Movie: Clerks (Kevin Smith, 1994)
Towards the end, Dante (Brian O'Halloran) laments that he finds it really hard to change what's bothering him as he is "not the type of person who'll disrupt things just to shit comfortably." In a movie that almost entirely consists of entertaingly long-winded asides and digressions, that's one of the few lines of dialogue that expresses a concrete idea simply. I would have enjoyed Clerks a lot even without it, but it does add some depth to it, highlighting that Kevin Smith has actually been building towards something, with more thought and subtlety than he's let on. O'Halloran deserves some credit here too. He is obviously not some great actor, and hasn't done anything of note outside of Smith's orbit, but he does get Dante's vibe of half-arsed nonchalance exactly right. He hates his job as an inconvenience store clerk, and hates himself for feeling that way, resulting in many failed attempts to find the exact midpoint between having a professional demeanor and a cool indifference.
Smith was still working in the store he shot Clerks in, an origin story that has helped him become successful enough to never have to worry about shitting comfortably, or about disrupting things. I hadn't seen Clerks before, but I was a fan of Chasing Amy and Dogma, and even found Jersey Girl quite charming. It's quite unfortunate that Smith has since become way too invested in essentially making fan fiction out of his own material, especially because it risks clouding his earlier work. His eagerness to be seen as the ultimate fanboy is at odds with his work on Clerks, which never feels like it's made by someone who has no reference points beyond geekdom. Aside from one scene that discusses Star Wars (and even then, the primarily discussion point is not the movie itself, but an absurd hypothetical dilemma involving independent contractors), there are barely any nods to popular culture here. Most of the jokes, dialogues and situations in the film are just (well thought out) comic exaggerations that would be recognisable to anyone who's ever been either a clerk (or has had any other shitty side job) or a somewhat lost 22-year old. And the opening scene (that has a brilliant punch line just when you think it has ended) made me laugh a lot.
Now to bring up the elephant in the room, yes, Kevin Smith is obviously not the director with the greatest visual sense in the world. It is here sometimes fairly obvious that he has no idea what to do with a camera beyond turning it on and pointing in the general direction of someone speaking, preferably without moving around too much. There is a hockey scene that contains so many close ups of roller skates and hockey sticks it's unclear whether it was filmed like that to achieve an artsy look, or whether it was intended as a parody of artsy depictions of sports. It doesn't work as either and its visual incoherence is mostly just baffling. Having said that, Smith has found lots of ways to make his visual limitations work in his favor. Apart from using cuts for comic effect really well, he also knows how to get the most out of static shots, probably most notably in the scene where Dante and his ex reunite, allowing us to see them work through their feelings in great detail. Another good example (that sets up the one scene of the film that's a bit tasteless and needlessly humiliating) comes when an older customer asks to use the staff bathroom, and once approved keeps reappearing into the frame with perfect timing and increasingly outreagous requests.
For my money though, the best shot of the film features Randal (Jeff Anderson), Dante's neighbouring video store clerk (who has much less trouble walking around with an air of cool indifference) ridiculing a client who is asking for film advice. They are filmed from inside the video store; through its windows we see Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith) hang around on the block as they usually do. When the disappointed client leaves, we see a confrontation between her and the two layabouts. As tbe camera remaisn still inside the store, we see it all happening from behind and with the sound muffed. It's the best example of how the corner on which our two clerks work is shown from many different perspectives and viewpoints, creating a nice sense of the overall atmosphere of the place, turning the movie into a snapshot of street life.
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