![]() ![]() ![]() There is no story here simply a series of barely-connected vignettes moving from person to person. ![]() Linklater claims his dialogue is based on notebooks which the director kept over several years, consisting of the strange conversations he overheard in and around the university district. Linklater gathered mostly non-professional actors for a comedy-drama that is every bit as meandering as the directionless lives of those who populate the film. The movie is a kind of metaphysical comedy about media-obsessed young Americans not interested in the American Dream but instead preoccupied, or at least satisfied with the now. Essentially Slacker is about being in your twenties and rejecting society’s formula for happiness: Says the Hitchhiker: “I may live badly, but at least I don’t have to work at it.” It’s about being true to yourself, even if that means settling for less in order to follow your passions and dreams. But thematically Slacker is about finding yourself and about rejecting the status quo for something more personally rewarding. Slacker falls somewhere in between Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and Robert Altman’s Nashville, with a structure similar to Twenty Bucks. Linklater’s eye for nuance, his freewheeling, documentary-style approach and his natural gift for dialogue makes Slacker an honest reflection of a community of twenty-something year olds from his hometown. And so what initially seemed like a gimmick movie proved to be a perfect method to capturing a place, time and lifestyle. Among the players are a variety of artists, musicians, students, Gypsies, hustlers and other memorable eccentrics – all sympathetically looked upon by the director’s eye. His film focuses on one person or group of people before moving along following somebody else for a while. Set over the course of a 24-hour period, Linklater’s camera follows a number of characters in a collection of short, unconnected vignettes. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize – Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991, Linklater’s breakthrough feature is a key independent film of the early 90s. Linklater ( Suburbia, Dazed and Confused) emerged as the reluctant messenger for a generation labeled, packaged and sold as a defiant demographic dedicated to shredding whatever classification society tried to mark them as. While Generation X as a whole sometimes seemed to lack direction, its filmmakers devoted their early careers to making powerful statements about contemporary society and their generation’s role in it. Slacker came out around the same time that Douglas Coupland released his book, Generation X, and the young filmmaker became an instant spokesperson for an entire generation. ![]() Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “ Slacker is a movie with an appeal almost impossible to describe, although the method of the director, Richard Linklater, is as clear as day”. Shot on a classic 16MM print which immaculately captures the sun and the ambience of a small town evokes more than a feeling but a lasting impression, making its mark on film nostalgia.In 1990, Slacker put Richard Linklater and Austin Texas in the spotlight. It’s beauty also lies in its familiar dialogue where you might feel a strong resemblance or an attachment to it, allowing a glimpse of a minute-long conversation to go beyond the screen and into your character too. It may seem strange and nonsensical but with brilliant direction and writing, Linklater creates a natural flow throughout the film that really just feels right. We then follow Linklater’s character till he crosses the path of a woman who is struck by a car then follow the perpetrator being arrested then a busker crossing the path of the policemen then a passer-by giving the busker change then a group of ‘slackers’ conversing about Dostoyevsky and so on. The film starts with Linklater (a ‘slacker’ himself) as a taxi passenger warped in E.T/UFO conspiracy theories who spills piles of information to the disinterested taxi driver. ![]()
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