McConaugheMay Day 19: Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny

The timing felt right to watch this movie after visiting my home town for my mom's birthday over the weekend. Director Richard Linklater obviously knows a thing or two about nostalgia after making a myriad of films partly about that particular feeling; Dazed and Confused and Before Sunrise are both about the weight that a moment holds in the moment that only becomes all the more important years after the fact. These are movies that could only be made by someone who knows that the bad memories softening over time is just a part of life, that those golden era days don’t reflect reality, but do reflect an emotional reality all the same. Here, he says something in this documentary about nostalgia and his relationship to his childhood that resonated with me, about not feeling bittersweet over all these good times, because so many of them weren't, but nonetheless appreciating that you can get some kind of distance from it, offering some compassion for a younger version of yourself so filled with all this aching need and ambition. I get that.

Significantly better than 21 Years: Richard Linklater, the other documentary about the director I watched last week, owing primarily, I would guess, to co-directors Louis Black (co-founder of the Austin Chronicle) and Karen Bernstein actually understanding what makes Linklater’s films special. The focus is scattered (purposely, I think), and if there is a "point" to be made about his career, it's that even his misfires were instrumental, that his movies were HIS movies, a reflection of his beliefs and interests and goals, even if they didn't work for a general audience. I think he's one of the most perceptive directors when it comes to those little moments that stick with you for no other reason than they happen to do so, those dreamlike moments, not in the surrealist way, but in the way that they can only be meaningful to you because you brought all this history and import that's impossible to explain to another person. That he's able to have made a career of those moments is impressive.

Fittingly, this documentary features a lot of footage of old Austin, when the buildings all had to be shorter than the capitol building, when an artist could work half the week to pay cheap rent and still make art the rest of the week. This too is a form of nostalgia, eliding the bad parts of that life style and that culture because those bad memories don’t stick as strongly as the sunnier moments. The film argues, and I would agree, that Linklater just wasn’t a director who could have made it in Hollywood if he was born there or moved there; he needed the culture of Austin and Texas to form fully into the artist that he became.

I never want to be nostalgic (I err more toward regretful anyhow), but I want to keep those little moments in my mind and not to miss them when they happen. I don't miss the person I was or the things he went through, but I think it's fair to accept it as a past that happened.

Once again, Matthew McConaughey is barely in this documentary, and Before Sunrise stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy come off as incredibly generous, thoughtful artists..