The very first shot of this movie is all too familiar to those who've logged many a mile on the highways of Texas: the sleepy little town, slowly dying a death it both stubbornly refuses and solemnly accepts. The November wind blows dust and tumbleweeds across the deserted main street, nearly every building appears boarded up in some way, and even the gentle familiarity of a Texaco sign is missing a letter or two.
But there's a suddenly a sense of warmth, a sense of love; the two co-captains of the local high school football team, Duane and Sonny, are lovingly teased by the townsfolk about the team's complete inability to do so much as tackle or throw. Duane and Sonny themselves, along with the other boys of the town, share that same brotherhood and camaraderie as so many schoolmates have since; hell, set the film a couple of decades later and all of the boys could've been in the Replacements (the band, not the football flick). Boys and girls go about their business of being, well, boys and girls in the process of becoming men and women. There's hangouts and dances, get-togethers and (somewhat laughably indifferent) breakups.
Not too bad for a film made about a decade before John Hughes codified the tropes of a "teen movie".
But the teen world, no matter how rough or idealized, doesn't last forever. People grow up, skip town. Preacher's kids do weird things with little girls. Mentors die. Things one thought were secret are the talk of the whole one-horse town. Best friends begin to resent one another. Everything falls apart.
And sometimes, like in the case of Jacy Farrow, the teenage fears that one will end up like one's despicable parents become harrowing, inescapable reality.
SYMBOLISM ALERT: There's a scene in which young Jacy, after leaving her beau behind, 'escapes' to a skinny-dipping pool party of the cooler and richer types; only, she has to strip down completely in front of all of them before she can truly become part of the group. The chord struck here--that the 'real world' is both appalling and appealing--is one that rings throughout the entirety of the film.
If nothing else, The Last Picture Show is brutally honest in its showing of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Things never quite work out the way we plan them to--sometimes horrifically so. But through all of this, there's always some sort of hope for tomorrow, some smidgen in the back of one's mind that despite all odds, betrayals, and insults, there'll be some sort of acceptance and renewal in the future. When things are at their lowest, the only way they can go is up.
(TECHNICAL NOTE: I have never seen a movie that utilizes ambient audio [such as music played over a radio or conversations on a television program] quite like this one. Mad props to whoever thought to include such wonders.)
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