Why Dazed and Confused (1993) Is My Favorite Movie: A Henry's Movie Guide Essay
Why Dazed and Confused Is My Favorite Movie
On January 1, 2020, I decided that I needed to make a personal change. I’d never really been someone who made New Year’s resolutions, but that time it just felt different. It wasn’t just a resolution for the new year; it was a resolution for all of the 2020s, and honestly, the rest of my life. I decided that I was wasting too much of my own time, spending too long sitting around feeling sorry for myself and not getting anything done, and generally just worrying too much. Going into the decade of the 2020s, I decided that my main goal should be to try my best to make the most of every moment. I wanted to learn new things, try new things, and basically just experience what life had to offer as much as I could. My biggest fear at the moment is that later on in my life I’ll look back and feel disappointed with how I spent my younger years. That’s definitely not to say I think I’ve wasted my youth so far, that’s not the case, but I do already regret some things about how I’ve spent my time in the past few years. More than almost anything, I want to look back on high school and think about how I did my best and how I had a lot of fun. Once I graduate, I’ll have mentally moved on, but for now, I am extremely conscious of this specific aspiration that I have. The extent to which I’ve succeeded with this goal so far is up in the air, and obviously life isn’t always going to be a blast; however, I still have that current goal that I will try my best at.
For years I’ve loved coming-of-age movies. If I had to choose a favorite subgenre, it would probably be that. I’ve seen the overwhelming majority of the “classic” teen movies, from American Graffiti and Fast Times at Ridgemont High to The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to American Pie and Superbad. Many of my all-time favorite movies are coming-of-age films. They’re the movies that I relate to the most because of my age, and when they’re done right, they can be incredibly poignant, thoughtful, and stirring. As a kid living in America who loves movies, seeing films about the lives of teenagers can be a very striking experience. Recently I realized that I had seen most of the true classic coming-of-age/teen movies that there were to watch, except for one big exception: Dazed and Confused. Ever since seventh grade when I started regularly watching R-rated movies and truly formed my “taste” in films for the first time, I’d wanted to watch this movie. Over the years I’ve watched hundreds and hundreds of movies, but I just never really got around to Dazed and Confused. At different points in time, I’ve had different movies that I’d considered my favorite: Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Do the Right Thing, and a whole bunch of others like Hoop Dreams, Lost in Translation, Stand By Me, and more. Pretty recently I had made up my mind that I just didn’t have a favorite movie anymore. I couldn’t pick one single film that was my favorite out of all that I’d watched. Until I watched Dazed and Confused for the first time about two weeks ago. For those of you who have never even heard of this movie, it’s about a variety of high schoolers of different ages and friend groups on their last day of school in 1976 and the different ways they come together throughout the film. It became my favorite movie immediately after watching it. The very next day, the rental hadn’t expired yet, so I just sat down and watched it all over again. Three days after that, I watched it a third time. And again, a week later, I watched it a fourth time. It just didn’t get old. For me, Dazed and Confused was not a movie I could’ve just watched once by myself. I am so glad I didn’t watch this in middle school. It really could not have come to me at a better time in my life.
This is less of a review and more of a big explanation of why I like this film so much, so I apologize to anyone who was expecting me to talk about this movie from a critical standpoint. I don’t necessarily think this is a perfect movie; for example I think there are parts of this film that dragged on a little bit too long. However, I love pretty much every minute of Dazed and Confused, and even if I could change it, I don’t think I would. Some small parts of this movie are even a little uncomfortable to watch, but that was definitely a directorial decision that Richard Linklater made. Other than that, I basically have nothing negative to say about this film. One of the best things about Dazed is that it’s a lot of things at once, but it can hardly be defined. It’s a pretty funny movie, but simply calling it a comedy oversimplifies it way too much, at least as far as I’m concerned. It’s thought-provoking and heartbreaking at times, but too much fun to really be a drama. Dazed and Confused is really one of the most realistic movies I’ve ever seen, because the story doesn’t feel like it was written by filmmakers, but instead like it was just ripped straight out of real life. The script is impeccably good; the dialogue is completely authentic. Like I said, I don’t have much to say about this movie on a technical level but I will say that, for a movie that essentially has no solid plot, when you watch it you really feel like you’re along for the ride with the characters.
Speaking of the characters, one of my favorite things about this movie is how authentic and fleshed-out the characters are. As someone who’s currently in high school, pretty much every character here seems like they could be someone I’d actually know. That’s something I never found believable in movies like The Breakfast Club – the famous “the brain, the princess, the athlete, the basket case, the criminal” categorization of high schoolers can’t be applied to real life. Movie characters can be one-dimensional, but it’s very rare that actual people are. That’s what makes the characters in Dazed and Confused so special – most of them don’t just fit under one general “type.” Take the closest thing there is to a main character in this movie, Randy “Pink” Floyd (Jason London). He’s an athletic football player who also runs with the burnout crowd, gets along with the intellectual types, and takes Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins) under his wing after he gets brutally hazed by his own senior friends. I apologize if this comes off as pretentious, but as someone who doesn’t really fit under one general category of high school stereotypes myself, I appreciated how Pink was friends with pretty much everyone, and had just as much fun playing poker with nerds as he did smashing peoples’ mailboxes for fun. Mitch is also totally realistic, and for me, somewhat relatable; he represents the transition from innocent eighth grader to slightly more experienced freshman. It could be argued that Wiley Wiggins is sort of a bad actor in this movie, but even if he is, that just adds to the genuine awkwardness of the character. If anyone in this movie has a true character arch, it’s Mitch. Perhaps the most tragic character is Mike (Adam Goldberg), a nerdy guy with an inferiority complex who wants more out of life than to just go to law school. He hasn’t had enough fun during his high school years, knows this, and during the fifteen or so hours during which this movie takes place, tries his hardest to grapple with the reality that he didn’t have a satisfying high school experience. On top of that, he feels uncertain about his future, and wants to be a dancer instead of a lawyer. When he gets insulted by a tough guy named Clint (Nicky Katt) at a party, he takes it extremely personally and can’t get over it. Dazed and Confused is a movie filled with amazing performances, not dramatic performances per say, but performances where the actor completely pulls off their character to an incredible extent. A standout performance is Ben Affleck as the aggressive and violent second-year-senior Fred O’Bannion. He absolutely nails the over-the-top hostility of the character. However, I think the best and most obvious example of this is Matthew McConaughey’s iconic performance as David Wooderson, the easygoing 20-something working man who still hangs out with high schoolers even though he graduated years ago. Even though, in theory, it’s a little loserish to be hanging out with kids that much younger than you, McConaughey brings a strong sense of nobility to the role that I don’t think a lot of other actors could’ve. He really took the character and ran with it. One of his most recognizable lines in the movie, where he says, “Let me tell you this: the older you do get, the more rules they’re gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin’, man. L-I-V-I-N,” wasn’t scripted. That was the first scene McConaughey filmed after getting back from his dad’s funeral. It’s little things like that that, in my opinion, make Dazed and Confused an extra special movie.
The biggest reason why Dazed and Confused is my favorite movie is that it is essentially, in my eyes, the film manifestation of the life goal that I described in the first paragraph: to make the most of your time and have as much fun as possible while you can. This is a movie about young people living in the moment, some more aware about impending change in their lives than others. Whether they’re just starting high school or they graduated years ago, the characters in Dazed are all operating within a couple-of-miles radius for about fifteen hours sharing many of the same experiences. There’s something sort of powerful to me about watching some of the characters try different things for the first time. Even though the film takes place over a day and a night and even into a morning with lots of different moments happening between those hours, it all feels like one big moment in time. Dazed and Confused is a pure snapshot of the last day of high school in Austin, Texas on May 28, 1976, yet feels like it could take place today. The themes of the film are truly timeless, yet the actual story is looked at through a nostalgic lens. Parts of the movie are just the characters aimlessly enjoying themselves, others focus on the more transcendent parts of the kids’ collective experience that night. This can be mirrored into real life: sometimes nothing is truly happening, sometimes it feels like everything is happening all at once. That’s why this movie feels so realistic; it’s not just realistic in its portrayal of how high schoolers think and interact, it’s realistic in its portrayal of how life can play out for a young person. Like I said earlier, it’s some of the little things that make Dazed even more compelling. The combination of sight and sound in this film gives it a dreamlike quality at times. The soundtrack, full of throwback songs of the 1970s, packs an emotional punch. Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” and Kiss’s “Rock and Roll All Nite” have always been two of my favorite songs; when featured in the movie, they really add to the experience. When the big party of the film inevitably comes to an end, and “Tuesday’s Gone” by Lynyrd Skynyrd starts playing, you really feel like you’re there with those characters and that the party is ending for you, too. Not to mention the additions of other affecting songs like Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” and Peter Frampton’s “Show Me the Way,” and classics like Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and Foghat’s “Slow Ride.” When those songs are paired with the truly incredible cinematography of the film, you really feel like you’re watching something real and special. Dazed and Confused is a very nostalgic movie on the whole. I can imagine it being nostalgic for the people who grew up during the time period the film is set in, or the residents of Austin, Texas. It’s true that the movie does look back at 70s-era Texas in a nostalgic way, but I think it’s also true that it can make any of us nostalgic for past experiences we’ve had, especially ones from our younger years. For me, as a fifteen-year-old who’s still in high school, it almost makes me nostalgic for the future.
