Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

[eternity]

Watching one of the adult characters [

Show Spoiler

pour a drink that's 95% alcohol and 5% Sprite

] was one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie in a long time. Probably wasn't supposed to be, but I chuckled heartily as did many others in the theater.

[Ezee E]

Watching one of the adult characters [

Show Spoiler

pour a drink that's 95% alcohol and 5% Sprite

] was one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie in a long time. Probably wasn't supposed to be, but I chuckled heartily as did many others in the theater.

Yeah, that was hilarious, along with his hate of squash.

[Watashi]

I thought you were from Minnesota?

Grew up all over Texas. Didn't move to MN until halfway through high school.

Saw this film again. I loved watching the audience reactions this time around. The scene where Mason is hanging in the attic throwing buzz saws had a lot of people squirming and one guy screamed, but I love how Linklater doesn't go for the expected or the "big moment" (another example is when Mason tells his mom that Sam is pregnant which had a couple behind me go "I knew it" and then it's brushed off as a joke). Just a beautifully woven film of sparse moments.

[Watashi]

Watching one of the adult characters [

Show Spoiler

pour a drink that's 95% alcohol and 5% Sprite

] was one of the funniest things I've seen in a movie in a long time. Probably wasn't supposed to be, but I chuckled heartily as did many others in the theater.

It's definitely an intentional funny moment.

[Ezee E]

Grew up all over Texas. Didn't move to MN until halfway through high school.

Saw this film again. I loved watching the audience reactions this time around. The scene where Mason is hanging in the attic throwing buzz saws had a lot of people squirming and one guy screamed, but I love how Linklater doesn't go for the expected or the "big moment" (another example is when Mason tells his mom that Sam is pregnant which had a couple behind me go "I knew it" and then it's brushed off as a joke). Just a beautifully woven film of sparse moments.

This. I had an older "know it all" couple that kept getting fooled throughout. Besides what you mentioned, there was also an extended scene of a car backing up where they knew that they were going to get hit, or the scene with the bullies and Mason that never really went beyond what we saw.

[number8]

There's a lot of rug pulling like that, and they're definitely deliberate. Like Ethan Hawke telling Mason not to use his phone while driving, and then we see him look at a cute animal on Facebook while driving.

Or how Nikole came back and you thought they're gonna recognize each other from when they were kids, but the movie just ends before they figured that out.

I think it was also an intentional choice that the kid positioned in front of the buzzsaw is the youngest, a virgin, and yeah, not white.

[Dead & Messed Up]

There's a lot of rug pulling like that, and they're definitely deliberate. Like Ethan Hawke telling Mason not to use his phone while driving, and then we see him look at a cute animal on Facebook while driving.

This was very clever. "Don't do that, something's gonna happen!... wait, no it won't. This isn't that kind of movie."

[Gittes]

In my case, the audience's dread was audible during the scene when Mason and the other boys were throwing the blades. I'm not going to demarcate myself from these observations, of course, as there were several instances where my expectations were similarly defied, including the aforementioned scene. That's definitely one of the interesting things about the movie. During the scene in the diner with Mason and his girlfriend, someone near me briefly mistook the eccentric at the other table as his former alcoholic stepdad (Marco Perella), which perhaps speaks to the obvious spectatorial desire for something traditionally climactic and intense, which the film rarely ever appeases in a traditional way (see Linklater's comments, below). This contributes to the film's distinction and appeal, of course.

Not surprisingly, my first example isn't atypical. Linklater has commented on it, and it apparently was not deliberate:

But that expectation for a big, cinematic moment can be kind of fascinating to behold. There’s a scene in the movie where Mason and his friends are throwing these dangerous metal blades around, just goofing off, and I remember when I saw the film at Sundance, the audience was completely convinced that one of the characters would get hurt. When the scene ended, people actually laughed at themselves, because it was like a gun that hadn’t gone off.

Oh, that was fascinating! I heard a chill go through the audience, but something like that never crossed my mind! As a young person, you risk your life regularly while fucking around, and you make it through. But I did think, Oooh, the audience really thinks something is going to happen. Did I just disappoint everyone? You see how we’re conditioned by movies? They usually depict the out-of-the-ordinary stuff — like, people pay to see the stuff that doesn’t happen in their own lives. We want to see great violence, great sex, great adventure and romance, but I was playing a different game here, obviously, hoping that the cumulative effect would have a different effect on you emotionally.

[Pop Trash]

That's probably why the scenes where it veered into more conventional drama and conflict stuck out to me; namely the alcoholic step-dad stuff. I also kept thinking of other recent indie films that handled that topic better such as The Spectacular Now and Adventureland. Adventureland in particular since that movie is never really about alcoholism and handles it with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it light touch.

I did like how that step-dad is just dropped out of the movie. Some people on letterboxd criticized that, but to me it seems very life-like. "Whelp that guy is over, won't see him again ever."

[number8]

I was thinking that you can argue that it's so pronounced and pointed in the first stepdad to contrast it with the second stepdad, who is also then implied later to be an abusive drunk, but never shown like the first one. His exit was even more abrupt. The movie is about growth, and its POV grows with Mason. Mason could see where the second stepdad was going because of his childhood, and the audience could suss out what the fuck happened between cuts to that guy because of the belabored drunken dad scene from before.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Yes to that too. It's cool how much that implies about Arquette's character, simply through omission.

[ledfloyd]

I liked this movie, although I found its first half more interesting than its second. Oddly, the most moving part for me was the waiter talking to the mom at the end.

It's weird, because I felt the second half of the film was infinitely more engaging than the first.

I don't agree with Melville's take, but I'm definitely sympathetic to it. It took me a good while to really get into the film. I think it happened around the condom scene. I don't know if it was the cumulative effect of the film at that point or what.

I have a lot of little quibbles with various parts of the film, but I'd like to revisit it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

To my great surprise, this opened at my theater this weekend. Might try to catch it before it leaves on Thursday.

[ledfloyd]

To my great surprise, this opened at my theater this weekend. Might try to catch it before it leaves on Thursday.

Yeah, I was surprised it showed up here as well.

Decent turn out for the 2:40 matinee yesterday. Maybe 20 people? An old couple walked out about an hour in.

[ledfloyd]

Or how Nikole came back and you thought they're gonna recognize each other from when they were kids, but the movie just ends before they figured that out.

Wait, who was Nikole the first time?

[Watashi]

Wait, who was Nikole the first time?

Supposedly she's the same girl that passed Mason the note in class. I don't think that's true.

[number8]

That's the beauty of it. In movies, when you have two characters with the same name, age, and skin color, you're typically meant to draw connections, which is why I was expecting the movie to connect the dots. But that's not the case in real life.

For what it's worth, it's not the same actress apparently.

[dreamdead]

Loved this without reserve until Mason Junior started his junior year, then I started withdrawing a bit. It felt like a return to Slacker's excessive paranoid delusions, where bitching about being anti-whatever undercuts the nuance that had been achieved elsewhere. I realize that this is likely a part of every teenager and that I'm glossing over my own iterations with anti-establishment and -conformity, but Linklater and the cast could have established Mason's reservations about conformity in a more nuanced manner. Hell, the whole photographing of the football scene conveys it all without paranoid annoyance.

Lorelei Linklater kills it. Hawke's solid. I think I'd have liked Arquette to not be so weak and mentally break at the loss of all of her children, but the choices that she and Linklater put her down justify that reaction, even if its slightly overdone.

Need to think on this one more.

[Kurosawa Fan]

It felt very long and tedious to me. Emotionally and visually flat. The protagonist is a blank the whole time, and the movie doesn't delve into his experience in any interesting way; even after three hours of watching him grow up, I felt like I didn't know him more than superficially. The final scene tells us that each moment is important, but none of the moments had any particular weight. The story just runs through them and relies on their "universality". For a Linklater exploration of everyday relationships and experiences, I prefer both Before Sunset and Before Midnight.

Fantastic summation. Tedious is a bit strong, but the film is ridden with cliche moments and characters, and has very little to say about human connection, family, and companionship. I mean, it's one thing to not offer up easy answers, it's another to offer no answers at all. And yet, the film was oddly didactic in small moments, which I don't say as a compliment. The format also did the film no favors when it came to giving depth to any character outside of MJ. They just hover around him like wallflowers. It also had an especially troubling depiction (or lack of depiction) of women. His mother is an intelligent woman who is never shown making an intelligent decision. His sister is a complete blank slate, even though she's in the film quite a bit. The other women barely register such as his girlfriend who sleeps with another guy behind his back and his mom's coworker who basically offers to have sex with him before he's leaving for college. I know the men aren't portrayed in a much more favorable or detailed light, but I can't think of one positive portrayal of a female in the film. Oh, and this has the most embarrassing scene of any film I've seen this year. The Mexican restaurant manager who stops by their table to tell his mother how she changed his life through one comment while he was fixing her septic line.

[dreamdead]

Been thinking about my experience with this one. When I saw it, it was with friends who totally identified with Mason's experience, saying how it felt like Linklater had transplanted their childhood to the screen. And I think the film powerfully captures isolated moments really, really well. The opening years, when Mason's forced to abandon his first house and friends, has such a bittersweet air to it. This power is echoed when Arquette and company abandon husband #2 and the stepchildren--where characters who seemed integral to the story just wash away--it's moments like those that the film's architecture perfectly works.

Where it's odd is how little the Mason and Samantha seem to genuinely speak to their mother. This facet would have afforded a chance to offset KF's critique of the worldview feeling skewed a little too masculine heavy. While I don't feel it's an irredeemable trait, though, it is realistic to note how the Before... series had a female writer who allowed more humanity into a character equally narcissistic and devoted to herself. That sense of grace and calm is something noticeably missing from this film, so that Arquette's character is the one logical choice to anchor a counter-narrative to the template elsewhere presented. I'll grant that this film is principally seen through Mason's eyes and so maybe that moment just can't "naturally" occur, but the fact that Linklater avoids that is a central flaw in a film otherwise generally successful.

[Spinal]

After watching this, I forgive Richard Linklater for Waking Life and all of his other indulgences. Does it work in every single moment? No, but it's hard to nitpick individual scenes when the cumulative experience is so deep, so powerful. Most importantly, it doesn't feel like a gimmick film. It feels like an artist going to extraordinary lengths to use the means necessary to convey specific feelings and emotions. I have to hand it to him. I can't imagine another filmmaker that could have made this film. It may or may not be one of the year's best films. But it's hard to deny it's a singular experience, and far more cohesive than I would have expected.

[Grouchy]

Yeah, this film is something else. It feels like the one Linklater has been building towards during his entire career.

[Pop Trash]

I liked this much better the second time around. I found the alcoholic step-dad to be (intentionally I'm sure) hilarious this time. Him getting angry at the golf game, the 'W' magnet on his refrigerator, "I hate squash!," the casual way the film implies he is one of the liquor store's best customers. Really funny. Arquette's acting didn't bother me nearly as much this time either. I also like how the film echoes back to Waking Life by having Mason being almost an impartial passenger in his own life. He just seems to casually absorb everything that happens to him while everyone else espouses their ideologies towards him.

[Dukefrukem]

That's 3 hours of my life gone.

[Irish]

I admire the daring behind it, but ... Yeah. Melville & KF probably said it best.

For a movie called "Boyhood," with that kid's face on the poster, it's not really about him. It's about the parents, and especially Ethan Hawke (who has an increasing habit of talking like his Before character, who often feels like a stand-in for the director. That little Beatles monologue felt like an outtake from an earlier Linklater film).

I almost threw something at the screen at the end during Arquette's showy monologue/ epiphany. This again felt like the screenwriter/ director talking through his characters. In a better movie, you wouldn't have to spoonfeed the audience the "Is that all there is?" line. We'd get the emotional truth of the moment, or the film, without anyone having to come right out and say what she said.

I admired the stones it took to put the movie together more than I enjoyed the film. It is, on some level, a grand experiment (but also one that's not terribly surprising, since Linklater has been playing around with the nature of time on film since at least Slacker. This is a new arrangement of a number he's been singing for twenty or thirty years.)

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

PS: It's curious to me that, in the same year, we got two movies that share the same concern. Linklater and Nolan are both middle aged men with grown, or growing, children and both of them made movies expressing their anxiety around that.