Slacker

The “slacker” is post-baby boomer, post-Vietnam, post-Communism and post- punk. The “slacker” is looked upon by elder generations as lacking ambition and ignorant of responsibility. The “slacker” is the white-bread, educated and unemployable refuse of American society on a collision course with itself. This rivetting film rejects traditional Hollywood narrative conventions. Instead, seemingly random characters move in and out of the frame, and without ever losing its charm or its anarchic wit, this impressionistic film manages to convey much about the dysfunctional social arrangements governing contemporary America. However, this film does not patronise the “slacker generation”; instead it finds comedy and illumination in the obsessions of the young. A young, nerdy woman holds up a jar containing Madonna’s pap-smear samples and in that jar she finds grace. This externally low-budget experimental feature shows how courage, determination, imagination and sheer will can result in an innovative film, that for all its money and power, Hollywood cannot hope to emulate. “Slacker” is a very, very cool film.