Richard Linklater had already ensnared me with ‘Slacker’ (more of which,later) but ‘Dazed and Confused ‘, named of course after the Led Zep track, really cemented his storytelling process.
Essentially, it’s a simple enough premise: a group of kids are looking for a beer keg party at the end of school. It focuses on the hierarchy of the classroom, the creeps (Matthew McConaughey came into the public consciousness with David, his sleazoid character here, perving on young girls) the bullies (Parker Posey as Darla and her cruelty of freshman year girls through initiation hazing rituals) the stoners, and the innocents who didn’t know what was up ahead.
And that was it. More structured than the freewheeling camera of ‘Slacker’, it was a love letter to youth in the seventies, with all of the subculture, frustrations and rebellion of that time. It holds up because nothing is trite or sentimental. It’s just a hormonal explosion of cliques, smart kids, loners and bad kids. It has its own lexicon and rhythm, like any decade of time. And of course, this being Linklater, it’s dialogue heavy, and exquisitely written.
A great many names were made here: the aforementioned McConaughey, Milla Jovovich, Parker Posey and many others went on to mainstream success. It’s an oddity this one, but it really works. “All right, all right, all right”.
Hit The North 