Clerks - Kevin Smith

Clerks - Kevin Smith

Clerks - Kevin Smith

Clerks is Kevin Smith's first feature film and, in my opinion, his best so far. With this movie, he inaugurates the so-called View-Askew universe, whose places and characters will be present in many of his later movies. View Askew is the production house behind most of his following flicks, and it is formed by none other than Smith himself, and Scott Mosier, who we see in Clerks appearing as Snowball.

At the time of shooting, Smith used to actually work at the convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey depicted in the film. He worked at Quick Stop during the day, and filmed Clerks at night, so that, for the three weeks necessary to shoot, he was getting something like one hour sleep each night.

The main characters impersonate that kind of comic-books and mainstream sci-fi movie fanatic, who will be present in many of his films, and is quite common in real life, as the nerd type. The roughness of the film, resulting from the low budget, which Smith managed somehow to put together himself, is definitely an attractive factor; in fact, stripped of all the pretence, and apparently nonplussed by the minimal scenery and (sometimes) heavily improvised props, the acting flows beautifully and the jokes acquire that much depth.

We can appreciate more the directive skills of Kevin as a one-man filmmaker, and his ingeniousness, considering he also wrote the screenplay, and appeared in the movie as Silent Bob, the grumpy and taciturn partner of Jay, who dispenses gems of wisdom the few times he actually speaks. The black-and-white assigns poeticism to some of the scenes; for instance when Jay and Silent Bob dance at the sound of their ghetto-blaster, while Dante talks to Kaitlin inside the store.

All in all, Clerks is a witty and ruthless comedy about anti-conformism, friendship and youth, where the diverseness of the characters helps us to grasp what actually are their common grounds, and appreciate the film that much more.

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