Just as Raging Bull
was, in retrospect, anointed the title of best film of the 1980s by
many critics despite its Oscar shut-out in the major categories (it would be Robert Redford’s Ordinary People that cleaned up that year), so too is maybe Richard Linklater’s little indie that could, 1993’s Dazed and Confused, perhaps the best film of the 1990s, or at least one that certainly merits inclusion in the discussion.

What?
Yes, I said it. After all, is there a more confident, graceful, crisply
characterized and terrifically funny evocation of adolescent time and
place than Linklater’s slice of life circa 1976? Charting both a group
of rising seniors and incoming high school freshman over the course of
the last day of school and that evening’s subsequent keg-fueled party, Dazed and Confused
is smart, inquisitive and superbly cast. Ironically, for a film that
Linklater says studio suits at the time felt that they couldn’t sell
since it had no “name actors” in it, the movie would serve as a
repository for a number of future stars and recognizable faces,
including Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, Joey Lauren Adams, Milla
Jovovich, Jason London, Rent’s Anthony Rapp, Parker Posey, Cole
Hauser, Rory Cochrane, Adam Goldberg, Nicky Katt and — if you squint at
a key extra in a parking lot scene — Renee Zellweger.

Shot for $6 million, Dazed and Confused is marked by
Linklater’s keen sense of detail (students while away time in their
last class of the year listing episodes of “Gilligan’s Island”) and
digressive frame of mind, which director of photography Lee Daniel
abets with smooth handheld work that follows our burn-outs, bookworms
and jocks to and fro. Music also plays an important part in the film,
and Linklater’s choices (from Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion,” which opens
the movie, to Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Peter Frampton and
Foghat) are all inspired and pitch perfect, well worth their
significant apportion of the movie’s budget. Perhaps the best gauge of
the brilliance of Dazed and Confused though, comes in the form
of young Wiley Wiggins, who plays object-of-upperclassmen-torture Mitch
Kramer with such precise exasperation — part fear, part swallowed awe —
that it almost sends one hurtling back to adolescence themselves.

Criterion’s double-disc DVD release of the film finally gives fans the full reverential and reflective treatment that Dazed and Confused
so richly deserves. Packaged in a unique and colorful cardboard
slipcase with punched-out holes that spotlight character pictures, the
movie is presented in an all-new, high-definition 1.85:1 anamorphic
widescreen transfer, with Dolby digital and DTS 5.1 soundtracks and a
warm feature-length audio commentary from Linklater, wherein he
recounts inspirations for various scenes and the nervousness he felt in
making the movie. A robust collection of deleted scenes includes
several that give the movie additional philosophical (not surprising)
and political (surprising) undertones, including one in which Benny
O’Donnell (Hauser) argues with Randall Floyd (London) over the outcome
of the Vietnam War.

The second disc houses a superlative 50-minute documentary by filmmaker Kahane Corn on the making of Dazed and Confused,
and rare on-set interviews and behind-the-scenes footage is also
included, as well as material from a 10-year anniversary celebration.
Some of the audition footage is a hoot, but the off-disc extras only
get better, as they include a black-light reproduction of Frank Kozik’s
original poster and a 72-page booklet that includes an essay by Chuck
Klosterman, amusing character biographies and a reproduction of John
Spong’s excellent retrospective interview article from the October 2003
issue of Texas Monthly. Among the revelations therein: Affleck couldn’t (and perhaps still can’t?) drive stick and Posey, on As the World Turns at the time, was able to book the movie only after her character there was rendered into a coma. A+ (Movie) A+ (Disc)