Linklater’s characters, from Dazed and Confused’s Pink to Before Sunrises’ Jesse, define themselves by the absence of time, living in the moment for the moment. Linklater creates contradicting cinematic confines, depicting people both defined by their 24-hour existence yet also refusing to fall victim to time’s ceaseless stride. Each of Tape, Slacker, Dazed and Confused, and all three instalments of the captivating Before Trilogy, take place in a single day and explore the inner boundaries of the people that exist in their ephemeral moments of time. This is an area of close examination for Richard Linklater, whose narratives often toy with the concept of time, even if not explicitly so. Concepts of the perpetual march of time and its relation to human existence and memory have forever interested artists, though with the scope of this concept being so large, its execution often proves hard. Kevin Smith branched out where he could (including an odd horror phase with Tusk and Red State), but would continue to return to his store to buy smokes and lottery tickets, and most recently hung out with Dante and Randal in Clerks III.Though, outside of the juvenile pot-smoking musings of adolescent teens in Dazed and Confused, which can be easily satirised, there is a genuine philosophical approach to the films of Richard Linklater that accesses a unique cinematic quality. Linklater went on to learn from his experiences all the same, creating more varied works and being braver with his output, fulfilling the promise of his early masterpiece Slacker with great films like A Scanner Darkly, School of Rock, the Before Sunrise trilogy, and Boyhood. Clerks stands up better, where SubUrbia has aged poorly for its obtuse racism and melodramatic themes on teen suicide ( Empire's review called it a "strangely depressing experience"). Gotcha.īoth films, over 25 years on, show early works from directors honing their crafts. So to get that straight: SubUrbia feels reactive to Clerks, which in itself was reactive to Slacker. Although none of the characters from either movie would like to admit it, both places have a hold over them like the most toxic of relationships: The Quick Stop provides Dante with a paycheck (while Jay & Silent Bob can smoke outside), and The Corner gives the friends a place to meet up, drink, and shoot the breeze in a town with nothing else to do.īy the time that the roles had been reversed in '96, Linklater's SubUrbia feels like it's only trying its best to capture and capitalize on what Smith had achieved with Clerks two years prior, even down to SubUrbia's poster that looks like a (only slightly distorted) mirror to Clerks' marketing. These characters could quite easily be the same people to walk into Dante's Quick Stop store in Clerks, buy cigarettes, and complain. Take when Pony (Jayce Bartok) arrives back in town in SubUrbia he cites The Corner as being this landmark (and with it, subtly suggests that nothing changes in this suburban Gen X place). With a simple edit and a black and white filter, one could convincingly make it look like Linklater's crew are stood feet away from Randal (Jeff Anderson), Dante (Brian O'Halloran), and a sign that reads: "I assure you, we're open." It is where they repeatedly assemble, because it is what they know. To the deadbeats in SubUrbia, "The Corner" outside a gas station has achieved its own title.
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