Beware spoilers!
Clerks III is the third and final instalment of the Clerks saga, written and directed by Kevin Smith. We return to the Quick Stop, to Randal, Dante, Jay and Silent Bob all still living their New Jersey dream, or nightmare depending on your perspective. A massive heart attack forces Randal to confront his life. Faced with the inevitable midlife crisis that accompanies a brush with the Grim Reaper, Randal decides to make a film about his life, roping in Dante and the usual Smith suspects to make his dream a reality.
Despite being packed with Smith’s trademark humour, this is an emotional gut punch of a film. This was an unanticipated turn of events, but not necessarily unexpected. Whilst many fans, and detractors, of Smith’s oeuvre may emphasise his preference for the absurd and often the frankly grotesque portrayals of his characters, there is always, underneath this chaotic carnival of absurdity, a tender heart. In earlier films like Dogma, we saw Smith’s ability to synthesise his own particular brand of humour, with the more serious and heartfelt subject matter. Clerks III is a continuation of this theme. Alongside the cursing, the snort laugh-inducing humour, and the absolute stupidity of some of the characters, we have two men who have been blindsided by middle age and must confront the sum of their lives. This feels like a very personal film, one that is almost certainly influenced by Smith’s own brush with death in 2018, when he experienced the ‘widowmaker’ of heart attacks. It appears that Smith has processed his own brush with mortality through the parallel tracks of Randal and Dante’s stories.
There is a real sense of homecoming, of a story coming full circle. This is a film that says as much about Smith’s career as it does about Randal and Dante’s lives in the Quick Stop.
In a whopper of a spoiler, we see these parallel lives play out in the third, heartbreaking (quite literally) act. Randal survives his heart attack and approaches his life with renewed vigour. When confronted with a retrospective of his own life, Dante is forced to come to terms with his own life, and loss. This results in an explosive, devastating argument between the two lifelong friends and a heart attack. Dante’s path follows the road fortunately not taken by Smith, and we see how Randal and the rest of his motley crew must absorb his loss. This is not just a film about one’s own mortality, but about the shifting nature of relationships. Randal and Dante have been together longer than most married couples, have seen the worst of each other, weathered the boring mundanity of daily life, and carried each other through unthinkable loss. Or have they? A significant element of this film is Randal’s forced confrontation of his own selfishness. Of his ‘main character’ syndrome, that doesn’t respect or acknowledge Dante’s contribution. Dante, for his part, is a broken man. A husk who has never processed the loss of his family. We see this hurt cast its shadow over every interaction and understand that it takes such strength to carry on in the face of such pain. But equal strength is needed when deciding when it’s time to let go and this is handled beautifully in a tender, touching scene. It’s a sad end for Dante, but feels perhaps more authentic than similar narratives in other films that soothe the fears of the audience by suggesting such loss is eventually surmountable.
This is a nostalgic film, one that will make no sense to anyone who hasn’t seen Clerks, or Clerks II. Although it does act as a standalone film, if you don’t have a connection to those characters, it probably won’t resonate in the same way. There is a real sense of homecoming, of a story coming full circle. This is a film that says as much about Smith’s career as it does about Randal and Dante’s lives in the Quick Stop. Coming back to Jersey, to return to these characters after almost thirty years since the original Clerks, can’t help but leave fans misty-eyed. I’ve been a Smith fan since my teens, and so to watch Randal and Dante, older, no wiser, confronting their mortality was very moving. Perhaps my score is indicative of this, of a love and appreciation for a filmmaker and a film that speaks so profoundly, and absurdly in the same breath.
5/5
Clerks III is available now on Lions Gate Blu-Ray
