5 Reasons to Watch Kevin Smith's "Clerks"

Greetings to all kinolyubov and kinoznavtsev on his blog! :) Today, we'll talk about the 1994 film "Clerks" by Kevin Smith. In its time, this picture became the triumphant of the Sundance festival - the main stronghold of American independent cinema and fell into the program of the Cannes Film Festival. The film was followed by a series of sequels, which eventually formed a kind of film-like.

The picture "Clerks" tells about one day in the life of young people living in the remote outskirts of the American town. The protagonist named Dante works in a local supermarket and somehow he has to go to work instead of a sick partner. The action lasts for one day, but during this time in a small shop there are so many accidents that half a day from the life of the seller becomes like a miniature epic.

If you have not seen this movie yet, I recommend it for viewing. There are at least five reasons for this:

1. Crazy humor ...

If you are a fan of jokes on the verge of a foul, the author of which does not look around with caution "but will not think about me bad", then Clerks are definitely your film. It seems that there are no forbidden subjects here - death, consumption society, and moralists with fighters for a healthy lifestyle are ridiculed, aggressively imposing their "only true" point of view on others. Jokes here are quite tough, sometimes suitable to the border of bad taste, but never cross it. The film empowers the audience cleaner than alcohol - it is only necessary to get used to the style of "local" humor and to grasp the local boundary of what is permissible, as they push you out again beyond the usual boundaries.

2 ... and at the same time - a serious message

... nevertheless, all the jokes in the film, even the hardest ones, turn out to be a well thought out artistic technique. The black and seemingly vulgar humor becomes not an end in itself, but a means - an instrument by which the author deconstructs the routine system of views, assessments and relations, exposing its contradictions and deadened elements. The film sharpens our eyesight, removes from the eyes the veil of the habitual automated perception, allowing us to see the world and our place in it with a fresh, unspotted gaze.

It is necessary for the viewer's consciousness to get rid of common cliches and cliches, as the film puts before him quite serious existential problems. Kevin Smith suffices only one day from the life of the characters to puzzle us with questions of choice and his sense, a momentary desire and genuine good, selfishness and self-deception. In the end, "Clerks" - about the automatism of life and its overcoming. The director skillfully entices the viewer with entertainment and imperceptibly leads him to introspection. So if you like a deep intellectual cinema, but you do not like dreary morals and monotonous filosofstvovaniya, then "Clerks" should be to your liking.

1. A film demonstrating the principles of postmodernism

In the 80's and 90's, cinema actively adopts the principles of postmodernism that originated in related art. Unlike many cultural formations of modern times, which place emphasis on rationalism and order, postmodernism sees the world as a chaotic heap of disorderly fragments. Hence, the possibility of moral evaluation disappears and a famous postmodern irony arises - the facts, torn from the context that we are accustomed to and lacking connections with each other, reveal amusing contradictions. For the same reason, the border between elite and mass art is blurred: in the absence of a clear hierarchy of facts, "high" can merge with "low", giving rise to an unexpected symbiosis of meanings and forms.

The key concept characterizing the nature of postmodern thinking is "rhizome." In translation from the French - "rhizome". Not the root, but the rhizome is a branched, chaotic shoot whose appearance is illustrated by the image of a nonlinear structure that assumes significant opportunities for internal permutations and metamorphosis.
The plot of "Clerks" is similar to such a "rhizome". The narrative at first resembles a heap of unconnected novels, sketches and sketches. Sudden events pass us beyond a linear connection with what has been and will be in the neighboring scenes. And only to the end of the disparate episodes show an interrelation with each other, the plot turns out to be complete and logical, but in order to understand this, it is necessary to watch the film to the end. Here the whole is not built up by the successive and gradual growth of the successive parts, but at the same time is composed of a chaotic scattering of fragments. Organizing the beginning is imperceptibly manifested in the chaos of jokes and insane accidents - and we ourselves do not notice how the absurdity and unsystematic narrative of the finale is organized into an integral structure.

This game with the text naturally assumes an ironic attitude to one's own work. Game and irony are two more important and interrelated aspects of postmodernism. The author laughs not only over his characters, but also on himself and his work. So each episode in the "Clerks" is preceded by a title titled on a black background, and the title of the episode often does not correlate with its content or intentionally states "sublime" intonation before the farce action. Sometimes the title of the action is characterized not by the plot, but by its position in the structure of history: thus, on the eve of the maximum heat of passions, a significant inscription appears on the screen: "Catharsis." In its primordial meaning, this term, claimed by Aristotle, means purifying the viewer of the ancient tragedy through compassion and empathy for the characters. In "Clerks" this word, originally associated with the high genre of tragedy, comes into discord with the farce-comedy intonation of the film. So the author sneers at both his own film, and over the centuries-old dramaturgic tradition, and also builds his text as a game in the text (I apologize for the tautology).

So, confronting lofty terms, buffoon humor, youth themes and a serious message, Kevin Smith blurs the line between mass and elitist art, fusing them into a single conglomerate.

1. Clerks - the beginning of the cinematic Jay and Silent Bob

Perhaps, everyone who is reading my article, at least once heard about this frostbitten couple, and even watched the movies with their participation. Jay and Silent Bob occupy a place of honor on Olympus youth idols of the 90's and 00's, and their first appearance on the screen took place in "Clerks". And although they have to become symbols of the movie-keeper Kevin Smith, their role here is relatively modest. Jay and Silent Bob - one of the many second-rate characters of the "Clerks". Scenes with them are just an example of those fragments that at first seem to be scattered, but to the finale turn out to be included in the meaningful structure of the narrative. Silent Bob, as it follows from his nickname, the whole film remains silent and only in the finale pronounces a capacious speech that assesses the life of the main character. It was Bob's silence throughout history that attached importance to his words in the finale of the film. It's no coincidence that this character is played by the director himself - so Bob turns out to be a resonator, through which the author communicates his point of view to the viewer.

By the way, Kevin Smith's movie set is not limited to "Clerks" and films about Jay and Silent Bob. The canonical franchise includes also lesser known films "Lobotryas", "In search of Amy", "Dogma" - comedies, dramas and fantasy. Unlike many other movie shops, there are a variety of genres for every taste.

1. One of the best works of American independent cinema of the 90s

The 1990s became a significant milestone in the history of American independent cinema. Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater and the author of "Clerks" - Kevin Smith, announced themselves. Beginning directors, as they could, made their way into the profession, resorting to any improvised means, just to capture their kinovyskazyvanie. Filmed in a single location on a black and white film, "Clerks" are captivated by the charm of the "homemade" film - the technical uncomplicatedness of the picture removes the distance between the author and the viewer.

Do not forget about the dialogues, which are very many in the film. In general, American independent directors of the 90s loved, bypassing all the rules, saturating their scripts with countless pages of conversations and, strangely enough, it turned out cinematic and in its own way bewitching. Remember Tarantino or Linklater movies. Talks between the characters, not directly related to the development of history, just create the atmosphere of the film, in which one wants to stay longer. And there you look - and from a detached, rather pointless spate, one of the key dialogues of the film is suddenly born.