The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Richard Linklater · a film · 1993 · about 102 minutes · written and directed by Richard Linklater · in English
Mode
Ensemble comedy of one night with the plot withdrawn; the one-night high school film turned toward drift, talk and real time
Mythos
A rite of passage in its classical order, ordeal, guide, night journey and return; the refusal of an oath; the youth who will not age
Phase
Afternoon, early evening, night and dawn: the last classes and the hazing, the paddling and the cancelled party, cruising, the pool hall and the beer bust under the moon tower, the fifty-yard line and the road
Presentation
Feature film in colour, 35mm, the theatrical cut of about 102 minutes, in English; no composed score, American and British rock of the mid 1970s heard from car radios and jukeboxes
Register
Low and level by intention, talk running on past its use; lifted lyrically at the opening, under the moon tower and at dawn, and broad at points
Scale
About two dozen young people, a school, a few parents, one town, one night
Governing Proposition
On the last day of school in 1976, in a town in Texas, a senior quarterback carries his coach’s pledge unsigned through one night, and a boy about to enter high school is paddled by the seniors and then taken along by them until dawn. The film withdraws the plot its kind promises and keeps instead the time a teenager lives, an endless present spent waiting for the night to begin; its wager is that a night in which nothing is required can show the customs by which the young buy a place, and the one refusal that night allows.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film covers one day and its night: from the last bell of the last day of school, 28 May 1976, in a suburban town in Texas near Austin, to the next morning. It opens on a car rolling into the school car park in slow motion under Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion”, and for a minute an ordinary afternoon has the lift of an anthem. Then the film settles to the level it will keep: last classes, talk in corridors and car parks, plans for the night, and a summer about to begin that nobody yet knows what to do with.
Two threads are set going in the afternoon, and they frame everything after. Randall Floyd, called Pink, a senior and the team’s quarterback, is held to his coach’s pledge, a sheet of paper the coach wants signed. Mitch Kramer, a boy about to enter the high school, is on the other side of the year: the senior boys mean to paddle the incoming freshmen, as the senior girls are hazing the freshman girls. One thread is a senior asked to bind himself to an institution; the other is a freshman about to be admitted to it by force.
Around them the film spreads an ensemble of about two dozen speaking parts, and none of them holds the greater part of the screen. Wooderson, Slater, O’Bannion, Darla, Mike, Tony, Cynthia, Don, Pickford, Simone, Michelle, Sabrina, Benny and Clint each have a manner and a place, and the film moves among them as attention moves at a party. This is the form, and it is the film’s knowledge: no one owns the night, and the night is the subject. Change it into a story with a goal and a climax, and the film would become the comedy its kind promised and stop knowing what it knows.
Movement II
The senior boys carry paddles, and the freshmen run. The hazing is a custom of the school, and the film shows it as a custom: planned, expected, almost administered. In the early evening Mitch is caught at the ballfield and paddled. The film plays it as comedy and does not hide the force of it; the paddle is a ritual instrument, swung by elders, and the threat is real while it lasts.
The girls’ version runs alongside. Darla leads the senior girls in hazing the freshman girls, and Parker Posey makes her a figure from a voice and a manner. The film’s first disclosure is laid out here without comment: the cruelty is handed down. O’Bannion paddles because he was paddled; Darla hazes because she was hazed. Later in the night the freshmen take their own lesson and turn it on O’Bannion with a bucket of paint. The farce of his comeuppance belongs at points to a cruder film, and so does some of the hazing, but the pattern holds.
Then the film turns the rite over. Mitch, paddled in the evening, is taken out that night by the same seniors, Pink among them, as their guest. The cruelty and the welcome are one ceremony, and the film keeps them together without deciding between them. How far the hazing is presented as cruelty and how far as fond custom is one of the questions the film leaves open, and the open question is part of what it shows: a place in the group is bought, and the price is paid in the same coin it will later be collected in.
Movement III
The night was to have a centre. Pickford plans a keg party at his house, and his parents learn of it, and the party is cancelled. From then on the night has no destination, and the film follows cars: cruising, stopping, talking, starting again. The threads cross at the Emporium, the pool hall, where Mitch is admitted among the older boys and Pink’s thread and his first run together. The camera moves through the room and in and out of cars, and the songs come from the radios and the jukeboxes, heard as the characters hear them.
Wooderson is at the Emporium, and later at the moon tower: a man some years past school who stays with those still in it. Matthew McConaughey makes him whole in a few minutes, from an entrance and a drawl (“Alright, alright, alright”) to a line that gives him away. He grows older, and the young ones he keeps company with “stay the same age”. The film knows what it has: the youth who will not age, held in the town while his years run, played as charm. Whether he is a joke, a warning or the film’s elegy is left to the viewer, and the film is better for not saying.
In another car Cynthia, Tony and Mike talk about the decades: how this one stands after the sixties, and whether the eighties will be better. Slater, in his own idiom, offers a riff on George Washington; the Bicentennial is in the background. The young people know that history happened just before them, and that they are living in its aftermath. Elsewhere mailbox baseball ends with a gun, and the threat is brief and real. None of these episodes is required by the spine, and each could be swapped for another of its kind; together they are the night’s argument that nothing in it is required.
Movement IV
The beer bust is held in an empty field under a moon tower, and the threads that drifted apart all evening arrive there. It is the film’s crowd: the seniors and the freshmen, the hazers and the hazed, the couples and those still hoping to be one, standing in the tower’s light in the dark country. The film gives it the quality of a gathering out of time. Nothing is decided at it, and nothing is meant to be.
The night’s events there are small. Mike ends up in a fight with Clint. Mitch drinks, and there is a girl. The talk goes on. Through the night almost no one in the film is happy, and several of them say so, and the film lets them say it. The nostalgia the form invites is undercut from within: the night the film recreates with such care is golden only at moments, and as often it is a night spent waiting for the night to begin.
This is where the film’s law is clearest. Every young person at the moon tower is negotiating a place in a group and in time, and every custom of the night is a version of the same thing: the paddling is the custom enforced, the talk in the car the custom questioned, the pledge the custom written, Wooderson the custom outlived. The range runs from O’Bannion’s farce to an elegy no one speaks aloud, and one law governs it. The law reaches the adults too, the parents glimpsed in the margins and the coach on the field at dawn.
Movement V
At dawn a few of the seniors lie on the fifty-yard line of the school’s field, on the turf, after the crowd. It is the film’s second gathering and its quiet summit: the few after the many. The police come, and the coach. The night that had no destination ends on the ground of the institution it has been circling, and the pledge comes back into the open.
Pink refuses it. He will play, he says, but he will not sign. It is the one act of the night, and the film keeps it small: a young man declining a sheet of paper. Whether it is a choice or a postponement is not settled, since he says he will still play. Then he and his friends drive off for Aerosmith tickets, and the film gives the car an open road under Foghat’s “Slow Ride”.
Mitch goes home. His mother chooses not to see what the night has made of him. He lies on his bed with headphones on while the morning comes, and the film holds him still. The two cadences close more firmly than the drift of the night would have, and the film knows the drift is its own law. What it shows in germ, time as the young live it, its director later made the whole wager of Boyhood, on this desk at 8.4, and of the Before films at 8.6; here it is held in one night, on a proven path, by an ensemble of unknowns.
Act III · The Twelve
Run the subtractive test and the frame holds. The coach’s pledge, held over Pink from the first scenes to the field at dawn, gives the night its question; the paddling gives Mitch’s night its threshold, and his return home at dawn its close. These two arcs, a senior who will not be bound and a freshman admitted, are the spine, and they cross at the Emporium, so that each needs the other. The looseness around them is the film’s argument, that nothing in such a night is required, and it is kept with discipline. What holds the axis: the mailbox baseball, Pickford’s cancelled party, the paint on O’Bannion and Mike’s fight with Clint could each be swapped for another episode of the same kind.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and in more than one form. Adolescence is governed by rituals of initiation whose cruelty is handed down: O’Bannion paddles because he was paddled, Darla hazes because she was hazed, and the freshmen learn the lesson with a bucket of paint. Belonging is bought by consent to an institution, and the pledge is that price written down; Pink’s refusal is the one act of the night. The seventies are shown living in the aftermath of the sixties, and the nostalgia the film invites is undercut from within, since almost no one in it is happy and several say so. What holds the axis: much of the truth lands as atmosphere, and the institutional meanings are sketched more than pressed home.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The register is low and level by intention, and its elevations are lyrical, not grand. The opening, a car gliding into the school car park under “Sweet Emotion”, lifts an ordinary afternoon into an anthem. The beer bust under the moon tower’s light in an empty field is a gathering out of time; the seniors lying on the fifty-yard line at dawn are the quiet summit; and the close gives two more, the road opening ahead under “Slow Ride” and Mitch on his bed with headphones as the morning comes, held still. The paddling and the gun carry a real threat, briefly. What holds the axis: the heights are few, gentle and carried mostly by songs, and the long middle is played flat on purpose.
Score: 7.5 / 10
The archetypal structure is built, on Mitch’s night, in its classical order: the ordeal, by elders, with a ritual instrument; the guide, Pink, who takes him out; the night journey through the adult world, the pool hall, the beer, the girl, the gun; and the return home at dawn, changed, under a mother who chooses not to see it. Pink’s night is the refusal of an oath: the young man who will not sign the covenant the elders of the tribe hold out. Wooderson is the youth who will not age, kept in the town while his years run, and the film knows it. What holds the axis: the rite is played as comedy, the oath as a sheet of paper, and outside Mitch’s arc the myth is carried by tone.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The inheritance is plain: the one-night high school film of American Graffiti (1973), whose last night, cars, ensemble and period soundtrack it takes up, and the teen comedies of the 1980s, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and the films of John Hughes. The turn is real and thorough. The plot is withdrawn, so that the night builds toward no goal, contest or romance; no story is privileged beyond two light arcs; the songs are the period’s air, not commentary; and the nostalgia the form promises is withheld, since the night is as often boring as golden. It brought the ambling time of Linklater’s Slacker (1990) into a studio teen picture. What holds the axis: the form was proven, and American Graffiti had taken its wager first.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Change the form and the film loses what it knows. Its knowledge is time as a teenager lives it: an endless present in which nothing happens and everything is felt, a night spent waiting for the night to begin. The form is that knowledge. One span of about eighteen hours is carried by an ensemble whose threads cross in cars, at the Emporium and under the moon tower, so that no one owns the night; the camera drifts from group to group as attention drifts at a party; the talk runs on past its use; the music is heard as the characters hear it. Plot it, with a goal and a climax, and it stops knowing. What holds the axis: the hazing and the fight lend borrowed teen-film beats, and the two closing cadences shut more firmly than the drift would.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Thirty-three years of evidence, and the evidence is return: the film’s standing was built on rewatching, and the ensemble rewards it, since a viewer who follows Mitch the first time can follow Slater, Cynthia or Darla the next. The questions stay open: whether the film is nostalgic or a critique of nostalgia; whether Pink’s refusal is a choice or a postponement, since he says he will still play; what Wooderson is, a joke, a warning or the film’s elegy; how far the hazing is cruelty and how far fond custom. It also reads differently as its period recedes, a film of 1993 about 1976 now seen from fifty years. What holds the axis: much of the return is to texture and performance, and the writing on the film is modest.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Field: the cinema of the 1990s. The intrinsic force is real. The film showed that an American studio picture could take the structure of the hangout, a plotless ensemble in real time, and hold an audience with it, and it refused the teen film’s moral and romantic machinery in the decade of that machinery’s bloat. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the film is the base of the later idea of the hangout film, often named as such; it stands at the head of a line of ensemble youth films and television that took its texture; and its director’s later work grows from it, Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) above all. What holds the axis: the reorganisation is of a genre more than of the medium, and the careers it launched are presence, not redirection.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, across thirty-three years. The form is whole: the film survives as released in its one version, with no later cut displacing it, and restorations for home release are repair. Presence has been continuous and wide for a film of its kind: a small release that grew through home video and television into one of the most circulated and quoted American films of its decade, issued in a prestige collection, revived in repertory and kept in use through constant quotation. The surface charge is light, since the film was a period piece when it was made: its surface is set to 1976 by choice, not fixed to 1993 by fashion, and only its manner of nostalgia carries a trace of its making.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The making is mostly invisible, and its chief achievement is the casting and direction of a large ensemble of young and largely unknown actors: two dozen people kept distinct and alive, most of them in a few scenes. Matthew McConaughey makes Wooderson whole in a few minutes; Parker Posey and Rory Cochrane make figures from a voice and a manner. Lee Daniel’s photography is warm and unforced, and the moving camera in cars and through the Emporium carries the drift; Sandra Adair’s cutting keeps the threads crossing without strain; the compilation of songs is placed with care. What holds the axis: O’Bannion is a cartoon, several of the girls are given little, and the staging is functional for long stretches, so the craft seldom bears weight in a single scene.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: O’Bannion swinging a paddle at a freshman, broad and brutish, and Cynthia, Tony and Mike in a car, talking about the decades and whether the eighties will be better. One law governs both: every young person in the film is negotiating a place in a group and in time, waiting for life to begin while a custom tells them how. The paddling is the custom enforced; the talk is the custom questioned; the pledge is the custom written; Wooderson is the custom outlived. The law reaches the parents and the coach, across a range from farce to elegy that is wide for a comedy. What holds the axis: the farce at points belongs to a cruder film, and the ending gathers the drift into two cadences of release.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Judged on what a film of about 102 minutes holds. Adolescence as consciousness, held through many minds rather than deeply through one; the family, in Mitch’s mother and sister and Pickford’s parents; the school as institution, with its coach, its team and its pledge, the strongest order after the young people themselves; gender, in the girls’ hazing and the double codes of the night; class, in the cars and the houses; the law, in a police officer on the field at dawn; history, in the Bicentennial, the aftermath of the sixties and Cynthia’s decades. The pledge integrates them, joining school, sport, adulthood and the law. What holds it lowest: labour, the state, the sacred and the natural order barely enter, and everything is held through one age group in one night.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form and The Imperishable at 8.6, then Pressure on Tradition and The Inner Law at 8.4. A form whose drift is its knowledge, time as a teenager lives it; a whole single version with presence wide and continuous for thirty-three years; the hangout film made in a studio and set at the head of a line; and one law, a place bought from a custom, from O’Bannion’s paddle to Cynthia’s decades.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.2: school, family, gender, class, the law and history held through one age group in one night, with labour, the state, the sacred and the natural order barely present. Above it, The Sublime at 7.5, heights few, gentle and carried by songs over a middle kept flat; and The Inevitable at 8.0, a spine of two arcs around episodes that could be swapped for others of their kind.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.0 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.4, The Made at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four axes: The Imperishable at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.4 falls a tenth short, The Unconcealment and The Swerve at 8.3 two tenths short, and The Archetypal Deep at 8.1 four tenths short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.5, and The Sublime meets it exactly at 7.5; The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The summit is withheld by the Epochal Gate and by the aggregate, 8.2 from a sum of 97.8, below the 9.0 that Tier V requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Dazed and Confused as released in 1993, the theatrical cut of about 102 minutes, in colour, in English; the deleted and extended scenes on later home editions are extras, not a version, and are not judged. Written and directed by Richard Linklater, his first film for a studio, photographed by Lee Daniel and edited by Sandra Adair, with no composed score: the music is a compilation of American and British rock of the mid 1970s. Shot in and around Austin. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. Dialogue is quoted only where its words are certain, and briefly; the rest is described. The exact blocking, the order of some short scenes in the evening and the placing of songs below the principal ones are held less surely than the whole, and nothing here turns on them. Details that could not be verified, among them the distributor, the aspect ratio, the budget and the gross, how the film was marketed, the origin of its title and the licensing of the song it names, and particular later films and series said to descend from it, are not given.