I'm a Linklater fan. Waking Life is among my top five favorite movies. The Before Trilogy awakened me to the true power of dialogue in film. This Linklater film, however, was way more frustrating than satisfying to watch, and the dialogue was, far too often, a mind-gamey labyrinth of petty sarcasm, passive-aggressive antagonizing, manipulation, and verbal circumnavigation. There were so few moments of clarity, if any, which to the writer's benefit, may have been the point. The prospect of this being the intention, for me, was the only redeeming factor of this movie.
Ten years out from high school, old but distant friends Vince (Hawke) and Johnny (Leonard) reunite in a hotel room in Lansing, MI for the debut of Johnny's first independent film at a nearby film festival. Vince is a somewhat volatile and immature Oakland drug-dealer who recently broke it off with his girlfriend of 3 years; his character is the defensive screw-up whose misery loves company. John is his foil, apparently more stable, idealistic, but whose sense of self isn't very concrete but can still come off inflated, especially when in the same room with Vince. Amy (Thurman) is an old fling for both male characters, but in a way that, whenever brought up, inspires ancient unresolved tensions centered on a nebulous incident in high school, the exploration of which drives the majority of the movie.
I think the dialogue was smart from the standpoint of it demonstrating the emotional and manipulative power that words can wield and the haziness of recollection, but in the broader scope of the movie, over time even the characters themselves got lost in what they were talking about! This is when even an iota of clarity could have saved the movie for me. But for me it never came, which felt unjustified because these are supposed to be ADULTS talking, and none of them can seem to muster a straightforward statement. Hence, this film left me resentfully asking the same question plaguing the characters to the end, "What are we even talking about?"
Ten years out from high school, old but distant friends Vince (Hawke) and Johnny (Leonard) reunite in a hotel room in Lansing, MI for the debut of Johnny's first independent film at a nearby film festival. Vince is a somewhat volatile and immature Oakland drug-dealer who recently broke it off with his girlfriend of 3 years; his character is the defensive screw-up whose misery loves company. John is his foil, apparently more stable, idealistic, but whose sense of self isn't very concrete but can still come off inflated, especially when in the same room with Vince. Amy (Thurman) is an old fling for both male characters, but in a way that, whenever brought up, inspires ancient unresolved tensions centered on a nebulous incident in high school, the exploration of which drives the majority of the movie.
I think the dialogue was smart from the standpoint of it demonstrating the emotional and manipulative power that words can wield and the haziness of recollection, but in the broader scope of the movie, over time even the characters themselves got lost in what they were talking about! This is when even an iota of clarity could have saved the movie for me. But for me it never came, which felt unjustified because these are supposed to be ADULTS talking, and none of them can seem to muster a straightforward statement. Hence, this film left me resentfully asking the same question plaguing the characters to the end, "What are we even talking about?"