Richard Linklater’s Slacker makes a funny, absorbing film out of people talking without getting much done. Its habit of changing company keeps it lively, though a few speakers test the patience.
Slacker is funny, absorbing company, provided you can tolerate a conversation that has no intention of getting to the point. Richard Linklater writes and directs a comedy that follows one person, notices another and goes off with them, leaving the expected business of a plot unattended. The interest is in what these people think, what they say and how much of either deserves to be taken seriously. At 97 minutes, it has room for a few conversations we would happily have left sooner.
The changing company is more carefully managed than it first appears. Scott Rhodes’s editing lets each encounter stand on its own while keeping us willing to start again with somebody else. We were delighted when we realised that the film really would keep abandoning people we had just begun to follow. The transitions remain easy to follow, so we can listen to the next speaker without worrying about what we have missed.
Lee Daniel’s cinematography gives the encounters a casually observed look, well suited to all this apparently unplanned conversation. Deborah Pastor’s production design is similarly unassertive: the surroundings leave us free to concentrate on the speakers. Making those spaces insistently quirky would have told us to start laughing before anyone had opened their mouth. Instead, there is time to notice how confidently a person can hold forth, and to decide for ourselves whether the idea being explained is worth much.
Even the character names suggest that Linklater knows these people can be a trial. He plays ‘Should Have Stayed at Bus Station’; Dan Kratochvil is ‘Espresso Czar / Masonic Malcontent’. The names are dry little jokes, but the people are allowed to keep talking after we have understood what makes them funny. Linklater gives their theories a hearing, even when the certainty with which they are delivered becomes ridiculous. He allows us to disagree without treating the speaker as a waste of our time.
The trouble comes when the talking begins to sound interchangeable. Some speakers fall into the same rhythm, and Linklater’s writing sometimes lets a notion run on after we have understood both it and the person explaining it. We grew restless in those stretches, because waiting for the next encounter became more appealing than listening to the current one. Rhodes could have cut some of those speeches without making the speakers any less recognisable.
A conventional comedy would use most of these people as an interruption, then hurry back to the main character. Linklater lets them take up space, and we appreciate his patience even when ours is running out. His jokes do not depend on proving that someone else is sensible enough to put these talkers right. The film gives us the freedom to enjoy their company without having to admire their decisions. Choose it when you fancy listening in on other people’s conversations and can forgive the occasional bore.
