Slacker [VHS]

One of those movies that changes your life. Nothing less. I cannot imagine anyone watching this without feeling utterly inspired, and mesmerised.

I thoroughly enjoyed the freewheeling nature of the film, moving from character to character giving us snippets of situations and mini dramas. Seeing it now it's almost like a historical snapshot of a certain class of people; one can't help wondering how they would fare today.

Good movie, reliable seller!

As a Linklater fan, I enjoyed this film which seemed ahead of it's time on environmental issues and the state of the world. It also related largely to the character's states of mind and philosophies on life.

Great!

Superb treatise on the life of the mundane.

The DVD appearance of this turn of the decade classic comes just as Writer/Director, Richard Linklater, is finding his feet again with films such as Waking Life and Tape, the former taking much of its philosophical source material from this Houston, Texas based paeon to dropping out. It's an excellent reminder of just how massively popular culture changed in the 90s. Replacing 80s spectacularism with a new sense of insularity, which was enhanced infinitely by the constraints of a tiny budget, Slacker spends five or so minutes each in the company of Houston's Idler community. The characters we encounter are all, in some way, pretty messed up. There's a car thief, an anarchist professor whose dreams of governmental meltdown have caused a minor identity crisis, there's a guy who obsessively collects TVs and leaves them on continually, a bitter 40-something returning from the funeral of his cruel stepfather whose grave he plans to go back and dance on. The monologue by the sci-fi conspiracy theorist is, in particular, a frighteningly funny view of a world gone mad leading to individual insanity.It could all seem pretty heavy when you also consider Linklater's ethereal approach. The Omnipotent camera floats throughout the city during the course of 24-hours (condensed to a neat 90 or so minutes), picking the most revealing and darkly amusing conversations of the individuals it passes. Once you've had a flavour of one character, it moves on giving us a Scroogesque view of a world that we were already aware of but had never really looked at in a particular context.What elevates the film above the maudlin, though, is a reassuring ability to laugh at itself. To say, 'look how much we've messed ourselves up - isn't it ridiculous?' The fact that Linklater himself plays the first character we meet makes us realise that he's with us all the way. He's one of them - one of us. The slackers.Appearing roughly around the same time as Douglas Coupland's literary equivalent, Generation X, Slacker didn't necessarily pave the way for a more aware world. Rather, it highlighted the apathy of the aware - something seemingly impenetrable from the powers that be. How could they get to us if we didn't care what they did enough to do anything about it but yack? Since then, such apathy or slackerism has been given the corporate gloss and the 'alternative' has now been so grossly commodified that the masses are able to write off films like Slacker as 'cool' in the most base, aesthetic sense. The layers of irony are so dense they become confusing.It's reassuring to know that people like Richard Linklater - not quite as big a Slacker as the rest of us - care enough to continue telling it like it is. Now click the button, buy the DVD you don't really need without leaving the house and see if there's some takeaway left in the fridge while you wait for it to arrive.

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