This image released by Sony Pictures Classics shows J.K. Simmons, left, and Miles Teller in a scene from "Whiplash." THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/Sony Pictures Classics, Daniel McFadden

TORONTO - James Anagnoson doesn't necessarily need to see "Whiplash" — the cinematic tale of a drum prodigy so intent on greatness he weathers abuse from a psychotically demanding teacher — in order to feel its beats.

After all, the dean of the Royal Conservatory's prestigious Glenn Gould School was once a furiously self-critical piano phenom just beginning a music education that would eventually take him through the Eastman School of Music and that hollowed incubator of virtuosos, the Juilliard School.

And one summer early in that process, a young Anagnoson was under the sway of an instructor at the Juilliard-affiliated Aspen Music Festival and School who left an impression deep as the boom of a bass baritone.

"I spent nine weeks and they were probably the most horrible weeks of my life," related Anagnoson in a recent telephone interview. "(This) teacher simply screamed at me, screamed insults at me, made me feel inadequate.

"And when I would come out of lessons feeling completely demoralized, her students would say: 'Well, if she doesn't scream at you, she doesn't care.'

"I was 19."

Among classically trained musicians, such "Whiplash" flashbacks are disconcertingly common; short-tempered instructors leave lasting impressions.

The question — left carefully unanswered by the admirably ambivalent film — is whether such drill-sergeant theatrics are necessary to motivate the best talents to achieve the impossible? In other words, are the greats always moulded by heavy hands?

Anagnoson, certainly, doesn't think so.

"It's just destructive," he said. "I don't think there's any room for it.

"There's no need to treat people like that. I'm a dean of a school with 120 students. We have some of the best faculty, some of the best players in the world. And there is not one who teaches like that. It's just not necessary."

On the other hand, some of the most marvellous talents have emerged from such torture.

In "Whiplash," the bullying absorbed by Miles Teller's drum prodigy Andrew is justified at various points by the legendary story of a 16-year-old Charlie Parker having a cymbal contemptuously thrown at him by drummer Jo Jones — and subsequently, apparently, using that burning humiliation as fuel.

Mercurial instructor Terence Fletcher (played by character actor J.K. Simmons in a performance that is earning Oscar buzz) eventually hurls a chair, but more stinging are the insults he sprays around the studio. Rail-thin, bald and perpetually black-clad, Fletcher demeans Andrew's masculinity, his ethnicity, his absentee mother.

It's all apparently meant to push Andrew past the ceiling of complacency, toward that intangible nirvana of greatness.

"There are no two words in the English language more harmful than 'Good job,'" spits the instructor at one point.

Andrew seems to almost relish the punishment, spending his evenings solitarily confined to a kit that gradually becomes splattered in his blood and sweat. He's intent on perfection.

While the lively film has inspired much critical devotion, its subtle implication that Fletcher's tyrannical bullying might have elicited Andrew's best has made some writers uneasy.

Stephanie Zacharek of the Village Voice noted that the audience was "supposed to leave our seats feeling just a little admiration for Fletcher and his alleged standards," while the Atlantic explored the film's "uncomfortable message" with a thorough feature. The New Yorker, meanwhile, noted with glee that: "Socially, it's dynamite, and 'Whiplash' could become the first film to be picketed by the soccer moms of America."

When the movie screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Simmons tread carefully to avoid establishing a position.

"I love that the movie inspires debate and I can certainly see both sides of the issue," Simmons told The Canadian Press.

Has he ever had anyone like Fletcher in his life?

"Not really," he replied. "I had some music professors who were real perfectionists but not relentless and not abusive. I guess the closest would be a couple of coaches in high-school football. That kind of abuse was part of teaching a young boy to be a man."

Anagnoson sees truth in Andrew's obsessive devotion — and it's part of why he thinks such hardline teaching techniques have no place.

"My experience as a teacher is the most talented students tend to be very hard on themselves," he said. "I mean, maybe one in 100 needs a kick in a the butt, a little bit of a wake-up call, to set a higher standard.

"But actually, most of the time, you have to teach them how to forgive themselves for being imperfect."

He has his own memories of coming off stage so distraught about some perceived — and to the audience, imperceptible — misstep that he refused to speak to his friends.

He once went on a 10-day vacation with his first wife so distracted by what he believed was a lacklustre performance in a CBC live broadcast that he was incapable of enjoying the sojourn. It was all he could think about.

Six months later he saw a tape of the performance and realized, with a mixture of relief and embarrassment, that "it was fine."

Certainly, however, such full-hearted devotion isn't completely universal. Just as some lax athletes seem to thrive under the stewardship of a full-throated coach — and indeed, "Whiplash" is in some ways a stealth sports movie — some players must possess more talent than ambition. And cultivating that talent can be a vexing challenge.

"I was never the kind of person who excelled by being abused," said soprano Sheila Christie in a recent telephone interview, "but I had friends who would say: 'I love it when my teacher's really hard on me. When she tells me I'm total crap, it makes me work harder.'

"I never had that personality. I needed the encouragement and the nurturing."

In the majority of cases, such tough-love posturing harms more than it helps, Christie stresses.

"I think most of the time it backfires," said Christie, who will perform in the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra's production of Britten's "Great War Requiem" on Saturday and Monday.

"All that pressure, even if a student seems to thrive on it, I think they eventually break under that much pressure."

Christie doubles as a teacher now, guiding students at the Richmond Academy of Dance and at her home studio.

Even if "Whiplash" portrays an extreme, most people who once harboured musical ambition probably also remember an exasperated teacher somewhere along the way.

Is music a particularly frustrating discipline to teach?

"Some days are more frustrating than others," Christie conceded. "Teachers get frustrated and angry and maybe get a reputation for being hard because they feel students are never living up to their potential. As a teacher you can hear talent in a voice ... and when that student either isn't working hard enough or doesn't seem to care, it's very frustrating.

"You either become the kind of teacher that gives up and treats every student the same," she added, "or you become the type of teacher who becomes frustrated and you start yelling and throwing things.

"Or, you try to balance it."

In other cases, teachers seemingly deem certain students unworthy of their time.

Calgary's Kiesza attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, and — years before she would climb charts the world over with her slinking dance confection "Hideaway" — she already harboured pop ambition.

And that meant some teachers simply tuned her out.

"I had mixed experiences," she said recently. "I had teachers that were so inspiring and I couldn't wait to go to class, and then I had experiences with teachers who just ignored me as a student, because 'Why would YOU be in this class? You don't belong here.'"

In the case of Anagnoson and the instructor who inspired nightmares, he would perhaps have preferred to disappear than suffer the wrath of her notice.

After all, even her compliments stung.

He recalls that in the seventh of nine weeks he spent under her tutelage, he was so discouraged he'd stopped practising. So he brought in for the final two lessons a Beethoven concerto he had played since he was 13, a composition "he knew in (his) sleep."

As he played, he remembered the teacher turning to an older student who was accompanying the orchestra with apparent wonder.

"She looked at him with great shock and said: 'I think he actually plays this rather well, don't you?'" he recalled. "Like, 'how could this piece of useless dog doo play anything well?'"

Recalling the tutor who terrified him, Anagnoson seems almost frustrated and hurt anew.

That said, the situation never devolved to the point where he pondered quitting. This teacher certainly didn't prevent him from going on to perform more than 1,000 concerts around the world, presiding over the Glenn Gould or judging piano competitions on various continents.

In fact, those achievements might have made for a savoury conversation starter had Anagnoson ever seen that teacher again. But he doesn't seem at all interested in such a coda.

"I met many students who (saw her), because she was a very famous teacher," he said.

"But every year that went by, I in retrospect felt that you should never do what she did. That was unforgivable."

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News from © The Canadian Press, 2014