Review by Peter Moraites

The film is extremely hard to find (if it even exists) on DVD, and I didn’t have a VCR so let’s have a big round of applause for YouTube where a raving fan of the film has posted it in 13 parts all chained together in a playlist. Watching it in the most populist of media felt totally appropriate. During a week when “Populist Rage” has suddenly become buzz lingo, I’m watching a well-crafted portrait of the disconnection and frustration which has become the accepted emotional state of our culture, and which underpins many of the challenges which have become so intolerable that we can no longer ignore them, and must at least begin to bitch out loud about them.

It’s a typically indie/lo-budget small cast (seven principal players) and very few locations. Lots of dialogue and it takes its turns from comedic and light to ponderous and dramatic, arcing across these peaks and vales from a lighter start to a darker finish. This is the third Linklater film I’ve seen, and the first one which hasn’t been rotoscope animated (Waking Life and Scanner Darkly). I’m glad Joe asked me to watch it because it gave me a chance to understand the great appeal of this director without the eye-candy of Tommy Pallotta’s animation. Suburbia reveals Linklater as an actor’s director – competent and skilled with camera, editing, etc, and excellent in cultivating a great ensemble performance. Giovanni Ribisi, Steve Zahn and Parker Posey are the most recognizable of the group, and all deserve kudos for their performance chops, but it’s the consistent thread of body language and facial expression which are almost always at odds with (or even in full contradiction to) what the characters are actually saying. Skilled actors, of course, do this all the time to reveal more about their character than the character would willingly reveal, but the consistency of this device throughout the story has to be a directorial choice, and it works to say even more about them as a collective of people, and thus about the suburban culture which they are meant to represent.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Go rent it, if you can find it. Or borrow it from a friend or find it on a torrent site or go check it out in 13 parts on YouTube. I liked it, but that doesn’t mean you will. Then again, if you’re a film-geek you’ll at least dig studying it from a directorial and/or acting perspective. If you’re a lost and loaded suburban slacker, watch it and drink a beer every time someone’s dialog is mismatched by their body language! It’s fun!

Linklater is an Austin Texas guy, and I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey. Say what you will about Red and Blue States, but Suburbia manages to get to something which was familiar to my own experience growing up bored and lonely in my own suburban world a decade earlier. Good movie.

You can find all 13 parts on Youtube….Here is the first scene