Ultimate Americana - Apollo 10 1/2

Apollo 10 1/2 (2022)

Richard Linklater returns to what he does best – Ultimate Americana about boyhood in Texas.

The iconic Dazed and Confused transported us into the 70s.
A portrait of living in the US when it was still in possession of the world’s majority of wealth and most average citizens could live of an average job, having average leisure time while feeding an average amount of kids.

Myself not being American, but visited Texas in my teenage years, where my father’s friend introduced me to “Dazed and Confused” with the words, “this is the most accurate depiction of my teenage life in the 70s”.

So I take this portrait of the 60s in Texas is probably pretty accurate too. What do I know. I am European.

source: IMDB

Having not lived in this period myself, I have a romanticized view on it.
No other decade in the 20th century seems to have so many popcultural significant moments, the US being the epicenter of it all.

The explosion of a music and movie industry focused on teenagers has built the fundamentals of what has emerged into a multi trillion dollar business.
The pill, burning Beatles albums, marching on Washington and of course the space race.

A time of departure, not only to the moon but very much so on earth.

source:IMDB

We learn of all the ups and downs of a more or less worriless childhood. Kickball, board games, prank calls and over clorinated public pools all through the eyes of a young Richard Linklater walking down memory lane in the flat south.

The whole Apollo mission just serving as a framework to tell anecdotes of his parents mannerism, falling asleep in a family station wagon and spotting hippies for the first time.

How everyday the TV serves as a central bonfire, where little Linklater and his archetype family gathers, celebrating a togetherness that it once stood for in post war America.

source: IMDB

After the horrific “Everybody wants some!”, a jock comedy set in the 80s, this is a decent return to old form of innocent nostalgia.

It is also not a must watch, but definetly a feel good movie, that immerses you through it’s style of illustrated overlays, rotoscoped on the actual life action footage that became kind of a “Linklater thing” since “Waking Life”.

A trait wisely chosen for a period piece to enter an enchanted idolized but simple world like our protagonist does while watching the Wizard of Oz during a rare broadcast once a yearon TV.

When the whole world was not accesible through a little black screen, not every move was documented, and children were not helicoptered constantly by their parents.

As Linklater explains, or better, his voice over alias (Jack Black),

“nobody thought too much about safety, life was cheaper”

Posted using CineTV