Of the many films I planned to watch from the 1000 Greatest Films of All Time list from They Shoot Pictures, Dazed and Confused was one of the most anticipated. I caught it on IFC and taped it on my DVR. Well, what a marvelous thing is this DVR, I acquired it late august and it gave me the gift of time! Simply because I can easily save several hours of television and movies and I don't have to tape it on VHS or be at the right moment in front of my TV!
Dazed and Confused is the kind of movie coming with a cult surrounding it. It tells, the final day of school of 1976 lived by freshmens and High Schoolers. Depicting a somewhat simpler time of our teenage years. Despite the time period, the occupations look the same and I remember having hang out with approximately the same kind of characters back then. The time of your first drunken evening, first love, the discovery of the possibilities of life and everything that surrounds drugs, alcohol, hanging out with friends, and partying. Dazed and Confused has a thin plot and luckily, Linklater (Slackers, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Waking Life, Me and Orson Welles, School of Rock) knows how to direct a film with no real tension but human interactions. He also understands teenage years and translate it in a way that brings us back to this time of our lives.
When I got into this film I did not knew how to perceived it, first because I tend not to like smoke head movies, since I haven't been one when I was at the High School but also because I don't really like them at all. In this case, there are many scenes of drug and alcohol abuse, but unlike Larry Clark's Kids or any pothead flick around it is a meditation of the effects of our actions as teenagers and the intercourses involved in this confusing time in a human's life. I think I may have liked this film even more than I actually expected. Recommended.
Great review Michael. Yes the best thing about this film is no matter what era you grew up in, you can still totally relate to the characters and events in it. Criterion just released this one on BluRay last week and I will no doubt pick it up soon.
ReplyDeleteThanx BT! Criterion are the best! It might be on my x-mas list...
ReplyDeleteI am always left after the camera slowly, slowly fades on the roadway of the next morning with a very sad feeling. For my still young generation, those born in the eighties, Linklater paints a group portrait of our parents before they had children they weren't sure they wanted, jobs they eventually settled into because of the need for surrounding materials; this sense of a question about where they were going and what they would discover down the road,is a bitter one. Those kids are now 50, and they're still confused. Linklater truly captured something which remains palpable.
ReplyDeleteVery good observation Tele Gram! It helps us understand the generation of our parents (in my case) and understand how they can perceive ours.
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