Sunday, February 26, 2017

My VHS Purge: Dazed and Confused





As part of a downsizing project eight years ago I purged most of my pre-recorded VHS tape collection. I've never been a big collector of movies -- my DVD library is fairly small -- but the fact is I had accumulated around 70 tapes:

Dazed and Confused (1993) The Bloor Cinema, Toronto, January 1993: The house was packed and the audience reaction was one of "I'm having so much fun watching this", which threw me back to 1973 and American Graffiti. A communal screening feeling was Dazed and Confused.

I would have been the age of the film's 'kids'; part of the "freshmen" pack, even if we don't use those decidedly U.S. terms here in Canada (as far as I know). In addition, initiation rites, certainly at the high school level, and most certainly in the mid 1970s, are not a Canadian thing (as far as I've been led to believe).

Richard Linklater is one of those film directors who understands people, what makes them tick, and cultural inter-dynamics flexed by time and place. Dazed and Confused is a retro time capsule, but in an enjoyable motion picture.

2 comments:

Jon said...

How cow, that *is* Milla Jovovitch. Four years before she broke out in The Fifth Element...

Simon St. Laurent said...

And there is the always terrific Parker Posey.