Austin, Texas, 28 May 1 9 7 6. It is the last day of high school, and two groups of teenagers—the seniors, who are ending their era; and freshmen, who are just starting their path—go to attend a party in the woods during the night. Freshman Mitch uses his friends to take revenge by pouring paint over senior O’Bannion who paddled him as a “initiation” ritual. Geek Mike felt he was humiliated by a punk pothead, so he starts a fight with the latter, but is saved by his friends Tony and Cynthia. Pink, Wooderson, Don and Slater decide to smoke marijuana on the football field as a symbol of growing up.
Despite all of its humor and youthful energy, Richard Linklater’s film still has melancholic, bitter underlying themes of passage of time and constant changes of eras in life. The viewers might feel a little bit disoriented during their first viewing, since “Dazed and Confused” has almost 30 teenage characters, constantly flipping between them, but the best way to watch it is to not worry about the names of all of them and just regard it as an example of “collective observation” of a generation on the last day of high school, a threshold of change in their lives. The episodic story is utter chaos—and yet, it doesn’t matter, since the only thing that matters is just the way it makes you feel: it is a ‘hangout’ and ‘slice-of-life’ film, and it is its own bubble of teenage experience. There is no real story or goal. Instead, it is a collection of Linklater’s experiences, filled with some incredible quotes, whether they are funny (“That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age”), weird (“All I'm saying is that if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life - remind me to kill myself”), or even wise and philosophical (“... don't you ever feel like everything we do and everything we've been taught is just to service the future?... You know, but that's valid because if we are all gonna die anyway shouldn't we be enjoying ourselves now? You know, I'd like to quit thinking of the present, like right now, as some minor insignificant preamble to something else”). The most was achieved out of the fleeting, but genius role by Parker Posey as senior Darla, whose energy, combined with perfect choreography of her character hazing the freshman girls by pouring ketchup on them while they are lying outside of school, is a virtuoso highlight that stands out and deserves to enter the anthology of the 90s movies. This upgrade of Linklater’s own episodic film “Slacker” is flawed, crazy and chaotic, but precisely because of that it feels just like life.
Grade:+++
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