The main lesson to be learned from "Dazed and Confused," Richard
Linklater's affectionate, innocuously playful snapshot of a group of
high school kids during the reefer-seasoned '70s, is that parents should
never know too much about what their teenagers are up to.
Without a doubt, the kids here are flying high on what looks like a
kamikaze mission. Usually the purpose of a film like this is to sound an
alarm. But "Dazed and Confused" takes a different angle, and the result
is a funny, weightlessly entertaining tribute to the indestructibility
of youth.
The year is 1976, and Gerald Ford is president. Weed and Aerosmith
rule, and hip-huggers are worn so tight that pliers are used to zip them
up. For most of these kids, money is not a problem, and nearly everybody
expects to follow the usual middle-class path to college, even though
they are vapid, undereducated, directionless and, mostly, stoned out of
their minds.
This is where most teen films would begin to editorialize, rising up
in righteous indignation to denounce this way of life. In sharp
contrast, Linklater keeps his head, refusing to resort to alarmism and
hysteria.
When Linklater looks at these fledgling adults he chooses not to see
the end of the world, concluding instead that each generation is a lost
generation with flounderings and excesses that are a continuation of the
natural order of things. If anything, Linklater's attitude toward, say,
Slater (Rory Cochrane), a walking hookah who jitters and bobs as if his
nervous system were packed with jumping beans, could best be described
as lovingly uncritical.
Watching this film, I thought not about the ungodly '70s music that
fills the soundtrack, but of a song Henry Gibson sings in Robert
Altman's "Nashville," the one with the line "You may say that I ain't
free, but it don't worry me." The characters in this film, which covers
18 hours on the last day of school in Austin, Tex., are easygoing to the
point of obliviousness. Though the world is in the midst of an oil
shortage, the kids pile into their cars, light up and cruise for hours
looking for action.
On this particular night, though, a party that was supposed to take
place at one of the gang's houses gets busted, and so the rest of the
evening is spent looking for another spot to celebrate the beginning of
summer. In the process, we are introduced to a diverse ensemble of
likable idiots. If this film has a central figure it is Randy "Pink"
Floyd (Jason London), the school's star quarterback. An amiable,
good-looking, lanky guy who moves easily between the jocks and the
brains and all of the school's other cliques, Pink is disturbed to find
that his attitudes about things -- such as whether he is willing to sign
a statement declaring that he will not drink or do drugs during the
upcoming season -- are in the process of radical change.
Into what, he hasn't a clue. But recently he's become aware of how
bored he is with the jock scene, with the endless practices and the
coaches barking in his face. Pink has decided that he's tired of being
pushed around. He'll play ball, he tells them, but he won't sign any
pledge or become their little puppet.
No one else in this crowd -- which divides itself into rising
seniors, who call the shots, and rising freshman, who are the scum of
the earth -- comes anywhere near being this decisive. The most
interesting of the younger crowd is a stringy forkful of spaghetti named
Mitch (Wiley Wiggins). With his dead-straight brown hair plastered flat
over his long, skinny face, Mitch is the living embodiment of the
awkward age. Wiggins does an extraordinary job of capturing this game
kid's repertoire of nervous tics. His performance is one of the best
I've seen all year.
London is also tremendously charismatic as the confused jock; he
could be a star in the making, and yet Linklater does a neat job of
weaving his story in with the others in such a way that he doesn't
dominate. Still, try as he might to balance the characters, Linklater
can't prevent Cochrane's frequent-flying Slater and Wiggins's Mitch from
stealing the show. The picture is uneven, hitting its low point during
some tedious scenes that deal with a high school hazing ritual, but
Linklater puts a lot of balls in the air. And keeps them there. As an
artist, he has near-perfect equilibrium.
Dazed and Confused, at area theaters, is rated R for language,
sexual situations, and flagrant and frequent displays of drug and
alcohol use.
