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Dazed and Confused, 1993
This film follows about a dozen young people on the last day of school in a small Texas town in 1976. Special focus is given to Pink (Jason London), who is being pressured to give up his "loser" friends and focus on football, and to Mitch (Wiley Wiggins), a freshman who is getting his first real taste of high school life from hazing to partying.
Something that this film does to tremendous success is show the way that young people, even the "nice ones", can be kind of a mess. And therefore their social interactions are a series of people with their own issues bouncing off of one another. High school is a very formative time for many people, and that era of finding/refining an identity can be both exhilarating and fraught. There are a few outright villains--like Ben Affleck as egocentric bully O'Bannion or Parker Posey as mean girl Darla---but for the most part the characters feel like a realistic range of teenagers, complete with their own insecurities and hopes.
What surprised me the most about the film was how sad I found huge swaths of it. This is largely maybe because I was expecting more of a comedy. But the first third of the film, with a heavy emphasis on the violent and/or humiliating hazing that the seniors inflict on the freshmen, really depressed me. "Someone did this to me when I was a freshman, and you'll do it when you're a senior" one of the senior girls tells freshman Julie (Catherine Morris), as the girl is being called a slut, b*tch, c*ck tease, and having her clothing covered with ketchup, mustard, raw eggs, and flour. One of the senior boys makes a freshman girl open her mouth, and then asks her if she spits or swallows, something his friends just laugh off. I think that part of what bothered me was the film's portrayal of these rituals---the hazing of the freshmen boys involves dangerous car chases and being hit with paddles---as something that the kids with good character just get through as a rite of passage. We don't see the kids who don't get over it, or for whom this kind of hazing is actually just a socially permitted form of cruelty against kids who will never actually be accepted into the herd.
There are abundant memorable supporting performances. Matthew McConaughey as a long-graduated man who still hangs out with high schoolers. Adam Goldberg plays one part of an outsider trio who chafes against the rituals of the popular senior class. Milla Jovovich and Joey Lauren Adams are also on hand as senior girls.
Despite some big moments like the car chases, a brawl, and a sequence of the freshmen boys getting revenge on O'Bannion, I most enjoyed some of the smaller moments like the symbolism of an empty keg, a moment of awkward flirting between Julie and Mitch, or some gentle sparks flying between a senior who is watching the freshman hazing and one of the girls being hazed.
I enjoyed this film, though I was definitely ready for it to be done by the end. Teenagers are emotionally exhausting to be around, and this movie certainly captures that! I really appreciated the way that it showed how character is built not mainly through grand gestures, but through small moments of kindness or defiance.
Dazed and Confused, 1993
This film follows about a dozen young people on the last day of school in a small Texas town in 1976. Special focus is given to Pink (Jason London), who is being pressured to give up his "loser" friends and focus on football, and to Mitch (Wiley Wiggins), a freshman who is getting his first real taste of high school life from hazing to partying.
Something that this film does to tremendous success is show the way that young people, even the "nice ones", can be kind of a mess. And therefore their social interactions are a series of people with their own issues bouncing off of one another. High school is a very formative time for many people, and that era of finding/refining an identity can be both exhilarating and fraught. There are a few outright villains--like Ben Affleck as egocentric bully O'Bannion or Parker Posey as mean girl Darla---but for the most part the characters feel like a realistic range of teenagers, complete with their own insecurities and hopes.
What surprised me the most about the film was how sad I found huge swaths of it. This is largely maybe because I was expecting more of a comedy. But the first third of the film, with a heavy emphasis on the violent and/or humiliating hazing that the seniors inflict on the freshmen, really depressed me. "Someone did this to me when I was a freshman, and you'll do it when you're a senior" one of the senior girls tells freshman Julie (Catherine Morris), as the girl is being called a slut, b*tch, c*ck tease, and having her clothing covered with ketchup, mustard, raw eggs, and flour. One of the senior boys makes a freshman girl open her mouth, and then asks her if she spits or swallows, something his friends just laugh off. I think that part of what bothered me was the film's portrayal of these rituals---the hazing of the freshmen boys involves dangerous car chases and being hit with paddles---as something that the kids with good character just get through as a rite of passage. We don't see the kids who don't get over it, or for whom this kind of hazing is actually just a socially permitted form of cruelty against kids who will never actually be accepted into the herd.
There are abundant memorable supporting performances. Matthew McConaughey as a long-graduated man who still hangs out with high schoolers. Adam Goldberg plays one part of an outsider trio who chafes against the rituals of the popular senior class. Milla Jovovich and Joey Lauren Adams are also on hand as senior girls.
Despite some big moments like the car chases, a brawl, and a sequence of the freshmen boys getting revenge on O'Bannion, I most enjoyed some of the smaller moments like the symbolism of an empty keg, a moment of awkward flirting between Julie and Mitch, or some gentle sparks flying between a senior who is watching the freshman hazing and one of the girls being hazed.
I enjoyed this film, though I was definitely ready for it to be done by the end. Teenagers are emotionally exhausting to be around, and this movie certainly captures that! I really appreciated the way that it showed how character is built not mainly through grand gestures, but through small moments of kindness or defiance.