Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

[Pop Trash]

I hope to hell this doesn't win Best Picture.

Strangely, I actually agree with you if only so I don't have to hear people bitching about how Boyhood and Linklater are 'overrated' for the rest of my life. Put the inevitable BP backlash on Birdman and Inarritu plz.

[MadMan]

Boyhood is great but Linklater has done better. I should view his Before... trilogy. And Waking Life. I've only seen five of his movies.

[dreamdead]

I really like this nuanced take on gender roles and how societal expectations shape Mason and Samantha:

For the first half of the film, as Mason dreams, Samantha competes with him. She dominates, teases and outperforms her younger brother (in reality, the actors playing the brother and sister were born only months apart). When Samantha first appears, she whizzes by Mason on her bike, calling him home for dinner. She taunts him by singing a Britney Spears song, speaking pig Latin and reminding him that he flunked first grade.

Even in early adolescence, Samantha remains outspoken, challenging her controlling stepfather about the pointlessness of dusting, worrying about her stepsiblings when he turns abusive and her mother flees the house.

But in the film’s last hour, Samantha starts to fade. Her speech and voice start to disintegrate audibly: She speaks less, signals uncertainty with the constant use of the filler phrase “I mean” and punctuates many of her statements with a nervous laugh. At Mason’s high school graduation party, she makes a toast only after being prompted to do so.

[Morris Schæffer]

Good, but I wish the filmmaking was more memorable. Seems odd that, for a 165-minute movie I'm finding it quite challenging to name a scant few scenes that have lingered in my mind. I was thinking of The Tree of Life and how that was also about Childhood, but thanks to more lyrical, poetic filmmaking ensured the somewhat mundane subject matter got transcended. Here, Linklater points his camera and shoots. There are no embellishment, no stylistic flourishes, virtually not a single shot that made me go "wow that's beautiful" or "I miss my childhood". Perhaps the kids in this movie aren't the kind that would miss their childhood seeing as it wasn't a particularly happy time, but the point is that I found it a bit dullish from a directorial pov. The loser stepfathers? Not crazy about them, but they do inject some conflict into the movie that I felt was needed. There's a scene early on where the young Mason is sitting behind his house and he is looking at the tiny cadaver of a bird. I was moved by that because, in a fleeting, very subtle yet profoundly true and earnest way, it tackles the subject of death at perhaps an age where we're beginning to grasp its meaning. And I really liked the very end when Hawke and Arquette have a small moment together in the kitchen and they seem to finally come to terms with how they really have done allright given everything that's happened. Although, and I'm only realizing this now, her observation to Hawke that it was gonna start all over again with the kid and the wife showed perhaps an undercurrent of bitterness (or envy) for the Arquette character. The 1st failed husband has settled down, seems to be part of a happy family whereas she isn't anywhere near that. There was some warmth there, some much needed character interaction and heartfelt emotion in a movie whose characters I found a bit distant, a bit borish. The ending is perfect, because it ends when it has to, but because it's a beautiful scene in a movie that, to me at least, didn't have enough of them. I suspect that even if I had given this four stars, I most likely would never have had the desire to see it again. And I agree with Irish that the "I thought there would be more" line didn't work. He goes on to say that such an idea would have gotten across more persuasively in a better movie. I think that scene is already there in my description above (italicized).

***/4

[transmogrifier]

76/100

Quietly resonant collection of memories that accumulate emotional momentum as you come to realize that the film is merely interested in proving that life is the sum of every moment, large and small, rather than laying out some cliched origin story so beloved in the time of comic book movies.

I loved the fact that Mason remains a cipher throughout, and it is hard to truly get a read on his personality, because by the time the movie ends, he himself has no read on it either; he sees stretched before him the same possibilities and pitfalls he has personally seen his family and friends encounter. I've seen some people complain about Arquette's mini-meltdown near the end, claiming it is too neat, or too contrived for the naturalism that preceded it, but it is telling that it immediately cuts away and doesn't allow it to be resolved, and doesn't allow Mason a chance to placate his mother, because the movie comes to us directly from his eyes, and at that stage, he has nothing to say, and in fact, probably has no ability to empathize with his mother. To him, as presented by the movie, all the pieces still matter, the bathroom bullying, the night spent throwing saw blades at wood, the time all his hair got cut off; he can't sympathize with the mourning of the passing of milestones because that concept hasn't hit him yet. He is still of the moment.

(Interested to see so many people mezzo-mezzo on this here; remove the dialogue, cut the scenes down even further, make the cinematography showier, add pretentious, grating voiceovers, and you have The Tree of Life)

[Pop Trash]

76/100
(Interested to see so many people mezzo-mezzo on this here; remove the dialogue, cut the scenes down even further, make the cinematography showier, add pretentious, grating voiceovers, and you have The Tree of Life)

You forgot the goddamn dinosaurs!

[max314]

Boyhood (Linklater, 2014):

The time shifts are never broadcast and no egregious pretensions towards narrative drive are made. The result is a cascading river of life and love that pulls you into its flow and forces you to ask the most important questions...and reminds us to forget the petty ones.

★★★★★

[DavidSeven]

Linklater basically confirms his status as master of the American "slice-of-life" film. It actually reminds me most of Dazed and Confused. That film also had a young blank slate protagonist that Linklater doesn't do much with. Yet, Linklater has a special knack for putting these cardboard figures in everyday occurrences and making them enthralling anyway. I think it was Tarantino who commented that watching Dazed and Confused felt like "hanging out with friends." This film has a similar feel. Although it's less of a "hangout movie" than Linklater's earlier stoner tale, he still manages to make you feel as though you're in the room and living life with these characters. It's an intangible quality that he handles best.

While the accomplishment is great, I hesitate to put Boyhood on the same level as the last two installments of his Before series. There are elements here that aren't just bad; they're so bad that they stick out and reverberate. For example, the scene with the boys hanging out at the abandoned house is so poorly scripted, acted and staged that it borders on incompetence to keep it in. It was either that or hubris. The scene offers no necessary information and could have been cut rather easily. The drunk dick step-father was compelling the first time around; trite as a motif when it was extended to a second character. As with a lot of Linklater's work, you wish he had a little more to offer as a visual storyteller.

Still, a very compelling 3-hours.