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Slacker, 1990
On a hot day in Austin texas, a man in a taxi cab ruminates on what might have been if he'd stayed at the bus stop. From there, we find a woman who has been apparently mowed down in the street. A jogger stops to help---though she does not stop jogging--and is promptly joined by a man who is late for work and can't stop to help, but does have time to slip her his card. And so on and so on as the camera roams the city, one character leading into a short vignette of the next in a series of long, luxurious takes.
It is interesting to come to this film for the first time having already seen Linklater's Waking Life, which uses a very similar long-take, loosely connected personal stories structure. But whereas that film leaned toward discussions of philosophy, this one weaves the deeper monologues in with more mundane interactions.
A broad theme across the different stories seems to be the intersection of individuals and groups. For example, a man musing on why it's bad for everyone that his acquaintance has given a quarter and a soda to a homeless man begging on the street or the way that different characters rail against the powers that be (corporations, the police, the government).
As with any film of this nature, some sequences are more memorable than others. But whatever is happening in the movie, be it a man mourning (or maybe not) the death of his mother or a motor-mouthed woman trying to sell what she claims is a preserved pap smear of Madonna, Linklater allows the sequences to develop with a sense of both time and space that is very atypical of most movies. There are punchlines within the scenes, of course, but Linklater isn't afraid to let his camera linger on the silence or the down beat after the moment of impact.
The characters on display are very much that: characters. They are zany and highly opinionated, but in a way that is very recognizable. Every town has at least a few of these people, and a place like Austin of course has more than its fair share.
It's easy to see why this is considered a significant film in the context of the way that independent cinema has developed.
Slacker, 1990
On a hot day in Austin texas, a man in a taxi cab ruminates on what might have been if he'd stayed at the bus stop. From there, we find a woman who has been apparently mowed down in the street. A jogger stops to help---though she does not stop jogging--and is promptly joined by a man who is late for work and can't stop to help, but does have time to slip her his card. And so on and so on as the camera roams the city, one character leading into a short vignette of the next in a series of long, luxurious takes.
It is interesting to come to this film for the first time having already seen Linklater's Waking Life, which uses a very similar long-take, loosely connected personal stories structure. But whereas that film leaned toward discussions of philosophy, this one weaves the deeper monologues in with more mundane interactions.
A broad theme across the different stories seems to be the intersection of individuals and groups. For example, a man musing on why it's bad for everyone that his acquaintance has given a quarter and a soda to a homeless man begging on the street or the way that different characters rail against the powers that be (corporations, the police, the government).
As with any film of this nature, some sequences are more memorable than others. But whatever is happening in the movie, be it a man mourning (or maybe not) the death of his mother or a motor-mouthed woman trying to sell what she claims is a preserved pap smear of Madonna, Linklater allows the sequences to develop with a sense of both time and space that is very atypical of most movies. There are punchlines within the scenes, of course, but Linklater isn't afraid to let his camera linger on the silence or the down beat after the moment of impact.
The characters on display are very much that: characters. They are zany and highly opinionated, but in a way that is very recognizable. Every town has at least a few of these people, and a place like Austin of course has more than its fair share.
It's easy to see why this is considered a significant film in the context of the way that independent cinema has developed.