EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! is Linklater's successor to his 1993 masterpiece DAZED & CONFUSED, if only in spirit. Previously, DAZED's reputation traveled largely on the basis of perceived nostalgia, but EWS!!'s entry into this (now) diptych transforms DAZED's role as a part of a larger-scale, entirely neglected utility of the period film: anthropology.
Much has been made of of EWS!!'s eschewing of a conventional plotline as a detriment, but I argue that the meandering and static events of the film are the very point, and that a plot would actually do a disservice to that purpose. EWS!! is a forensic recreation of a 3-day period in 1980, when Linklater himself would have been playing college baseball. Linklater's own singular eidetic memory serves to restore what most period films lack: the detailed minutiae of interpersonal communication. Period films historically have been able to recapture clothing, props, hairstyles, and other fashions of a given period, but more difficult (and perhaps most difficult) is to recreate the mannerisms and speech patterns of said time and place, and Linklater does this masterfully. For myself, watching the film reminded me of things I haven't seen in social situations since I was a child but were as clear as a bell upon seeing it rendered with almost documentary authenticity. Every character (with one exception) fits the era almost perfectly, with characters such as McReynolds and Beuter seemingly brought directly out of 1980 to the future for this film.
EWS!! intends to immerse the viewer into the very time period itself as if they were a native to it. To facilitate this, Linklater avoids all stylistic photography, shooting everything with neutral or natural lighting to replicate how the people of the time would see it, and not how later generations would do so by using vintage aesthetics to imply the past seen retroactively as we might through aged photos or obsolete media (THE GODFATHER, SCHINDLER'S LIST, etc.).
EWS!! is as close as I feel to making a period film without using time-travel to get there, and the focus on the sheer mundanity of the narrative solidifies this. The film is a look back in time, not to any great historical events, but into the parts of history that get left behind: the details of an everyday life.
It gets my vote as one of the best films of 2016 and one of the best films in Linklater's oeuvre.
Much has been made of of EWS!!'s eschewing of a conventional plotline as a detriment, but I argue that the meandering and static events of the film are the very point, and that a plot would actually do a disservice to that purpose. EWS!! is a forensic recreation of a 3-day period in 1980, when Linklater himself would have been playing college baseball. Linklater's own singular eidetic memory serves to restore what most period films lack: the detailed minutiae of interpersonal communication. Period films historically have been able to recapture clothing, props, hairstyles, and other fashions of a given period, but more difficult (and perhaps most difficult) is to recreate the mannerisms and speech patterns of said time and place, and Linklater does this masterfully. For myself, watching the film reminded me of things I haven't seen in social situations since I was a child but were as clear as a bell upon seeing it rendered with almost documentary authenticity. Every character (with one exception) fits the era almost perfectly, with characters such as McReynolds and Beuter seemingly brought directly out of 1980 to the future for this film.
EWS!! intends to immerse the viewer into the very time period itself as if they were a native to it. To facilitate this, Linklater avoids all stylistic photography, shooting everything with neutral or natural lighting to replicate how the people of the time would see it, and not how later generations would do so by using vintage aesthetics to imply the past seen retroactively as we might through aged photos or obsolete media (THE GODFATHER, SCHINDLER'S LIST, etc.).
EWS!! is as close as I feel to making a period film without using time-travel to get there, and the focus on the sheer mundanity of the narrative solidifies this. The film is a look back in time, not to any great historical events, but into the parts of history that get left behind: the details of an everyday life.
It gets my vote as one of the best films of 2016 and one of the best films in Linklater's oeuvre.
Tell Your Friends