10 Excellent Films That Don't Actually Have A Plot
6. Clerks (1994)
A black and white comedy shot for just over $27,000, Clerks is about Dante Hicks (Brian OHalloran) who is called into work on his day off to cover another employees shift. Set almost entirely in the same location, the film is essentially just a series of conversations broken up only by the very occasional scene transition. Though the characters and their relationships changes over the course of the film, eventually climaxing at the very end with an emotional confrontation, there is very little plot to speak of. After a series of screw-ups (like knocking a coffin over at a funeral), Dante is confronted by Randal over his lack of direction and ambition, the two characters fight and make promises to change the way they live their lives. While that kind of revelation is typically associated with the culmination of a plot, none of the events leading to this moment are connected in any meaningful way. All of Dantes terrible decisions are made because of Randals influence, and Randal influences him to make bad decisions because Randals a screw-up. Its a destructive circle that forms the basis of their relationship, one that the entire story is centred on. If the two characters stopped making poor choices then there would be no movie because the movie is about their poor choices, and that certainly isn't grounds for a plot.
