Dazed and Confused

Saw Dazed and Confused, a Linklater film which eventually settles into a boozy, weedy, drifting sort of film about teenagers trying to stave off boredom in a small town. Unfortunately it starts out in some ghastly and depressing parallel universe where children are publicly beaten by Ben Affleck. The social stratification of high school is reinforced and celebrated with Jocks taunting Nerds as smiling, approving teachers look on. A little old man asks the handsome, paddle-wielding quarterback if he's gonna throw some good ones next season. Kids openly deal pot as 40-year old dudes leer at freshmen girls. It made me want to kill myself.

For some reason films celebrating the halcyon days of youth really depress me. They never reflect anything remotely resembling my experiences. They're a wish fulfillment fantasy for the recently graduated, making the suck of adulthood all the worse by focusing on a glorious near-past that never was. It would be depressing enough to be so wallowingly stuck in the past, so backwards-looking, but to be stuck in a past that never even actually occurred, that makes all of your good times look like shit in comparison? Misery.

Reading about this it seems that Linklater was trying to make an anti-John Hughes film. This film is indeed much less delicate and careful, its high schoolers much more laconic and sarcastic, less earnest and plastic. It is however a lot like American Graffiti, the George Lucas infantilism-fest. Anyway, being a Linklater film, we get some kooky conspiracy theories, some philosophical noodling. After the beating and gleeful humiliation of children ends, we settle into a Heavy Metal Parking Lot style meander which is much nicer. It winds down at last, and ends with the teenagers driving off into the sunset and to an Aerosmith concert, highfiving and laughing, just kids after all. I guess I shouldn't be so wound up in these fictional kids' lives, but the attitude of the universe they inhabit is just so damn depressing.

Also totally random but the main character looks exactly like Winona Ryder.