Dazed & Confused (HD-DVD/DVD Combo Format)
Picture: B/B- Sound: B Extras: C Film: C
Richard
Linklater has remained a solid independent filmmaker at a time where it is so
hard to maintain autonomy. He is
definitely talented, but through most of his works, there is always something
that misses the mark somewhere for this critic, though he is precise, personal
and not making garbage. One particular
thing I am a stickler about are films (or anything else) that claims to be
about and/or is set in the 1970s. The
variables about that decade have been so purposely revised, bastardized and
lied about that I automatically take anything beginning in the 1980s addressing
them as very suspicious. Linklater’s Dazed & Confused (1993) was not one
of those revisions, but it still has its issues.
The film
is set in the beginning of the Summer of 1976, which has many advantages to
it. It is the year of the Bi-Centennial,
an event promoted like crazy as a first step to somehow wash away Vietnam and
Watergate. It was President Ford’s last
year in office and the counterculture was still in full swing entering a new
reality and its final stages. The film
is dead center in that world, where it seems freedom would be bouncing out all
over, but opportunity and progress have not reached the lower-middle class high
school where the older and stronger prey on the weak. Part of this is, of course, a reflection of
the immorality of the power structure that produced Vietnam and Watergate.
At the
crux of this contradiction of freedom and hate is a band of older boys going
around paddling younger boys as part of terrorizing them. Though Tony Bill’s enduring My Bodyguard (1980) was the first to address this kind of teen
terrorism, the extent to how bad things get had never been shown on film before
until Linklater made this picture.
Obviously, it is an expression of latent homosexuality on the part of
the stalkers, but that the situation of no future and opportunity is so ugly
that the victims give in sooner than they ought to (today, you would hear
idiots say the victims “liked it” or something to that effect, but Linklater
makes it very clear that is a big lie by people who want to and enjoy being
victimizers and not accept responsibility) because they are such easy targets.
Writer
Robin Wood discusses the film briefly in his great book Hollywood – From Vietnam To Reagan… And Beyond (reviewed elsewhere
on this site) and points out that the film is more of a Horror film in high
school film clothing, for which Linklater wrote him confirming he was
right. So yes, this is not just another
teen film. It picks the time just before
the 1980s made schools far more dangerous to the point they needed metal
detectors and the threat of the next school shooting (eventually building up to
Columbine, which always felt as much of the government and nation’s school’s
responsibility as the Kent State shootings, circa 1970) became the worst
possible new phenomenon as the youth population became more disposable than
ever. The connection to Vietnam is
undeniable.
The title
of the film for some automatically signals the famous Led Zeppelin song, but it
has a deeper meaning here. Those who
think this is just a drug film are wishful thinkers and making a big mistake. It is about the ultimate missed opportunity,
as the dominant ideology broke open, the next generation was too busy becoming
bored, violent and even remained ignorant to this because the energy through
the music (a key component to this film) was as good and better than the massive
drug use. Energy that could have been
used to innovate was squandered on pettiness and caused the countercultures’
own implosion.
The
triangulation here is that of victims, predators and stoners, with the stoners
actually being in some kind of power to team up with the victims to defend them
and maybe even get new things achieved.
Instead, al the stoners can do is make non-predators stoners and they
can all perpetuate ignorance by drowning out the truth with whatever drug they
can get their hands on. At the time,
drugs were not as potent, it was an innocent time before the 1980s found more
violent dealers, addicts and more dangerously potent new drugs (or further
debased versions of the old ones used here) more potent than ever before. It was a time of innocence in the middle of a
nightmare for more people than you might consider (beyond any high school,
though this is a microcosm of that) and also reminds us that once again, the
very people who should have been proactive failed to make a difference when
they could have in a way that made us all pay the price to this day.
Then
there is the obvious drug reading beyond the aforementioned, the most fickle
and commercial following of for the film.
The populist and predictable fan (and I have debated several of them)
try to “explain” that I do not “understand” the film and that it is all about
how “great” drugs are and totally captures the culture that “we” have all
experienced. The film is then whittled
down to only being a vivid celebrating of the “fun” of getting high, despite
all the other aspects of the narrative.
When I bring up the paddling sequences (set in Kubrick/Peckinpah slow
motion to increase the nightmare, something that would currently not work in
HD), they either don’t know what to say, go into shock and/or ignore my
point. As a matter of fact, intended by
Linklater or not, that point of view automatically identifies the kind of
passive stoner drug guy today that is just as useless in their inaction about
anything as ever before.
So with
all these effective things going on in the film, along with its enduring
popularity, what are the film’s limits?
Is it too one-sided that the 1970s were a nightmare? No, though three men who sued Linklater said
they were unhappy about the film and that they had “fun” then, not enjoying the
dark side of the film. What kind of fun
is the issue. Yes, this is accurate
about some things that did happen then and were long overdue to be said and
shown. However, there is a sense of the
1970s the film still does not achieve cinematically, including things still
left unsaid.
Recently,
two films set then captured some of these moments. Malcolm Lee’s Roll Bounce about young African American males and their love of roller-skating
may have been a formulaic family film, but the moments in the rink are
remarkable and do recreate a part of the 1970s chemistry you do not see or hear
about much. The same can be said of
Catherine Hardwicke’s Lords Of Dogtown,
about three young men much closer to the Dazed
& Confused characters in spirit whose skateboarding innovations
eventually changed the world. This is
not to say that adding wheels to the paddles in Dazed would have ended the nightmare, but that these films (despite
their own problems to be addressed another time) capture key parts of the 1970s
Dazed missed in its zeal to focus on
the nightmare.
That is
not a bad thing, or the film would not work as much. Despite its low budget, there are mistakes
abounding in the year certain products (even cars) existed. That Linklater gets the music right, but he
and his crew have dozens of continuity goofs otherwise is annoying, one’s that
have nothing to do with a low budget. It
is just that recreating the 1970s is more complex than the visual effects in an
early Star Wars installment. Add the lack of ironic distance in more than
a few scenes of the film’s 103 minutes and the combination ultimately stops Dazed & Confused from becoming a
classic, settling for being a cult picture people still talk about.
Finally,
there is the cast, which also makes the film age in odd ways. A good friend of mine once said that the film
would be looked back on like George Lucas’ American
Graffiti (1973) in all the careers it launched, but I disagreed. Time has now vindicated me for picking Robert
Mandel’s School Ties the year before
Dazed (and certainly above Peter
Weir’s ever-obnoxious Dead Poet’s
Society) as that generation’s actors-and-stars-to-be film. If anything, something weirder happened.
Some of
the actors have gone on to consistent independent and sometimes commercial film
success, like Nicky Katt, Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg, Rory Cochrane, Joey
Lauren Adams and Jason London. Cole
Hauser and Milla Jovovich had more successful flirtations with commercial films
and Milla is the best-known of the female stars, no matter how mixed and patchy
that success has been. That leaves us
with two of the other male stars.
It is my
strong belief that one of the reasons Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey are
the two actors pushed commercially more than any others of their generation is
because of this particular film. Affleck
is an Oscar winner, but from his writing, not acting. His performance here (as one of the guys who
paddles younger boys) is dated and made weirder by similar behavior in too many
other films, but by streamlining him and McConaughey in safer, more shallow
fare the studios trying to push a tired, formulaic, dominant ideology of
predictability and against any traces of that still-recent counterculture have
spent hundreds of millions trying to make these guys “legitimate” film
stars. However, neither has become the
next Tom Cruise or Sean Connery.
Just as
well, Affleck (who was in School Ties)
has only made five other films of as much note, which says something about his
scorecard and McConaughey seems to sign up for any dumb film, only has Steven
Spielberg’s Amistad (1997) as a film
(of over two dozen) that is as good as this one. Some even think this is his performance as a
stoner is his best to date for all kinds of reasons. Whatever the case, the film is still a menace
to the establishment and that is a new reason altogether to celebrate it. This HD-DVD should upset those who dislike it
for that reason.
The 1.85
X 1 1080p digital High Definition image is even better than that of the
standard definition Criterion DVD, though this has some grain due to its lower
budget. Lee Daniel is Linklater’s usual
cinematographer and the relationship began early on. The film is slightly grainy in unintended
ways, but this still looks good and fans will be happy with the increase in
fidelity.
The
original theatrical sound was Dolby’s more advanced analog SR (Spectral
Recording) system, which has been upgraded to 5.1 as of a few years ago. The Criterion Collection set offered a DTS
track and that is repeated on the Standard DVD side here, but again NOT the HD
side. That offers Dolby Digital Plus
5.1, which is the same as the DTS mix, though I am mixed about which I prefer,
especially since I always had issues even with the sound on the film.
For a
picture set in the 1970s, though the choices of songs were inarguable for the
most part, the sound of those songs never evoked the fidelity of the moment
once and furthers the little things that add up to this film never seeming
totally authentic, which has been the basis of my many debates to date (and to
come) about the problems the film runs into.
To Linklater’s credit, the fact they got any good fidelity copies of
these songs pre-Super Audio CD or DVD-Audio is impressive. However, the mix is awkward, though the
upgrade may have corrected some problems with the original SR mix.
Extras
here are limited, so those who are fans (and own) The Criterion Collection
double DVD set will not find any of that here.
What we do get is “retro” public service announcements, deleted scene
and an “institutional” filmstrip on the dangers of “partying” dubbed The Blunt Truth. That is better than nothing, but makes this
Combo disc a solid companion to instead of replacement for The Criterion
Collection set. If you have never seen
the film before, the HD-DVD version is especially the way to go.
- Nicholas Sheffo
