Dazed and Confused centers on a fictional high school class of '76. These seniors are bored, stoned and generally disinterested in any activity that doesn't have a beer attached to it. They devote the day to humiliating freshmen, while the freshmen search for sex and a good party. A few students occasionally ponder the future, only to draw a blank every time.
The kids experience some conflicts, in spite of their generally lackluster existence. The school's quarterback is feeling rebellious and doesn't want to sign the anti-drug pledge the coach is handing out. A freshman is attempting to score with a sophomore, who happens to be a friend of his hip, older sister. A few other freshmen are aching — literally — for revenge against a sadistic, paddle-wielding senior. And one of the school's liberal intellectuals has just decided that he doesn't want to become a lawyer for the ACLU — he wants to dance, instead.
Despite these minor diversions, the bulk of the student body just wants to party, and a good chunk of Dazed and Confused is devoted to the quest for the perfect beer blow-out. When they find it, it turns out to be large, loud and dull. No wonder these kids are moody about the future — they can't even party with gusto.
The movies pervading sense of aimlessness is meant to reflect the blankness that characterized the late '70s. The kids in the film were born too late to join the counter-culture and too early for the punk rebellion. They're smart enough to discuss questions of sexual irony in Gilligan's Island, but they're not perceptive enough to recognize the irony in their own conversations. Most importantly, they define themselves by what they're not — and they never move beyond that negative perspective.
Dazed and Confused does a nice job of realistically portraying the free-floating drift of this generation. Unfortunately, the film, like its characters, doesn't have an identity of its own. It simply meanders through its own state of confusion until the screen goes blank.
No comments:
Post a Comment