Anticipating Linklater's "Boyhood"

Before Midnight was so fake that it made MGM look like Cassavetes.

i assume you refer to the MGM that made "22 jump street" :)

Random Harvest starring Melissa Leo and Jonah Hill

but yeah, i found it fake, but i could have been looking at it from the most unflattering angle.

i remember hating richard brody's review when i read it (before having seen the film). it's still stupid and self-regarding in the usual brody way, but i think it was built on an accurate observation that he inflated into a rather misguided attack on "naturalism" (funny from a defender of mumblecore!). the observation being that the muted stylistic approach of the last two "before" films is treated as a guarantor of realism when it isn't really any such thing. the first film is rather more obviously and expressively stylized, and i'd argue that linklater is probably aware of the stylization of the latter two films as well. yet there's still something in brody's basic reaction to the film....

anyway.

(random harvest is a powerful film BTW)

re mumblecore: i see a few critics fawning over joe swanberg's films (smart people like dan sallitt and "smart-set" people like brody) and i want to take a gun to my head. wtf. i 'd rather watch almost any TV drama than a joe swanberg film. i'd watch a marathon of "taxi brooklyn" to avoid seeing another swanberg film.

Have seen two or three Swanberg films, he's OK, at least some of the time.

I agree RL's been overrated of late, but the only 3 films of his I've really liked in the last dozen years are A Scanner Darkly, Me and Orson Welles, and Fast Food Nation.

Holly Willis FC piece on Boyhood:

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/richard-linklater-boyhood

Release dates across the U.S. (scroll down a little):

http://thefilmstage.com/news/find-out-when-and-where-you-can-see-richard-linklaters-boyhood/

Thank you! Going to see it on Saturday...

The thing this reminded me most of all was Marclay's The Clock - films about time passing, and where the content constantly alerts you to the film's actual duration (ie "Oh he's fifteen now, must be about twenty minutes to go").

Film is too long, and the last third is by far the weakest.

Hardly gone to the cinema in the last month - World Cup and all that.

Making up for it, hopefully should see nearly three hours of this and nearly five hours of Norte - The End of History to compensate.

Agreed it was too long. And would directors please stop casting their kids in major roles? The sister's horrendous acting really sticks out. Maybe it was just too overhyped, or the reviewers are falling in love with their own "they grow up so fast" schtick, but I was bored to death, and I love his movies.

Kudos to Patricia Arquette for going zaftig, though--you could hear the anorexic New York audience gasp in horror when she first came on screen

saw this last night, it was singular and great. so much minutiae, so much to watch and look at. emotionally overwhelming in virtually every way.
i could have watched 3 more hours tbh.

i haven't seen the film, but i HAVE read the thread (lol), and i'm probably alone in enjoying the little dustup above about the utility of having the same actor throughout.

lorelai linklater a real highlight of this, the most vibrant part of the first half of the film. so many good lines w/the asshole stepdad.

she kinda disappeared in the second part but you are otm about her humor in the beginning
the blue cup made my heart sink so hard. i knew what was coming.

Lol'd heartily at the scene where she was singing "Ooops I did it again" while beating her little brother up.

(Potentially interesting retromanic thesis on how/if at all the use of songs marks the different years. Generally the tech is more evocative of a particular year)

The songs totally marked the passage of time -- no question about that!

Loved the movie! Some bits seemed unnecessary (condescending plumber "arc" in particular), but so many powerful moments. Lorelei Linklater was great, and pitch-perfect as a sullen teenager. So heartbreaking that you never see their step-siblings again.

The movie really captured the way that kids are completely powerless (and usually mostly-clueless) to the circumstances of their adults in their lives. But also how resilient they are to all of the chaos. Tragic and hopeful at the same time.

the last third is by far the weakest.

Sure, in that life's final third is by far the weakest.

Admittedly, tho, the longer it went the more frustrating it got -- but that played at least in part as a reflection of the now post-pubescent Mason ascribing tentative significance to his own existence, compared to the more fragmented, sensory nature of the earliest years.

Like Tree of Life, it's made by an adult who no matter what he feels about boyhood has mixed opinions about manhood.

Like Tree of Life, it's made by an adult who no matter what he feels about boyhood has mixed opinions about manhood.

― You are exactly why people root for the apes (Eric H.), Tuesday, July 22, 2014 3:54 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just saw the movie last night and I think I might've 'watched' it in a very different light than what has been discussed so far here.

One of my favorite bookends in this movie was the contrast between the ~9 year old Mason having his long hair shorn off at the behest of stepdad 1 and the teenaged Mason blowing off stepdad 2 when he gives Mason shit about the earrings and nail polish. Basically this isn't a particularly queer movie but I am pretty into anything that celebrates resistance to the intergenerational enforcement of masculinity.

Also I was amused at how by the end of the movie Mason had more or less grown up into a rambling, contemplative, slightly out-there Richard Linklater character whose musings in the desert wouldn't have been out of place in Waking Life.

There was some great parts in this...but there was so many cringe inducing moments that made me feel like I was watching an episode of some WB sitcom monstrosity.

The scene where the Latin American comes to the table to "thank" Patricia Arquette for telling him he was "smart enough" and that he should go to college was some truly vile and condescending nonsense.

The third part of the film and the scenes between Mason and his gf was full of horrible acting and felt like I was watching a One Tree Hill/Dawson's Creek B-side.

I could go on but there were many moments that were either just straight up corny and cliche riddled at best or condescending and completely unaware at worst....

It wasn't a bad film by any means but the hype is not justified.

Also, for all of the talk about innovation...I also found it aesthetically very boring and bland.

Yeah the thing with the plumber-then-restaurant-manager was kinda garbage.

But I unreservedly love Teen Feelings as a genre and I have no objections to any of the girlfriend stuff.

For as many plot elements as there are that feel like they were transposed from a much inferior movie, Linklater has a way of presenting them in ways that seem surprising and observational and of-the-moment. Like someone said upthread (I think), the restaurant scene ought to be a Hallmark moment, but Patricia Arquette seems so unmoved by the man's testimonial that you're not even sure she remembers the incident at all. The drunken stepfather does stock villainous things, but then some of his asides emphasize the self-destructive angle, which I wasn't expecting since thru the eyes of a child, he's just being straight up terrifying.

That all said, Tree of Life hit me deeper for sidestepping plot almost entirely.

Lorelai Linklater's character is better than her acting abilities, but she gets better as she gets older. Can't blame the man for only casting one kid to stick it out for 12 years.

I feel like this is the anti-Tree of Life in a lot of ways (visually, for sure, but also anti-memory in a way) but it hit home in the same places for me.

The last third >>>>>first third.

I may be alone, but the actor playing Mason is such a compelling camera subject as he ages: the drawl, reminiscent of Wiley Wiggins, the offhand way in which he lands on one of Linklater's portentous lines. Too many monologues, yes, but high schoolers monologize too, and he knows when to cut

Love the moment when Arquette accepted Hawke's offer of dough. Excellent production design: the genteel poverty of an assistant professor. Neither children nor the movie judge her either.

This was everything the mendacious Before Midnight was supposed to be.

Eric OTM about how the restaurant scene played.

The third part of the film and the scenes between Mason and his gf was full of horrible acting and felt like I was watching a One Tree Hill/Dawson's Creek B-side.

you mean it was a good "Dawson's Creek" episode.

"mendacious"? i mean, jeez, i didn't like it either, but...

I enjoyed this, in particular the sense of how memories and self-narratives are made up of minor moments (not always the landmarks that the mother lists at the end). Agree with everyone else about the hamfisted restaurant scene - I guess the intention was to contrast the fact that kids rarely express explicit gratitude? The daughter did fine with a limited part ("ok in this scene, look glum!"), the son was pretty likeable for a "weird kid" - and way more successful with girls than my friends were.

Biggest laugh in my aisle: "I could go on sabbatical!"

Mystery that bugged me throughout the last 30 minutes (and since): where did Mason go to school in the end?

I don't mind the restaurant scene anymore because Arquette played it well.

it dovetailed with the film's theory that you're most appreciated by people who don't know you well.

http://www.amfm-magazine.com/boyhood-epic-story-in-an-epic-state/

When Mason finally does escape, he ends up on the other side of the state, at some college (possibly UTEP or Sul Ross) driving distance from Big Bend National Park. “He wanted to get as far away from home as possible,” Linklater said, “it’s a long, long way – you’re halfway to LA at that point, but you’re still in Texas.”

Aha, thanks - I thought there might have been something obvious that I didn't pick up on. When he's arriving for the first time there was a sign on one of the buildings but I couldn't make it out.

so basically it was a movie but it took a really long time

otm

i liked it for the nostalgic moments of verisimilitude -- there were definite tics and references that i would not expect to see in a movie unless they were being recorded in secret -- but gawd linklater really only has one idea of male adolescence/youngadulthood doesn't he? there was so much of ol' wiley wiggins in this and i didn't really like dazed and confused either. also a few moments where that dazed and confused era seeped through weirdly, when mason was around wiley's age. and that's juxtaposed with the weird lack of pop culture history throughout, which i always hate about recent-period pieces; aside from samantha singing along with "comfortably numb" and i guess mason's understanding of the beatles everything was kept so current, ignoring how heavy the culture of our elders weighs on us as we grow up.

that wouldn't have stuck out so much if linklater wasn't so insistent on marking time with present pop culture

aside from samantha singing along with "comfortably numb" and i guess mason's understanding of the beatles everything was kept so current, ignoring how heavy the culture of our elders weighs on us as we grow up.

that's precisely what the movie doesn't do!

The scene with the solo Beatles comp played like "Oh, god, another generation corrupted" -- oh, even a post-boomer dad can't resist a comp with solo George.

Friend who I saw this with pointed out that watching Ethan Hawke age was at least as interesting as watching the kid grow up

xp that's like the only thing! and there's no way linklater intended for the scene to be read that way. he's still got ideas about sensitive male authenticity he pushes on everything.

it's interesting that with a film built around pop culture refs we don't really get to know the individual things mason likes as he gets to the age where he'd probably start over-identifying with them. just photography and graffiti and not lacrosse.

the lack of the line "lacrosse players are assholes" broke the verisimilitude for me tbh

eh I've actually known kids his age detached from pop culture; later they learn that this is how they presented themselves.

struck me as a sign of the last third's undercookedness, too many teenage waking life monologues and authority figure lessons, not enough bullshit

wish i had a teacher like mr. terlington in HS though