Linklater's Boyhood...

Thanks for posting this. I'm looking forward to seeing it soon.

I don't take critical reviews as the authority for most movies, but this has unanimous thumbs up and heaps of acclaim as an instant Americana classic
 
Well, I just saw it. And I'm in literal shock...because I thought it was absolutely incredibly mediocre.

There were some nice performances. Patricia Arquette was good, not great. And Ethan Hawke is solid. The kid that plays the "boy" Marcus was good too. I didn't think any performance was particularly transcendent. The filming of the movie over 12 years with the same actors brought some bit of extra perspective than normal for a generational film, but that ultimately fails, IMHO, to lift up the movie which is burdened by a flat screenplay.

I love Linklater, and I'm not biased against open/experimental/not traditional plots. Great films, art house or otherwise, do fine challenging the idea of regular plots. I wasn't expecting one here.

But here's the problem, there's enough conflict, e.g. absent father, struggles and bad choices of a single mother, a boy challenged with becoming a man, to suggest to the audience that a story arc is happening. It gives you that expectation. And then after 2 1/2 hours, inexplicably (with a very minor exception to Hawke's character) everyone character has zero character arc. It's like Bizzaro Chekov wrote the screenplay.

Every major character, including Mason the boy, doesn't seem to have learned a single thing from their environment, their choices, or relationships. To top it off, I found all the characters very unsympathetic and vapidly self-involved. While not ideal, it's okay to have unsympathetic protagonists...but there better be some damm good drama. And there was none here.

I can't comprehend how this is getting superlative reviews and is 100% of the tomato meter.

Below is the second half of a very well written dissenting critique of the movie from a Linlakter fan that captures almost every disappointment about the film that I shared with my GF as we were driving away. Read her whole review here.

In reply to:
 
We watched it last night. I really liked it. It was fascinating to see the characters truly aging within the narrative. I really got the sense of these kids growing up right in front me over a 2.5 hour period. The main character, Mason, was just so good in my opinion.

Without spoiling anything, there’s a terrific touching scene with a restaurant manager that refers back to an earlier (several years) moment with Mason’s mom. It was a nice touch.
 
Something I ran across about Boyhood tonight on the Alcalde site, with a relevant quote from David Edelstein:

“I’m not saying Boyhood is the greatest film I’ve ever seen, but I’m thinking there’s my life before I saw it and my life now, and it’s different,” David Edelstein wrote in New York magazine. “I know movies can do something that just last week I didn’t. They can make time visible.”

Photo Essay about the film from Boyhood: Twelve Years on Film, a coffee-table book of photographs and essays by Matt Lankes recently published by UT Press.

alcalde.texasexes.org/boyhood

utexaspress.com/index.php/books/lanboy
 
UT Cheerleader from the Alcalde site.

UT-Cheerleader-Postcard-600dpi.jpg
 
it reminded me of Francois Truffaut's Antoine Donel movies except Truffaunt followed his kid character in four or five films over 20 years and Linklater did it in one film that he made up as he went along.

there is no narrative arc in a sense because the film ends with the kid at age 18 going off to college. That is, he is starting his adult life.
I saw the film as a thought line about the various factors that play a part in getting one ready to live one's life, not as a completed story with beginning middle and end. The story is just beginning.

Linklater's european films with Hawke and Delpy are now three in number and follow the characters from early 20s to their forties. There is a lot of rumination in each and a sort of conclusion to them. Maybe he will follow this kid as he moves along in life. But, the film is titled Boyhood and that is what it is about.

I almost transfered to the school Coltrane started out with when I was 21 but instead went to UT. Forty years later I still wonder about the life arc if I had hitch hiked there instead of to Austin. He made his choice based on wanting to get away from his family so he would have some breathing room. That is an interesting basis for such an important decision and gives room for thought about whether it is a good idea or whether it will work out for him. If it doesn't, he gets some room for thought about significant wrong turns based on misjudging a situation.

I guess what I liked most was the many turns taken in this family by its various members and how they played out on the lives of others as well as themselves. For us navel gazers, it was a great film and one that will hover for a considerable while in my opinion. The French still honor The 400 Blows for what Truffaut suggested about childhood.
 
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