AFP
LOS ANGELES
“Whiplash,” about a young jazz drummer and his bullying music teacher, is generating Oscar buzz even before its release this week. The movie, which won two top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival in January, is even being mentioned as a possible Best Picture nominee for the Academy Awards in February. It tells the story of promising drumming student Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) and his abuse at the hands of sadistic jazz teacher Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), in an elite Manhattan conservatory.Director Damien Chazelle, himself a jazz drummer, said he wanted to dramatize what he had gone through to learn the art, which was “fear of missing a beat, fear of losing tempo. Most overwhelmingly, fear of my conductor. “I wanted to make a movie about music that felt like a war movie, or a gangster movie - where instruments replaced weapons, where words felt as violent as guns,” he said. From its opening scene the film focuses relentlessly on the protege/mentor relationship between Neyman and Fletcher, a perfectionist who demands that his students give everything - and then some. Neyman idolizes legendary jazz drummer Buddy Rich, and takes to heart an anecdote about Charlie Parker - who reportedly transformed himself into a jazz great after having a cymbal thrown at his head for making a mistake on stage.