Now Playing: (Richard Linklater, 1990/1988) [seen on DVD]
Caught up with Linklater's debut and his breakthrough film (again, in the case of the latter) as part of a pretty sweet Criterion two-disc set. This is my first time seeing SLACKER post-WAKING LIFE, and while in retrospect it certainly feels like an un-rotoscoped alternate-reality take on the more recent film, it's by no means the same animal. For one thing, the PHANTOM OF LIBERTY-style movement between characters and stories provides an effective structure that WAKING LIFE doesn't have (not that it suffers as a result). The whole point here is that the term "slacker" doesn't really apply to a lot of these people except in the most narrow-minded sense of the word (as in, people who aren't working white-collar jobs and striving to make lots of money)- some have willfully chosen to live the life of the mind, while others simply don't seem to be 9-to-5 people. Either way, these are people who live outside the mainstream, and Linklater celebrates them because he's one of them, just as the film is a kind of city symphony to the "other" Austin, the Austin Linklater and friends helped to put on the pop-culture map. PLOW, etc. is pretty fascinating to watch as well, not only because the opening scenes of SLACKER take on a whole new shading having seen his previous work. It's an essentially plotless movie centered around a young man (played by Linklater himself) who has grown restless with his life. When he listens to the radio, he flips through the stations; when he watches television, he channel-surfs incessantly. Eventually, he travels to visit a friend, and after he leaves, rather than taking the train directly home, he decides to take the long way home, traveling around the Western half the country. It's not a great film, but it's of interest to any Linklater fans, introducing the train motif that's the jumping-off point not only for SLACKER but also for WAKING LIFE and BEFORE SUNRISE.
Posted by hkoreeda
at 3:30 AM EDT
