Dazed And Confused (1993)

Dazed and Confused is one of my most rewatchable movies: Richard Linklater’s teen-drinking/pot-smoking opus is like the opposite of a GEICO commercial — whenever I stumble across it while channel surfing, I’m unable to turn away. The movie is so invested in every member of its large ensemble cast that when that kegger in the woods finally materializes we care about every single one of the subplots that seamlessly intertwine. Most movies are lucky to get us to care about one or two characters — the film equivalent to a party where you know a couple of people and wind up desperately hanging on to them the entire night. But here is the kind of party where you know everyone and everyone knows each other, so every interaction is loaded with history and inside jokes and you feel like you’re actually connecting with other people instead of just getting drunk enough to create a fake intimacy.

Whether Dazed and Confused captures what it was really like to be a teenager in Texas in the 70s or merely filters it through gauzy layers of nostalgia is not for me to say, as I’ve never set foot in Texas or the 70s. But it’s also beside the point. Even if Dazed and Confused’s teenage existentialism is a tad bit fuzzy, it’s that fuzzy mixture of romanticism and honesty that every generation holds towards its adolescence. That’s the thing about the high school experience — we get older, but it stays the same. And that’s why Dazed and Confused speaks to students (and partiers) of any generation.