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Dazed and Confused
Pink ..............
Jason London
Simone ............ Joey Lauren Adams
Michelle .......... Milla Jovovich
Pickford .......... Shawn Andrews
Slater ............ Rory
Cochrane
Mike ..............
Adam Goldberg
Gramercy presents
a film written and directed by Richard Linklater.
Produced by James Jacks, Sean Daniel and Richard Linklater.
Photographed by Lee Daniel. Edited by Sandra Adair. Running
time: 97 minutes. Classified: R (for pervasive, continuous teen drug and
alcohol use and very strong language).
This film is a somewhat darker
version of "American Graffiti," set about ten years after that
film, in 1975. Again, it is the last day of high school, and the kids are
living it up before going on into the world or into the next year of
school. As with "Graffiti," there is a lot of cruising,
drinking, sex. I don't remember if the kids in "Graffiti" smoked
pot, but these kids do. Also, as with "Graffiti," there are many
subplots that weave in and out of one another.
Perhaps the most dominant one (among
equals) is the story of the quarterback on next year's (potentially
powerhouse) football team. His coach, presented as fifty years behind
the times, wants the whole team to sign a pledge that they won't drink,
smoke or use drugs all summer, for the sake of the team. The big moment,
supposedly, is when the kid throws the pledge back in the coach's face
unsigned and tells him that although he'd like to play football, he will
never sign such a document. The film sees this as his great rite of
passage, the quarterback's affirmation of autonomy.
The school has a tradition in which
the seniors beat up on the incoming freshmen (girls on girls, boys on
boys). There is a lot of supposed fun with the seniors chasing the frosh and the frosh getting
even. As one who used to get beaten up by bigger kids when returning home
from school, I didn't find that whole theme very funny, but others might
look at it differently. The "initiation" process, however, is
for these kids another rite of passage. After the senior boys paddle the
freshman boys within an inch of their lives, they introduce them to their
world of booze, girls, pot, vandalism, cussing, etc.
The movie seems to be saying that
this is the right world to be a part of. The adults who try to restrict
access to it, especially the coach, are presented as demons and
impossible reactionaries. The kids who join that society are simply
doing what they must do, and nobody has a right to tell them
otherwise. Indeed, the heroic thing is to defy or deceive the
straight adults as much as possible.
There are no tragedies in this film.
Nobody dies of an overdose or an auto crash. Indeed, there is very little
plot. It's just a slice of life, well-directed and convincing in
its portrayals.
But the message of the film is appalling. Apparently it never occurs once to the filmmakers that the values of autonomy and peer-acceptance which they romanticize here are the values that have put our very civilization in jeopardy. Nor do they see anything wrong with the teen society which rationalizes drugs, drunkenness, fights, free sex, and hatred of the "straight" world. Many movies today have progressed beyond this moral viewpoint, though it was certainly the dominant one in the 1960s and '70s. For it is now painfully evident that there is a huge downside to this kind of teen-age fun. But this film is quite complacent about its '60s sensibility concerning the '70s. Someone should tell the makers of this film that they are the ones who are reactionary. The only ones whose message will not fade with time are those who get their values from God's Word.