REEL | 90s Baby! – Still 'Dazed and Confused' After All These Years

"It'd be a lot cooler if you did."

Universal Pictures / Focus Features

Beloved Austin-based, independent filmmaker Richard Linklater's highly influential but box office disappointment of a sophomore teen film, Dazed and Confused, famously took its title from the killer Led Zeppelin classic rock song whose music rights the film was unsuccessful at securing for its bitchin' soundtrack, all the way back in the year 1993. This was one of many omens of sorts for its eventual lasting cultural legacy as a stone cold cult classic. Some three decades after its debut, its all-in-one-day, last-day-of-high-school hangout vibes remain strongly rewatchable.

In many respects, watching this slice-of-life film any time after its modest theatrical release feels like travelling back in time to 1976 via the power of cinema. Fresh but not yet famous faces like Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Matthew McConaughey, and many others, in their first significant supporting roles, show up in various memorable high school scenes as Linklater moves through the small-town Texas characters fluidly to mark the celebration of the start of summer vacation and slow thematic transition into young adulthood.

Linklater takes his everyday authentic experiences of true Americana and layers them through memories of mid-'70s youth culture, classic rock, and a sense of friendship. It's truly hard to describe just how significant and meaningful the experience of watching this film through the eyes of a teenager or young adult at any time or era is. Some things are universal. Dazed and Confused understands this through its expression of growing up middle-class while still marking common coming-of-age hallmarks.

It's both about as authentically real yet carefully nostalgic a revisiting of the 1970s American high school experience captured film as it gets. Cue "Tuesday's Gone"—party's over, fin. Dazed and Confused screened at the Rio Theatre and screens at the Park Theatre on July 3rd. It also screens at the VIFF Centre starting July 10th as part of their 90s, Baby! series (on until August 31st).


More | YVArcade / Criterion / Dazed / Dissolve