Richard Linklater‘s long trek from SLACKER (1991) to BOYHOOD (2014) has featured more high points than low, but few of the films he’s directed along the way are more fondly remembered (at least by those of us in a certain demographic) than DAZED AND CONFUSED, a film about adolescence in the Seventies, made in the Nineties, that captures both decades beautifully while ruefully meditating on the cyclical nature of cruelty that still obtains in the chronically wasted teenage permaculture. But it’s no less a stoner comedy for all that — and far and away one of the best entries in that low-bar (not to say low-brow) genre.
Set in suburban Texas in 1976 on the last day of school, D&C features a large cast of players, several of whom went on to be, lords be praised, STARS — such as your Matthew McConaughey and Ben Affleck, your Parker Posey and Milla Jovovich — but most of whom didn’t, and that’s ok, their performances shine no less brightly for that. Together they comprise the following school year’s seniors and freshmen. Against the background of an impeccably curated hard rock soundtrack and dressed in exquisitely awful (or awfully exquisite — choose your own adventure) period-perfect duds, these kids participate in a series of hazing rituals — evidently established years before — to initiate the incoming freshmen. Fun and games, sure, but also — not to put to fine a point on it — funny games. Revelry, play, and a lot of very underage drinking are inseparable here from violence — several kinds of it, indulged in because it’s there, and because it always has been. This is a coming of age film in which no one is really sure what they’re in for, but they know they’ll have to suffer to get there.
Watching D&C again for the first time in twenty years, it struck me that my memory of the film had been corroded by the same kind of nostalgic myth-making without which none of us would look back on high school as “the best years of our lives.” Although genuinely moving, warm, and hilarious (just as I remembered), and boasting the most carefully observed and sympathetically portrayed cross-section of freaks and geeks this side of, well, FREAKS AND GEEKS, DAZED AND CONFUSED is at its heart a pretty brutal film. Its brutality isn’t restricted to “bullies” — there’s no more than one or two really nasty customers here. Not even the jocks, traditionally villains in these kinds of films — generally made, after all, by recovering nerds — are all jerks (though Ben Affleck’s ass-pounding sadist certainly qualifies). Linklater doesn’t demonize anybody — as individuals and small groups of friends, I take him to be saying, these kids (and any kids) are all right.
But they’re in the grip of something larger than themselves. Even the sweethearts among the seniors — the thoughtful or at least goodnatured goofballs who comprise the average high school’s single largest contingent — participate in the brutality. They do so because that’s what they were taught to do when they were freshmen. The good news is that a few of them are groping their way towards doing something different. Grope right along with them at midnight tonight or tomorrow at the Kendall.
9/12 MIDNIGHT!
9/13 MIDNIGHT AGAIN!
102 minutes
$8
Kendall Square Cinema
355 Binney Street
One Kendall Square
Cambridge, MA 02139
