I've always had this unspoken sense of purpose hanging over my shoulder. It's like an invisible friend that cuts me from the world I live in. I spend more time living in the world I wish to build than in the one that was dealt to me. Most people are like that (or so I believe), but not everybody. There are strange, beautiful creatures that long for nothing else but this very moment. Who don't see the future if they can't live the present. Society calls them slackers. They are a 100% contemporary phenomenon, created by the post-war culture of aggressive opulence. They are hippies without idealism and renowned filmmaker Richard Linklater dedicated his directorial debut to them. SLACKER is a beautiful, life-affirming movie about doing nothing.
There is no narrative to SLACKER. Either it's that or there is a micro-narrative for every character in the movie and they all have one scene to live their story. The movie is situated in Austin, Texas and starts at the bus station where an unnamed character (portrayed by Richard Linklater himself) recalls a dream he made to his taxi driver and ties it up with a theory of alternate universes he's currently reading. From that point, every time characters cross paths, Linklater leaves the first and starts following the second. He never stays with one character for more than one scene/discussion and the nature of this discussion is obstinately irrelevant to any form of plot. In SLACKER, characters are shooting the shit about JFK's assassination, Charles Whitman, a disappeared roommate, anything but their lives and where they want to take them.
If SLACKER is such an efficient and engaging piece of anti-storytelling, it's because of its keen understanding of what makes slacking beautiful. The stillness, the conversation, the moment it creates. The characters of SLACKER have no desire but to fill a long day with conversations about the world they inhabit. It's a very intellectual movie as everybody is passionate with something and has a point to make about it, but it's all just conversation fodder. Most characters seem to be dropouts of University of Texas (which is located in Austin), so what they have to say often revolve around intellectual topic. SLACKER is never boring or stale because it has a great pace and its conversations are well-structured. It'll make you nostalgic for campus life, back when you could spend entire days without having to live up to any responsibilities.
There is an antique beauty to SLACKER. It'll make you appreciate how fast the world changed in 23 years. The internet and the social media ages have changed the way human being interact with one another. If you have never watched SLACKER before, you'll feel proximity to it, because the nature of the conversations is similar to what you might find on Facebook, yet you're going to feel alienated from it because people engage one another in real life to discuss such subjects. If SLACKER was filmed in 2014, every character would walk around looking at a smartphone and it would be called ''cynical'', but it was filmed in 1991 and it's rather heartwarming to see people interact with one another for no apparent reason other than shooting the shit together. Several critics said it before me, but I'll say it again because I believe it's accurate : SLACKER is a celebration of life, freed from the desperate need to live it at 100 miles an hour.
In his own way, Richard Linklater is a filmmaker that discusses innocence a lot. It might be more true in SLACKER, but innocence is an important variable of most of his movies that I've seen. It's a part of A SCANNER DARKLY and DAZED AND CONFUSED too. I prefer his understated, carefree approach than Wes Anderson's heavy-handed eccenticity, for example. SLACKER is still pertinent and important today. The vast majority of people are imbued by this unspoken sense of purpose that'll have them racing through life to go somewhere that might never have existed, yet it's important to understand our world can be a wonderful, magical place too if we stomp on the brakes and allow ourselves to live in it. If you haven't watched SLACKER yet, I envy you. It's as closed as you'll get to traveling and exploring a new city and its ways in less than two hours. Not many movies can make you feel like you're on a vacation, much less can replicate the experience of traveling with as much accuracy.