It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books

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.

While Slacker might have been Richard Linklater's first big film, many people tend to forget that his first feature film was It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books which was released in 1988. Richard Linklater single handedly did everything on this film for only a budget of $3,000 and even stars in the film as well. The film was only ever released in home media in 2004 when it was included on a second disc in the Criterion Collection of Slacker (which I highly recommend for anyone interested).

The film follows a man (Richard Linklater) as he travels around the country and lives his mundane life.

It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books is one of those types of films that I seem to have very little enjoyment in watching like most other films. The film sees Linklater being experimental here. No plot, no story movement, very little dialogue, and a motionless camera. But I always come to learn that films like this have purpose and that purpose in being to show how life can be boring and mundane at times, which is something that I can find myself relating to at times. When I rate a movie, I always try to keep into consideration what the sole purpose the filmmaker had in mind and how well that was executed and I must give credit to Linklater where credit is due because he did that very well here by being more of a visual story teller here. But on the other hand, I find it hard to have a whole lot of interest in this film as it is a mundane film.

If you want to watch a film that explores mundane life, check out Slacker as it is a much better and enjoyable film than this one but if at all curious as a Linklater fan like me, give it a watch.

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.

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.

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.

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.