Linklater’s breakthrough indie has the kind of anarchic energy that still feels relevant today, capturing America at the crossroads of stagnation and progress, as his camera roams from one character to another like a stream of consciousness.
Review #2,972
Dir. Richard Linklater
1990 | USA | Comedy, Drama | 100min | 1.33:1 | English
Not rated – likely to be NC16 for coarse language and sexual references
Cast: Richard Linklater, Rudy Basquez, Jean Caffeine, Jan Hockey, Stephan Hockey
Plot: A day in the life of eccentric young people in 1990s Austin, Texas. In a series of loosely connected vignettes, a merry-go-round of amateur philosophers, jilted lovers, inept criminals, aspiring artists, and whacked-out conspiracy theorists searches for a place in society.
Awards: Nom. for Grand Jury Prize – Dramatic (Sundance)
Source: Detour Filmproduction
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Day in the Life of; Austin Texas; Youth
Narrative Style: Straightforward – Vignette
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: Criterion Blu-ray
Spoilers: No
Richard Linklater’s sophomore feature, Slacker, is not only the director’s breakthrough film, but one of the most important entries in the then-burgeoning American indie film movement of the 1990s.
It’s very talky, full of long takes and would lay the stylistic and structural groundwork for some of his later films, particularly his more polished but still improvisational ‘Before’ trilogy. In Slacker, we see the rawest form of Linklater’s conversational, episodic drama with comic overtones.
As his 16mm camera roams from one character to another like a stream of consciousness, we mostly see the youth of Austin, Texas, idling away as they muse about everything under the sun—politics, conspiracies, society, the arts, media, sex, and more.
Most of them are oddballs, weird-ass ‘slackers’ who lament about the past and present, and are blinded by what the future holds for them.
“I know it’s disgusting, but it’s sort of like getting down to the real Madonna.”
Some of them seem to be overeducated or have radical ideas. “Terrorism is the surgical strike capability of the oppressed!” someone asserts on the street; “Every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death!” another warns.
And so, Linklater’s work has the kind of anarchic, distrust-the-authorities energy that still feels relevant today, especially its biting sociopolitical commentary.
There must have been at least a hundred characters as the camera is passed like a baton in a 100-minute relay race, starting with the director himself taking a cab and having a one-way conversation with the bemused driver.
With an extremely modest budget of USD23,000, Slacker grossed more than a million dollars. As financially successful as it is artistically vital in capturing America at the crossroads of stagnation and progress, Linklater’s work is about people who aren’t sure who they want to be, for themselves, for others, and for the US of A.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Promo Clip:
Eternality Tan 
[…] Linklater really hit a hat-trick of critical wins in the early ‘90s with Slacker (1990) and Before Sunrise (1995), with Dazed and Confused stuck in between like some problem middle […]
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