It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books

This is Rick Linklater's actual first movie, pre-Slacker. "It's more Slacker than Slacker was..." - from the liner notes by Richard Linklater himself. He also described it as an attempt to capture the most boring parts of travelling. Shot entirely on Super 8 film, and edited at the local cable access station on Beta, this movie does in fact achieve it's goal.

Richard stars as a no named man who goes from Austin to see his friend by train, bus, and car during summer break from school. Minimal dialogue and mostly serene vistas of America from the window of a train.

I have never had an experience quite like Richard Linklater's It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books. Intentionally alienating yet undeniably fascinating and innovative. The title was at first a mystery but after watching the film (equipped with a fantastic commentary by Linklater himself), I began to comprehend its meaning which is sort of saying, "you don't learn how to do something by reading books." The only true way to learn something as unique as filmmaking or plowing, one must put down the book and pick up a camera. Or a plow in this context.

A plow is never seen in this film. Nor is anything resembling a book. The film is a plot less excursion following an unnamed character (played by Linklater) leading a mundane, uninteresting life in Austin, Texas. He gets up, dresses himself, points a shotgun out the window and fires it a few times, wanders around town, goes on multiple train trips to travel up to Montana, and basically goes about his unconventional day.

One must see this film to truly comprehend it. Because the film has little to no dialog (and when it does, it's usually unimportant rambling), I turned on Linklater's commentary middle of the way through and listening to him speak is a very reassuring touch to a film already so unique and baffling. He provides us with not much backstory as to why the events are occurring, but dives into topics such as why he made this film in the first place and how he sympathizes with the youth of today who are trying to break free of typical life conventions.

I mentioned in my review of his official directorial debut, Slacker that by defining the word itself as, "people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for" he is giving adolescence a tremendous amount of reassurance and confidence in their minds. He took a word, often equipped with a negative connotation and turned it into a positive definition about being true to one's self and one's personal goals.

Slacker was a picture that, the more I think about, the more I truly adore it. It is uniquely structured, stably paced, and very thoughtful and innovative. It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books is a different breed of plot less filmmaking. It offers no insights, no coherency, no drama, and no real message or purpose. It does however erect a soothing and primitive aspect from its Super 8, home video cinematography and its focus on the smaller aspects of life (a wobbly 7up can that makes a "cool" sound). It's fun, lightweight, sometimes frustrating, mostly unrewarding, and yet I kind of dug it.

Starring: Richard Linklater. Directed by: Richard Linklater.

There were moments watching this narrative experiment- the first of many for Richard Linklater- where it comes about as close to being totally mundane as can be possible with the camera. It probably wasn't a problem for him to get his shots, as it looked as if he was making his own personal 'home movie' with him either on the train or in stations or just bumming around Austin, Texas. In that sense it's almost close to being a documentary even though, according to Linklater, it's not really quite himself on screen even as it is himself. In real life he isn't this mundane and sort of drift-less, however does admit that the feelings are in him, and were in him then, and it's on a second viewing that a sort of pattern emerges from what looks like bare-bones storytelling. Unlike Jarmusch's Permanent Vacation, it doesn't necessarily try to relate some sort of 'character' in the sense that it's something created by the actor, and then surrounded in the typical indie-movie easy-going scenes. Here, Linklater is showing how such everyday things like traveling on a train, walking through a town, getting stopped by someone to see your t-shirt, watching TV, watching movies, reading, doing laundry, doing dishes, reading a Kafka quote, driving, listening to music, so on and so forth, can have some kind of interest in the initial disinterest in seeing this.

On the one hand the narrative is lax, and unlike Slacker there isn't even the framework of a bunch of characters in a small town. But on the other hand out of all of these seemingly random shots of a guy going through the motions in life, dealing without a job, the 'whatever' attitude of hanging out with friends or a girl, taking care of a car, becomes a narrative itself. It's experimental and as Linklater also has said certainly not for a large audience to see (and many haven't until the DVD of Slacker was released with this film included), but the visual language is rich in its detachment, and at the least is a curious effort that doesn't just keep the audience on a sort of line away from typical emotional involvement but is about the same thing. Far from being any great success, but for a real "student" effort (self-taught student) you could get much worse. Watch for a Sterling Hayden tribute in one scene and a sense of dissatisfaction with 80s TV.

I enjoyed this laid-back self portrait of Richard Linklater. He shows "the artist as a young man": the viewer builds up a picture of the artist by seeing his private life which includes mundane things like cooking, doing laundry, talking on the phone. There are encounters with other people, but very little dialog. Linklater decides to travel, as he is confused about his goals. We watch him travel across the country in a train. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts however. One senses that the vision of this filmmaker includes an almost zen-like love of the moment, and of simple pleasures. One is able to sense Linklater's connection to life, to like-minded souls, to the small pleasures of life. The result is a relaxing but interesting journey into the mind and soul of a great filmmaker.

It Is Impossible to Learn to Plow By Reading Books: There is a scene in Richard Linklater's It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books where the protagonist meets a woman at a train station. They nervously chat for a little while and fall asleep in the lobby of the train station. Then, our protagonist wakes up and leaves a note on the stranger's luggage. This scene has more poignancy in it, and a stronger feeling of isolation in it, than all one hundred and two minutes of Lost in Translation. Learn to Plow creates an entire banal world of lobbies, passenger carts, and tiny bathrooms. It is dull, dreary, and sad.