Music, as in playing it, as in playing it to perfection and standing among the greats, is the most serious business there is in this film. We see instruments dripping blood more than once.
You’ll never be a world class jazz drummer until you play so much that the skin comes off your hands and the sticks dig gashes into your palms. Blood is fitting in a horror film and that’s almost what this is—it’s full of fear and tension—only the terrors here are falling short of greatness and the wrath of a demonic college band director. That’s J.K. Simmons, chrome-domed, sharp-eared, mean-eyed and foul-mouthed. He runs the top tier jazz band at the country’s top music school (a fictional New York City conservatory). He can tell in two seconds whether or not a musician knows what they’re doing. If they don’t, he cuts them off immediately and then fires an insulting line their way (as if being silenced after two seconds isn’t insult enough). There’s no horror movie villain in 2014 who’s more scary and that’s because Simmons embodies the harshest critic of our worst nightmares. He sees your flaws so clearly that he looks straight into your soul. He’s the police car who seems to be following you, checking you out. He’s the big boss at your job, the guy who’s not always around, but when he is he watches you close and never likes what you’re doing.
His entire band is petrified of him. He does not make friends with them. He does not win them over. Instead, he screams, belittles, promotes, demotes and ejects. Not one sincere kind word passes through his lips. Positive reinforcement is the worst thing a teacher can offer, he insists. Rather, he seeks to break down and destroy his students on the belief that, after that, only the great ones, the future Charlie Parker’s and Buddy Rich’s, will remain standing.
What makes this a great film is that it’s about hard work. There are no unfathomable musical geniuses here, just those who give up everything and work themselves half to death to get good. It’s carefully made, but it doesn’t beautify much. It barely makes its characters likable, though we’re just fine following Miles Teller, 19 years old, awkward, incomplete, the new recruit in the band and dedicated to the drums. Hell awaits him, as well as a few bad decisions from which to learn. This film has little time for charm. It’s got work to do.