the same scene that Phil has his table of desserts, Rita quotes a Sir Walter Scott poem to comment on his egocentrism. A little bit of depth to counterbalance and even augment the comedy.

Or, maybe it’s just funny.

Despite the repetitive structure, Groundhog Day still manages to have a pretty basic 3-act structure like most any other film out of Hollywood. Phil exploits his circumstances, he learns the failings of it, then he figures out that the key might not be making the best of the situation but making the best of himself. That’s Groundhog Day put simply. But, I don’t want to just put it simply. I want to break it down, tear it apart, look at its parts and what those parts tell us about life, the universe, and everything.

So, the plan: I will watch Groundhog Day every day, and I will explore its aspects and research into its tangents. I will run the film into the ground and, I hope, build it right back up again. Like Phil Connors with his day in Punxsutawney, I will probably have some crazy ideas early on, I will probably get sick of the film after a while and watching it and writing about it will become a chore. But, sometime later, maybe I can explore the film in such a way that I rebuild it, rebuild myself, and maybe help my readers, whoever they may end up being, to rebuild themselves with a better grasp of, dare I say it, the human condition.

Or, maybe it will just be funny.

Anyway, welcome to The Groundhog Day Project. Don’t forget your booties ‘cause it’s cold out there.

In the future, follow The Groundhog Day Project at http://groundhogdayproject.blogspot.com/.