Dazed and Confused

Richard Linklater / US, 1993

The independent filmmaker Richard Linklater was hailed as the chronicler of the slacker generation in the 1990s. Dazed and Confused is his humoristic portrait of teenagers on the last day of school in 1976. Part of Looking for America: Slackers.

You”d expect a bunch of exuberant teenagers looking forward to the future. Nothing could be further from the truth: for Suzanne, Randall, Michelle, Kevin, Ron and Mike their last day of school is spent at the same monotonous pace that dictated their entire school career. But boredom is something you need to fight and sex, booze and rock “n” roll (think Aerosmith) are essential ingredients in this battle.

In his third long feature film Linklater paints an ironic and sensitive portrait of a group of adolescents in Austin, Texas. The year is 1976. The director – who also wrote the screenplay – brilliantly managed to capture the psyche of the suburban teenager; the soundtrack, containing songs by Ted Nugent, Black Sabbath, ZZ Top and Deep Purple, is also perfectly expressive of that somewhat undefined guitar solo era prior to the explosion of punk.

The band The Mighty Breaks will perform on the evening of 30 November.