SLACKER
A film review by Jeff Inman
Copyright 1991 Jeff Inman
SUMMARY: SLACKER is a new, professional-looking, low-budget film in which the camera rides piggyback, from character to character, across the fringes of Austin, Texas. We take brief snapshots of character and then move on, like some intelligent interstellar virus, transmitted through air, gathering information on humanity before the big invasion. The people we meet are mostly going nowhere, but they are interestingly human.
If you've seen Juzo Itami's TAMPOPO, you must remember the startling but effective detours, in which the camera suddenly follows a seemingly irrelevant background character, veering off into a brief tangential story. These deviations are a little confusing at first, but one soon appreciates the suggestion that there are many other stories lying just to the left or right of the one Itami is concerned with. He seems to be casting his eye around, noticing how deeply interconnected things are, even if individuals remain unaware of much of the larger pattern.
New director Richard Linklater carries the tangential-story technique to its logical conclusion in SLACKER. There is no central story to return to. His "story" is just a thread in the vast interconnected web of interactions among friends and strangers in the outskirts of Austin, Texas. Have you ever been sitting on the train, or been walking on the street and thought about how the people around you are all involved in their own movies for which *you* are one of the "extras"? Here are five strangers walking past each other, all at (roughly) the same place and time, but each moving off into a different story. Which one shall we follow?
In SLACKER, we are constantly making this decision. We follow an unending chain of interactions; a young woman wearing a fishbone T-shirt throws a coin into the open guitar-case of a street musician (whom we've just been following). She continues down the street into a cafe. Inside we overhear a conversation and the camera discovers the people involved. [paraphrasing] "What happened to Mark, anyhow? Anybody seen him recently?" "Hmmm, he just hasn't been around." We listen for a while and then follow one of the guys who leaves. As he walks, a stranger from the cafe catches up with him. The stranger says, [paraphrasing, again] "I heard one of your friends is missing", and proceeds to provide a cogent, if whacked, story of how the USA and Soviet Union have been colonizing the moon and Mars since 1952, funded through the Medellin cartel. "I just hope your friend isn't ... well, nevermind." We ride piggyback from character to character, following them to their houses, in their cars, to the bars, cafes and junkyards. Instead of following one story, we ride through a cross-section of humanity, wonderfully crazed, creative, and mostly-unemployed humanity.
The production values are not up to Itami's standard (anyhow, Linklater is following his own genius), but at $23,000 this movie is a f*cking miracle. It is simple and straight, but looks surprisingly professional. I noticed only one goof (and I wasn't wearing blinders), in the next-to-last scene, in which a reflection of the cameraperson can be seen in the back window of a car. I would think, I would strongly hope, that repeated viewings might turn up glimpses of characters from earlier scenes in the background of later scenes, rather than goofs.
What to say about the title? Before seeing the movie, I had gotten various indications that the title is a label for a type of person who is, well, not too ambitious. Most of the characters are drifting, marginally employed dreamers in their mid-twenties, but they've got character and the movie doesn't laugh at them. We've seen enough predictable middle-americans, or alienated loners, in the movies. It's about time we got a chance to see the unrecognized-but-unrepentant, day-to-day weirdness that is usually filtered out or wrapped in cellophane by the commercial media. These are people, as Linklater says, with "... an Active mind and too much time. You've worked your life out to not have to make payments on a car ... and you don't need as much money to get by, so it equals active mind, time, and no outlets. ... Anything can happen -- revolution, terrorism, subversion." [Boston Phoenix, 10-4-91]
CAST: The credits roll by too damned quickly. I am not usually a credit-hound, but after this film, I wanted a chance to read each of the roles (or monikers describing people we've met in the movie), like "Guy who should've stayed at the bus station", (Linklater himself) or "Madonna PAP smear salesperson." Presumably, the actors are friends, and friends-of-friends of Linklater, as he couldn't have afforded to pay actors much, given his budget. Thus, it is all the more incredible that he gets some authenticity in just about every character.
POTENTIAL TO OFFEND: Gimme a break. Some language. Violence described, advocated, etc, but not exactly shown. No nudity. A great pick-up scene in which not a word is spoken.
RECOMMENDATION: If you need Plot, Moral, and/or Special Effects, this is not your film. However, if you (like me) are constantly looking for new vision and feeling in film, then this is a movie that may stay with you for a long time. My rating: 7.5/10.
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