American Graffiti

This flick was made as a nostalgia piece back when it was first released; imagine then how out of touch with the present it is today. It is a strange experience watching this one in light of what has gone on in the last in the last 46 years. There is still the time-traveling interest that comes from seeing how the world—or at least, in this case, Turlock, California—looked back in the day. And the adventures of the principle characters are not without a certain amount of entertainment and charm. But what’s striking about this film is how utterly trivial these events seem in comparison with the world that teens today have to navigate; the concerns of the present are profoundly deeper than what seemed so important for high school grads in 1962. (Or, at least, what a filmmaker in the early 70s thought mattered to kids a decade previous). You also can’t help but watch this movie without being profoundly aware of everything these now very famous people did after this picture was made. Lastly, as a piece of cinema, it must be noted how slow this movie seems compared with the hyperkinetic films generally popular today. That’s not necessarily a complaint; a change of pace is good once in a while. But combined with the relative lightness of material, watching this flick can come across as an exercise in next to nothing. Overall, this is a textbook case in how the passage of time can fundamentally alter the way a work of art is perceived—often to its detriment, and not necessarily of its own fault.