Criterion Blu-ray Film Review

Slacker (1990) • Blu-ray [Criterion Collection] — Linklater finds profundity in the everyday

A day in the life of Austin, Texas as the camera roams from place to place and provides a brief look at the overeducated, the social misfits, the outcasts and the oddballs.

The director Jim Jarmusch (The Dead Don’t Die) once provided some astute advice to aspiring artists. About the creative process, he said “Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination”. Now, the word ‘steal’ is quick to raise hackles — stealing, we’re taught from a young age, is wrong regardless of the object or subject. So we replace the word steal with words like ‘influence’, or phrases like ‘indebted to’.

If art is a spiritual endeavour, intangible rather than material, then how can it be stolen in the same way a tin of soup might be stolen from a supermarket? Certainly, the need to feel something in one’s soul, to absorb it into the bloodstream, is as essential to human function as food or water. This…