George Lucas---what happened to you? Remember when you cared? Remember when you effectively placed boomer nostalgia within a humanistic context that was both funny and interesting?
It finds the angst, insecurity, distractions and hormones of high school and gives us great characters to follow as they amble through a night on the verge of summertime in Modesto.
Paul La Mat. Candy Clark. Both are tops.
Harrison Ford is always cool, even when he's too old for high school, too old to be on the proving grounds with his souped up automobile.
Lucas doesn't end it with nostalgia, which takes it from good movie to great movie, with the epilogue description of what happened to the four main males after school, to the "now" (the now of 1973, I suppose).
The eternal now.
Dead, lost, writer, insurance.
There you have it: the American Dream.
Leave your mark on the landscape. Be remembered.
Was that night important? Was it essential in the course of things? Only in its unimportance.
Only in the way it isn't about epiphanies.
As the future dawns behind the car at the end, it is the small choices that make up a life.
We see that. They lived it. They lived through it.
Are they any better?
Is this one more thing they will forget?
Is this the embarrassment they think of when they remember their youth?
film journal entry: 04.05.2013
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