Lyrics
I read the news
today oh, boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the house of lords
I saw a film today oh, boy
The english army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
But I just had to look
Having read the book
I'd love to turn you on.
Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
Ah
I read the news today oh, boy
Four thousand holes in blackburn, lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the albert hall
I'd love to turn you on
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph
He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the house of lords
I saw a film today oh, boy
The english army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
But I just had to look
Having read the book
I'd love to turn you on.
Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream
Ah
I read the news today oh, boy
Four thousand holes in blackburn, lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the albert hall
I'd love to turn you on
As I've written in my previous entry on The Beatles, I like them, but not as much as most fans of pop music. This song though is great. It is also an example of how The Beatles weren't just musically revolutionary, but also lyrically. This song is basically a narrative about a reasonably smart dude, who essentially hangs around aimlessly all day. This kind of stories weren't all that usual around that time, but now we have an abundance of them. We now even have a word for the kind of person described in this song: slacker. Thus the movie I chose is (quite literally) about slackers, but it is perhaps interesting to note that I could have also chosen a different movie. Namely the movie referenced in the second verse of this song. It is Richard Lester's How I Won the War (1967), with John Lennon himself in the leading role.
The Movie: Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1991)
Ha! Just two posts ago I 'complained' about Kieslowski's Red. I loved how he was willing to lose sight of his main protagonist Valentine to offer us slight glimpses of the life of her neighbor Auguste. Auguste's life at first seemed unrelated to Valentine's, until Kieslowski started to make connections between them, which I found rather unfortunate. While I loved the movie, I thought that it would be even greater if Auguste and Valentine remained unrelated to each other. Well, Slacker takes my wish to its extreme and is in my opinion Richard Linklater's best movie. I also consider it better than Red, but that's not a really fair comparison. Although I am not a fan of all of Kieslowski's choices, he has good reasons for all of them and is interested in exploring other things than Linklater here.
Slacker is a plotless movie. It just follows the young citizens of Austin during one day, but only follows each specific citizen for a short amount of time. The movie for example starts with a twenty-something (played by Linklater himself) arriving at the Austin airport and getting in a taxi. On the ride home Linklater talks to the hilariously disinterested driver about how easily his life could have gone into other directions. If he had hopped on a bus instead of on a taxi perhaps his life could have turned out differently. After getting out of the cab Linklater's character stumbles upon a women hit in a car accident. Another woman arrives at the scene, calling the police and telling Linklater that he is not needed anymore. We see him go away in the distance and never meet him again. The camera pulls back to find a youngster entering his nearby home. We see him doing some mysterious stuff and home and then the doorbell rings. It's the police coming to arrest him for intentionally driving over (and killing) his mother. As the police leads him away, we meet two friends on the street looking at what happens and the camera decides to follow them. And they too are followed for a while until the camera meets some other people more worthy of attention and starts following them. That's the whole movie. It works wonderfully because Linklater writes great dialogue and he uses long takes in very intelligent way, something that would become his trademark in later movies.
While Linklater doesn't directly connect all these people to each other, there is an idea behind his approach. These are not just disjointed scenes involving the citizens of Austin. All these scenes together do form a relatively coherent whole. The movie amounts to a rather sad, and despairing portrait of Linklater's hometown. Most of the people we meet here are (college-) educated twenty-somethings who mostly hang out aimlessly. They cannot seem to find a job and are thoroughly dissatisfied with the American establishment. They've basically lost all trust in the American elite. Two separate characters we meet believe that the American government is involved in dark conspiracies, one of them of course about the killing of John F. Kennedy. Another guy calculates that the popular vote that elected Bush Sr. in the previous elections actually included a very small percentage of Americans. A black man protests against the imprisonment of Mandela, only no one really cares. All of these people are reasonably intelligent, but seem stuck in Austin having conversations about Dostoevsky, the nature of television, and the meaning of political actions, anarchism, life and art. Only all these knowledge is basically useless. They are stuck being slackers in Austin and there is nothing they can do about it, because they are stuck being slackers in Austin. So they talk. On top of this they cannot really connect to people. This dissatisfaction is also visible in the actions of these people, which are very often acts of frustration and despair, leading nowhere. Three dudes throw a perfectly working typewriter in the water, because it 'symbolizes the woman that broke their hearts.' There is an old anarchist who lies about fighting in the Spanish Revolutionary War, because his anarchism has mostly existed in theory. If this all isn't enough, all these people also have trouble connecting to each other. So many of the conversations here involve one person talking enthusiastically, while another one just is reasonably bored, or thinks that what the other is saying is a load of crap.
Still, this is not a despairing movie. The dialogue is filled with too much humor for that. And the unknown actors exude too much energy for this movie to be despairing. They convey to us that their characters truly believe in what they are saying and that they are hopeful that life will get better. It's not surprising that many of these actors actually were local struggling artists, or other kinds of artistic types. Which at the same time makes the movie more tragic. They are all young and full of dreams, which will most probably never be fulfilled. Unless you are of course Richard Linklater, who quite clearly has sympathy for all of these characters and positions himself as one of these young Austin slackers. He became a major filmmaker whose films often involve the same themes discussed by the characters of Slacker. There might be hope for the rest of them too!
What I also liked about this movie is that you really get a sense of the city of Austen itself and its geography. By following all these characters in long takes across the city streets, we get the sense that we are getting an authentic tour of the city. These are not the places where tourists might go when they go to Austin, but the places where ordinary Austin citizens live and work. It is quite rare to get such a portrayal of an American small town, and it is very deglamorizing. It is something we rarely see in movies and it is one of the reasons I also liked for example Jason Reitman's Young Adult, which is not that good a movie otherwise.
Lastly it is quite interesting what a secretly influential movie this has been. It launched the career of Richard Linklater (even though he had made one movie before, which hardly anyone seems to have seen) and made Austin the capital of the American indie-movement. But even more interestingly, as far as I know the characters here were considered back then as a small subculture. Now their attitudes and behavior are attributed to and adopted by what we call hipster culture, which whether you like it or not is becoming quite in an important youth subculture. This has perhaps become even clearer since the current financial crisis began in 2008. Many so-called hipsters now have become skeptical of those who have the power in our society. The current popularity of hipster culture is of course the consequence of many different societal developments and cultural influences. But there are scenes and moments in Slacker which are so prescient that watching the movie you may get the feeling the most important seeds for the current popularity of hipster culture were laid by Slacker. Of course that's probably not the case, but this remains as written earlier Linklater's best movie. Though I must mention that I am not as great a fan of Linklater as others. I haven't seen a bad movie by him yet, but I don't think he has made a great one apart from this and Bernie. I have not seen parts 2 and 3 of his Before trilogy yet though and I have neither seen Waking Life.
While Linklater doesn't directly connect all these people to each other, there is an idea behind his approach. These are not just disjointed scenes involving the citizens of Austin. All these scenes together do form a relatively coherent whole. The movie amounts to a rather sad, and despairing portrait of Linklater's hometown. Most of the people we meet here are (college-) educated twenty-somethings who mostly hang out aimlessly. They cannot seem to find a job and are thoroughly dissatisfied with the American establishment. They've basically lost all trust in the American elite. Two separate characters we meet believe that the American government is involved in dark conspiracies, one of them of course about the killing of John F. Kennedy. Another guy calculates that the popular vote that elected Bush Sr. in the previous elections actually included a very small percentage of Americans. A black man protests against the imprisonment of Mandela, only no one really cares. All of these people are reasonably intelligent, but seem stuck in Austin having conversations about Dostoevsky, the nature of television, and the meaning of political actions, anarchism, life and art. Only all these knowledge is basically useless. They are stuck being slackers in Austin and there is nothing they can do about it, because they are stuck being slackers in Austin. So they talk. On top of this they cannot really connect to people. This dissatisfaction is also visible in the actions of these people, which are very often acts of frustration and despair, leading nowhere. Three dudes throw a perfectly working typewriter in the water, because it 'symbolizes the woman that broke their hearts.' There is an old anarchist who lies about fighting in the Spanish Revolutionary War, because his anarchism has mostly existed in theory. If this all isn't enough, all these people also have trouble connecting to each other. So many of the conversations here involve one person talking enthusiastically, while another one just is reasonably bored, or thinks that what the other is saying is a load of crap.
Still, this is not a despairing movie. The dialogue is filled with too much humor for that. And the unknown actors exude too much energy for this movie to be despairing. They convey to us that their characters truly believe in what they are saying and that they are hopeful that life will get better. It's not surprising that many of these actors actually were local struggling artists, or other kinds of artistic types. Which at the same time makes the movie more tragic. They are all young and full of dreams, which will most probably never be fulfilled. Unless you are of course Richard Linklater, who quite clearly has sympathy for all of these characters and positions himself as one of these young Austin slackers. He became a major filmmaker whose films often involve the same themes discussed by the characters of Slacker. There might be hope for the rest of them too!
What I also liked about this movie is that you really get a sense of the city of Austen itself and its geography. By following all these characters in long takes across the city streets, we get the sense that we are getting an authentic tour of the city. These are not the places where tourists might go when they go to Austin, but the places where ordinary Austin citizens live and work. It is quite rare to get such a portrayal of an American small town, and it is very deglamorizing. It is something we rarely see in movies and it is one of the reasons I also liked for example Jason Reitman's Young Adult, which is not that good a movie otherwise.
Lastly it is quite interesting what a secretly influential movie this has been. It launched the career of Richard Linklater (even though he had made one movie before, which hardly anyone seems to have seen) and made Austin the capital of the American indie-movement. But even more interestingly, as far as I know the characters here were considered back then as a small subculture. Now their attitudes and behavior are attributed to and adopted by what we call hipster culture, which whether you like it or not is becoming quite in an important youth subculture. This has perhaps become even clearer since the current financial crisis began in 2008. Many so-called hipsters now have become skeptical of those who have the power in our society. The current popularity of hipster culture is of course the consequence of many different societal developments and cultural influences. But there are scenes and moments in Slacker which are so prescient that watching the movie you may get the feeling the most important seeds for the current popularity of hipster culture were laid by Slacker. Of course that's probably not the case, but this remains as written earlier Linklater's best movie. Though I must mention that I am not as great a fan of Linklater as others. I haven't seen a bad movie by him yet, but I don't think he has made a great one apart from this and Bernie. I have not seen parts 2 and 3 of his Before trilogy yet though and I have neither seen Waking Life.
No comments:
Post a Comment