Clerks
Responsibility
I have a rule here. You may not fully realize it, but it’s there, and it’s important. It’s one of the things that keeps me sane.
The rule is this. I have to write a review of every movie that I see that’s a “current” movie, unless there are compelling reasons not to. For example, I didn’t review The Pianist because I didn’t need to; the movie is perfect and a review would spoil it. I didn’t review The Emperor’s Club because it wasn’t worth my invective; it wasn’t good enough to make me care enough to rip it to quivering, bloody shreds. But these are rare occasions. (UPDATE: Okay, they used to be rare occasions. And I did go back and review both movies, eventually.)
That’s one part of the rule. The other part of the rule is that I don’t have to review every old movie I see, unless it’s a classic. I can watch the 597th rerun of Tremors on the Superstation without having to feel the least bit guilty about it. I can watch all the old movies I want to without having to worry about writing about them; I can just relax and enjoy them if I so choose.
So why write about Clerks?
Clerks is not a great movie. Period. There is no reason to discuss this at all. It is a cheap movie made in the cheapest possible way, after hours at the director’s place of daytime employment. Black and white film, of course, and not incredibly well processed. The actors include the director, his friends, community-theater types, and close relatives of all of the above. The dialogue is so off-the-cuff that it’s hard to believe that it’s scripted. The elements that are scripted are so vulgar that they rise below the level of profanity. The requisite discussions about the important aspects of life — sex, street hockey, and Star Wars are limp and unfocused. And perhaps worst, the movie launched the careers of Jay and Silent Bob, two of the most annoying characters in the long and sad history of annoying characters.
So why write about Clerks?
First, it’s amazing that the movie is as good as it is given the circumstances of its creation. It is like a perfect scale model of USS CONSTITUTION made out of Popsicle sticks. It’s memorable for reasons outside of its general aesthetic awfulness. Its cheap vulgarity is leavened by some exquisite comic timing. The acting, while amateurish, is better than you might think. (If nothing else, Clerks reminds us that there’s a very thin line between good actors and average actors, and that the success of good actors has more to do with luck than anyone ever admits.)
The plot is a little more coherent than it appears. Clerks is not what you would call a pretentious movie, at all, but it does have two threads that lend it some consistency. The lead character’s name is Dante, which is more-or-less intentionally designed to evoke the Divine Comedy, or the part of it that deals with hell, anyway. But the portrayal of a run-down video store and mini-grocery in Leonardo, New Jersey as hell owes more to Sartre’s description of hell as “other people”. (Note: This is likely the only time that you will ever see a review on this site comparing anything to anything by Sartre, so cherish this moment.) Dante the convenience store clerk is not so miserable because he’s in hell, but because he’s in a hell populated by idiots, all of whom want free Gatorade or iced coffee or the perfect egg. Tellingly, Dante is happiest in a brief moment when he is lying hidden on the floor, allowing customers to make their own change by leaving a pile of singles on the counter.
That Clerks takes place in a convenience store is a clue to one of its themes. In its cynical way, Clerks is about convenience, about the things that people get in the odd hours of the day, about the way people want things like cigarettes and pornography and coffee without having to exert much effort for them. Dante’s life is reflected in this need; everyone he knows is driving him to do something else with his life, but he doesn’t. Part of this is that his life, although it is filled with savages and misery, is convenient, for him, and it would be less convenient, more effort, to do something else, to be somebody else.
What changes things for Dante is the one moment of clarity that he experiences. It’s the moment when he realizes, finally, that he has a choice, that he can take responsibility for his life. The Kevin Smith movie usually has a scene or two when responsibility shines through the murk of foulness like a good deed in a naughty world, and that moment is in Clerks, too. It’s the truest thing in the movie, and the one thing that makes the movie worth writing about, that lifts it beyonnd the swamp of vulgarity, past the occasional guilty giggle, out of the dismal black-and-white world of the convenience store and into full blossoming life.