Everyone’s been asked this question before: “What movies would you bring with you onto a desert island?”
Although it’s not a very easy question to answer, if you can hypothetically bring, say, ten movies, there’s not a terrible amount of pressure. I mean, most people could feel pretty confident in their ability to compile a list of ten films that they would be able to watch for the rest of their lives. Picking five movies, however, is tougher. You’re cutting your original list in half and leaving behind films that are almost certainly important to you. Three? Now that’s just a cruel proposition, and narrowing your list down even further is a nearly impossible task. But, in the three-movie desert island scenario, I think one of mine would be Dazed and Confused.
I saw Richard Linklater’s 1993 coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused for the first time when I was probably 13 or 14 years old, but I didn’t fall in love with it until a few years later. By the time I was a junior in high school, it was a key text for me; one of those films that was steadily in my movie-watching rotation.
Dazed and Confused takes place over the course of one day in 1976 Austin, Texas, following the conversations and activities of various teenagers on the last day of school. That’s pretty much it. The movie doesn’t really have a plot in the sense that there’s no hero, there’s no villain, there’s no singular goal that’s trying to be achieved, and there’s no overarching problem someone’s trying to solve (unless you count “Where can we have a party?” as the film’s central conflict). It’s a hangout movie, through-and-through. We’ll talk more about that in a bit, but first, a disclaimer: I, Jalen Maki, hereby declare that I do not condone any of the illicit activities depicted in this film. Alright, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s dive into this classic.
You can’t talk about Dazed and Confused without talking about its soundtrack. Folks: it rips. You’ve got Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Black Sabbath, Bob Dylan, Rush, Deep Purple, Dire Straits, Foghat, Alice Cooper, Head East, ZZ Top…it’s just banger after banger on a level that I don’t think any other movie has been able to rival. Largely, I think it’s a factor of the time period the film takes place in. I’m aware that it’s corny and lame for someone to be like, “I was born in the wrong generation, man! New music sucks!” and then fire up a rare vinyl pressing of The Dark Side of the Moon or something. But what does the soundtrack of the 2025 version of Dazed and Confused look like? I gotta say: it’s probably not as good!
Also, the cast of this thing is pretty awesome. Dazed and Confused finds numerous actors ahead of their eventual fame, including Matthew McConaughey in what might be his definitive role (although I’d argue his turn as Rust Cohle in True Detective is more deserving of this accolade), Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, Cole Hauser, Adam Goldberg, and Joey Lauren Adams. Heck, even Renée Zellweger pops up on screen a few times. It’s cool to watch this collection of young actors do their thing in Dazed and Confused, knowing now that they’d find success in the years that followed.
Something that, to me, elevates Dazed and Confused above many other high school movies is its portrayal of the high school social framework. Most movies in the genre feature very rigid and arguably unrealistic separations between the athletes, and the brains, and the burnouts, and so on. But in Dazed and Confused, the social circles are more like Venn diagrams, with kids sort of floating from one group to the next, and everyone intermingling to various degrees. For example, Randall Pink (who they call Pink Floyd, because, you know, the ‘70s) is the quarterback of the football team. He’s obviously got pals on the team, but he also runs with a more intellectual crowd, and he spends plenty of time with the kind of kids his parents probably warned him about when he was younger. This somewhat amorphous social structure feels like a much more realistic depiction of what the high school experience is really like, and it’s a crucial component in the “everyone’s just kind of hanging out” vibe.
Speaking of which: what makes a good hangout movie? Well, people hanging out would be a pretty solid place start; we can go ahead and check that off the list. The overall feel is important, too – you gotta have the right music, and visual style, and dialogue, and attitude, each of which this film has in spades. But hangout movies that really work have characters that you’d actually want to spend time with. Anyone can watch Dazed and Confused and see themselves or someone they know in a character – but that doesn’t mean they’re just a bunch of hollow archetypes. In several moments, Linklater finds real depth within them. They’re more than just run-of-the-mill stoners, or jocks, or nerds – they’re real people dealing with real issues that high school-aged people experience, and Dazed and Confused, like other great teen movies, is able to thread the needle by creating familiar, relatable characters while making them unique individuals.
You ever think about what you were like in high school? I can speak for myself, and the assortment of people I hung out with, and most of us were firmly planted at various coordinates on the Moron Spectrum. I don’t mean we were actually, literally dumb people; we were just kids who did dumb things in pursuit of a good time, and I think that’s an important distinction. Dazed and Confused captures this idea with more honesty and authenticity than maybe any movie I’ve ever seen. Characters will complain about wasting their fleeting youth, or wax poetic about the mundanity of impending adulthood, and shortly thereafter chug some beer or get in a fight. It’s just so funny yet endearing to see people who are so completely confident that they’ve got life figured out, like they’re the first 17-year-olds in the history of 17-year-olds to nail down how the world works. There’s a version of this movie where these conversations wade into cringe-inducing waters, but Linklater, a master of writing dialogue, injects every interaction – short exchanges and heart-to-hearts alike – with a true-to-life charm.
Dazed and Confused doesn’t carry nearly the emotional weight of The Outsiders. It’s not a Breakfast Club-style character study. We don’t get a lot of the classic teen rom-com beats in the vein of Say Anything…. And there certainly isn’t an adult role model figure, à la Dead Poets Society. Why not? Quite simply, the film doesn’t want or need these things. Dazed and Confused is just fun – it’s about as fun as you can have watching a movie. It’s just so cool, and lighthearted, and funny, and genuine, and original, and completely deserving of its cult classic status.
There might not be a filmmaker better than Linklater at capturing a moment in time. With Dazed and Confused, the beloved Before trilogy, and Everybody Wants Some!! – the absolutely wonderful and criminally under-discussed spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused – Linklater has demonstrated time and time again that he’s an alchemist, combining a few basic elements (setting, music, dialogue, etc.) to conjure pure nostalgia. I don’t think Linklater is the stereotypical “high school was the best thing that ever happened in my life” guy, and I don’t think his message with this movie is that those people are correct in their assessments of their lives. But I do think Dazed and Confused is a testament to Linklater’s distinctive talent for creating moments that are worthy of fond reflection; assuming that you can actually remember them.
Jalen’s columns, “Movies You Gotta See” and “The Free Play,” can be found online at www.medium.com/@jalenmaki.
Follow Jalen on Letterboxd at www.letterboxd.com/jalenmaki182/ to see what he’s been watching.
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