Here's our review of Linklater's excellent SubUrbia.
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"What? Why do you keep saying I always play the same character? I don't." |
Richard Linklater is perhaps the quintessential American
indie filmmaker. He helped redefine independent film for the 1990s with Slacker,
and in the two decades since then he has crafted a very distinctive style as a
writer and director in a very strong body of work that includes his Before
Sunrise, Sunset, and Midnight trilogy, Dazed and Confused, Waking
Life, A Scanner Darkly, and Bernie. And now he has given us
possibly the best film of 2014, with his twelve-years-in-the-making masterpiece
Boyhood. Towards the beginning of that illustrious career, in 1996, he
made SubUrbia: a film which in many ways is a crucial step in his progression
as a director, and which is certainly just as great a film as many of those
mentioned above, but which, due to a complicated and troubled distribution
history, has faded into obscurity rather than earning recognition as one of his
greats. It's time for Warner Bros to start giving this neglected piece of the
Linklater filmography the respect it deserves- starting with a long-overdue
DVD/blu-ray release.
SubUrbia was directed by Linklater, but written by
author/monologuist Eric Bogosian, adapted from his off-Broadway play of the
same name. Although the two auteurs seem to have pretty different styles
(Linklater's work is very laid-back and thoughtful, while Bogosian's is
high-energy and confrontational), they work remarkably well together, to create
a film that feels just as purely Linklater as Dazed and Confused and the
Before Sunrise trilogy, while still having a distinctly Bogosian energy
to its more intense dialogue scenes. The play itself (to which the screenplay
is nearly identical, save for a few modifications and omissions of minor
scenes) is perfectly suited to Linklater's easily-recognizable style: it is set
entirely over the course of one night that acts as a microcosm of the
characters' lives and personalities, and is told through a series of long, very
naturalistic dialogue scenes that are shot in an immersive, fly-on-the-wall
kind of way. Like the Before... movies, it essentially just follows its
characters around listening to them talk and play out their lives and personal
struggles, but his style and his talent for finding powerful visuals among
ordinary settings ensures that it is never dull and certainly never stagey,
despite its dialogue-heavy theatrical roots. Linklater also really knows how to
work with actors, and bring out their best strengths to keep the long
conversations engaging. He always assembles a great ensemble cast, and SubUrbia
is no exception: this time his leads include Giovanni Ribisi, Parker Posey,
Steve Zahn (who originated his role in the off-Broadway production), Nicky
Katt, and Ajay Naidu.
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"Haha. Yeah, you do, dolt." |
SubUrbia is essentially a tale of twenty-somethings
struggling to find direction in their lives, and to recognize the personal
demons and psychological roadblocks that hold them back. The film's five core
characters are a group of old high school friends who never succeeded in
getting out of their dead-end suburban town and finding something better. As
their twenties are starting to slip away from them, they're still living at
home, spending every night drinking outside the local convenience store, and
talking vaguely of plans to escape, despite the obvious fact that various
factors are keeping them from budging. Whether it's fear of putting their art
out there and having it criticized, love for someone who refuses to budge in
their ways, or anxiety and depression caused by previous failed attempts at
escape, they are all stuck in suburbia, but keep fooling themselves into
thinking that they're figuring out how to leave. On this particular night,
their one friend who succeeded in getting away and making something for himself
– who is now a rock star on tour with his band – stops by the convenience store
to catch up with his old friends. His fame, and the various reasons for which
some of the other characters resent it, is the catalyst for an intensely
emotional night of confrontations: outwardly, confrontations with each other,
but really, confrontations with the personal factors holding themselves back,
which they otherwise refuse to acknowledge. Fueled by alcohol and each other's
volatile personalities, this is a night that will leave no psychological or
emotional stone unturned, for better or for worse.
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"This is a song called Giovanni Ribisi Always Plays The Same Guy. Now, dance!!!!" |
Linklater and Bogosian's film is deceptively rich in themes
and psychological observations, wrapped subtlely in darkly comic dialogue and
casual character interactions in a way that makes it all seem rather
effortless. Two years earlier, Reality Bites tried way too hard to be
the quintessential, issue-encompassing gen-x comedy/drama, and it badly
stumbled under the weight of everything it so self-consciously sought to be; SubUrbia
actually succeeds in being the quintessential gen-x film precisely because it
isn't trying to be. It's just telling a story about these characters, which
resonates as a very universal one, for its time or any other. It does a great
job of capturing the mid-1990s – both in the characters and the world they
inhabit, and in its excellent soundtrack by Sonic Youth – but the particulars
of the characters and their stories are so eternally relevant that the film is
aging extremely well, and is not totally bound to its particular time and
place. This is a film that will not lose its power over time.
click to watch |
-Christopher S. Jordan