CLERKS
A film review by Raymond Johnston
Copyright 1994 Raymond Johnston
Director: Kevin Smith Starring: Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti.
CLERKS is a bold and audacious comedy from New Jersey. First-time director Kevin Smith raised under $30,000 to make this black and white ode to the minimum wage worker. A sum that in Hollywood is not enough to design even an advertising poster. With that money and a cast of unknowns he created a sometimes ragged but more often hilarious comedy of errors.
Originally the film was rated NC-17 for language alone. A famous lawyer made a freedom of speech argument and got it reduced to an R without cutting. CLERKS takes the obscene adolescent banter of the aimless class and raises it to a new level. The film charts the course of one misbegotten day in the life of a convenience store clerk and a video store clerk, neither of whom seem concerned with actually working.. Most of the humor in the film is very crude, discussions over sex and former girlfriends, descriptions of X-rated tapes. But the film is not just a barrage of crude jokes, if it were that the film would be little more than a fast food version of POLICE ACADEMY. Beneath the graphic dialogue are serious issues of relationships and goals. As things go progressively wrong, the clerks are forced to face up to the shortcomings of their personalities. Through an absurd series of unlikely events they have to make choices that will effect the rest of their lives. Beneath all the crude banter, there is a complex discussion of the two divergent philosophies of the clerks. The variety of people who manage to wander into the stores keeps the film being a monotonous two-character dialogue. Odd (to say the least) circumstances take the clerks out of the mall briefly to provide a break from the one-set atmosphere.
While the black and white film and realistic locations suggest a documentary, the events quickly suggest surrealism. Like Luis Bunuel's great farces on the manners of the European upper classes, CLERKS takes a cross section of lower class people and faces them with the sublimely ridiculous. Dante, the main character, is plunged into a world that seems to be plotting against him, and everyone he has ever known or wanted to know. Dante thought he had trouble when his relief fails to show up so he can play hockey. When he reads in the newspaper that his girlfriend is getting married to somebody she never mentioned, his troubles just begin.
The shoestring budget and non-professional actors leads to a less than perfect film. In one long scene, shot with one camera movement, one of the actors noticeably forgets her line. Other actors give somewhat stiff deliveries to their small bits. The flaws really add a dimension to the film. They remind you that this is not a polished multi-million dollar film where a team of 32 writers managed to come up with nothing worth watching. This film is a joke scribbled on the wall as the pen runs out of ink. The crudeness of the technique accents the crudeness of the humor.
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