Anticipating Linklater's "Boyhood"

You're one of many who've been angered by that awful, awful scene.

this felt like a lost opportunity to make a really good/great film. the kid - and rest of the cast to be honest, espec for me for some reason ethan hawke - aging was the best part of the film, shame that despite having the inspiration to innovate in that way the other things that many other films have that make them worth watching were conspicuously absent.

Finally saw this yesterday. I really loved it!

this felt like a lost opportunity to make a really good/great film. the kid - and rest of the cast to be honest, espec for me for some reason ethan hawke - aging was the best part of the film, shame that despite having the inspiration to innovate in that way the other things that many other films have that make them worth watching were conspicuously absent.
--Rave Van Donk (jim in glasgow)

Exactly how I felt. One trick Dawson's Creek episode. Schmaltz.

I hadn't paid attention to any of the criticism/promo/hype and didn't even know about the 'gimmick' going in; I just knew it was the most recent Linklater. I just loved the dialogue, the pacing and space. Yeah, 'nothing happens' and the big dramatic moments and conflicts are not shown: that's often the point with Linklater. (So criticizing it as 'schmaltz' or comparing it to a teen drama seems v off the mark to me.)

i watched this, it was really great!

funny how just like the ~vibe~ did make me think fondly of dazed & confused

yep, this

Writer Joyce Carol Oates tweeted her support, saying: "It is rare that a film so mimics the rhythms and texture of actual life as Boyhood. Such seeming spontaneity is a very high art."[42]

Yeah, that's a quality I like about both movies.

so i really liked this

a few thoughts i had:

- i had no idea that the actress playing sam was linklater's daughter until afterwards. i thought she was great and was one of the highlights of the movie for me. i have two sons but i kept thinking "wow sam is so cool throughout this whole movie, i wish i had a daughter too", she just had so many great scenes and was such a smart and often hilarious character, i wish she was in the movie more. she was the anchor of the movie for me especially in the first third when mason doesn't even really say much at all. the "oops i did it again" routine at the start of the film had my wife and i lolling so hard.

- i was never really bored at all. i easily could've watched another few hours. i loved how the transitions and passages in time were filmed, just a slight detail like someone's haircut letting you know time has passed.

- interesting to read this thread w/ all the varying opinions about mason's philosophical monologues and rambling "deep opinions". i fucking loved them tbh, mostly because i used to say that shit all the time and i thought linklater portrayed them with such compassion and empathy. we aren't supposed to think "wow mason is so profound, his thoughts are blowing my mind", we are supposed to be reminded of how heavy and profound these thoughts feel for a teenager. i think linklater is really gifted at writing for these types of teenagers, not all teens are like that obviously but for teens who were like me and felt a little outsidery and reflective and maybe a little too convinced about how deep we are, he is great at that. like that last scene at big bend when they are stoned, i definitely felt like that "profound moment" he shares with that girl about how the moment seizing us was portrayed perfectly -- yes that can be a powerful realization but they are also so clearly stoned so we can both laugh at and deeply appreciate the stoner wisdom on display. i don't know, i was a stoner teen too and i totally identified with that and thought it was hilarious and meaningful at the same time.

- schlump and others otm about him being a little remniscient of wiley wiggins! i thought that too. i also loved wiley wiggins.

- a few people mentioned above how they were a little soured on mason's good looks and luck with girls. i also thought he was good looking too but at the same i was well aware that for much of his teen years he is greasy and has zits and bad facial hair and is a little awkward, i don't know it seemed real to me. he was like a lot of kids i knew growing up who weren't jocks or super popular but were into skateboarding and were a little alternative and still had a lot of friends.

- i haven't spent much time in texas, only a little, but i felt like linklater's love and appreciation for texas was very present throughout and i dug that. the film had a strong sense of place i thought.

good points all, bud

I think about this movie a lot actually. For some reason there are a couple of scenes that randomly pop into my mind all the time -- the scene where the photography teacher lectures him about hard work, and the scene either at the end or close to the end where they hike in the canyon.

I would like to see it again but feel like it could use another big screen viewing. Even though it's a *small movie* in certain senses, there's something about the immersiveness of the large screen that works well for this film.

yea i wish i saw it in the theater, in one go. that said i noticed these comments from stilladvance earlier:

and boyhood is very episodic. it could have worked well as something like a web series.

― StillAdvance, Friday, January 23, 2015 7:06 AM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

theres something about boyhood that does seem quite web-y actually, its lightness/lack of weight, and how easy it is to watch, how it doesnt really require too much commitment from the viewer.

― StillAdvance, Friday, January 23, 2015 7:10 AM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree w/ all this! actually since we are super busy and sleep-deprived from our two young boys we had to watch this movie in short installments over the course of a few days. it worked really well that i thought.

I want to see it again, def. I watched Reality Bites on the weekend & his Boyhood dad feels a bit like grown up Troy when I think back on it :)

It had a "lightness" but there was always the looming threat of something traumatic on the horizon. Refreshing that it never really went there.

a few other thoughts:

- my wife and i thought a lot about ethan hawke's transformation -- selling the cool car, getting a minivan, marrying a square-ish girl from a texan christian family, not scoffing too much at the bible and church, growing the moustache. with the rest of the alcoholic husbands throughout the movie, we thought that maybe hawke was once and alcoholic too and maybe in the background was doing work to get sober and starting a new christian life was part of that. there seemed to be a lot of focus on people pouring drinks at mason's graduation party and we noticed hawke's character was drinking water so we were convinced of this. but then that scene when he is talking to mason at the music club about mason's ex-girlfriend he is casually enjoying a beer, so that was it for our theory i guess. we were wrong. still that transformation was very interesting to watch.

- like others i really hated the restaurant scene with the mexican guy. as an hispanic i was just weirded out seeing this guy thank this white woman and her white family for changing his life based on one totally obvious piece of advice ("go to school"!!!) that would occur to most people thinking about striving for success. it was the one sour moment for me in the film and i thought it was totally unnecessary. then my wife pointed out that there was something incongruous about that advice, about how yea the mom went through night school and worked hard for a career but at the same time she seemed unsatisfied and restless throughout her life and never quite found stability or satisfaction.

- i thought it was a little strange that mason drove by himself to his first year at college -- that seems so far outside the norm for most college kids and their families but i guess it really wasn't far off for mason's character and his mom's character. sam and mason seemed very independent throughout the film and their mom seemed mostly hands off (e.g. it was the stepfather that was pissed that mason would come home later, not the mom, she didn't care much about him getting high or drinking).

- anyways i thought the first day at college thing was done so perfectly. like this is such a huge thing to get to college on your first day and realize "i can do whatever the fuck i want." sure, i can eat some pot brownies and skip this orientation thing to go hiking with these people i just met, that sounds great. i didn't have quite a cool experience as mason on my first day at college but i totally identified with that sense of freedom and i thought linklater did a good job conveying that freedom and openness.

yeah I also had an almost movie-like skip orientation moment. It was literally me, my roommate, and my roommate's cool friend (who I wound up close friends with) about to start an orientation sack race, looking at each other, and saying "Let's get the fuck out of here." Unfortunately it declined from there and consisted mostly of us trying and failing to get into frat parties.

marcos on at least ten different marks

they should have called this "boring white people over time"

id def of seen it sooner if that was the title

they should have called this "boring white people over time"

― chaki (kurt schwitterz), Friday, August 7, 2015 11:27 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love how that title works on two levels

i finally saw hoop dreams and can report that boyhood is basically like a white hoop dreams, though lamer.

Just rewatched Hoop Dreams last week. (I was thinking of showing it to my grade 6 class--once I got up to the fifth or sixth thing I was going to need to mute, I abandoned the idea.)

I can see the comparison. Love both films.

Arthur's mom getting her nursing certification = Mason's mom going back to school. Films very much about motherhood, too (and fatherhood, though not as much).

the wrong one won the oscar.

Yes, Hoop Dreams was robbed of the Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role Oscar 20-odd years ago.

lol

lol, that should have read AN oscar

I just watched this for the first time the other day and loved it. It so vividly captures how childhood is a prison. Wish the acting was better all around - Ellar is OK, Lorelai is very good, main adult players are all great, but a lot of the kids & people who appear in a scene or two are rough. Loved all the loose ends - the leering restaurant manager, the step-kids, the second stepdad appearing in only three scenes - and the elision of the everyday over big, obvious moments. I like Linklater but I'm not the biggest fan, I find him kind of dull or "simple" for lack of a better word, and whatever bugs or disappoints me about him is all in that last scene and the final lines of the movie, which he wrote back in 2002. But good lord I'm glad Terrence Malick had nothing to do with this. I remember reading about it in ~2004 and being convinced that someone crucial would die before completion. I wasn't seeing movies so much when it finally came out in 2014 and now it's been four years and I've only just gotten around to it. Easily Linklater's best. Don't know why people love Dazed and Confused so much.

The plumber reappearing after all those years was the only completely ridiculous and unbelievably stupid and tone deaf moment of the movie. Felt like a commercial for DeVry University.

I think ultimately the best thing about this is how much of an ambitious undertaking it was and how mild and ordinary the result was.

Never been a Linklater superfan, but find myself appreciating him more with age.

https://www.metacritic.com/browse/movies/score/metascore/all/filtered

The Top 5 rated films of all time:

Citizen Kane
Godfather
Rear Window
Casablanca
Boyhood

Science!

I don't know if this was ever posted on ILX--don't see anything on this thread, and nothing comes up when I search the filmmaker's name. I'd never seen it till it turned up on my FB wall today. Looks like he beat Boyhood by about 15 years (and I know there are the Brown sisters, who got their photograph taken every year for four decades).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfqpqiTMUEg