Anticipating Linklater's "Boyhood"

how comes Ethan Hawke suddenly started dressing like his grandfather in chinos and such?? woulda been more convincing had he kept on wearing 'cool dad' clothes as he got older and older. those suits and stuff really jarred.

My initial reaction to the film was that this was good...has some cringy moments, but not bad and certainly nowhere near amazing.

It seems most on this thread liked it but I hear no one raving that this is a cinematic masterpiece.

So why the unanimous critical rapture ?

We don't write for newspapers?

Movie critics see so much shit that anything remotely good gets extra scrutiny and praise.

it took a really long time

I have been thinking about the film today, and that's a good thing. I thought the ending was great. Not so much the philosophical content--in a way that was almost funny, but a good kind of funny, not so-bad-it's-funny; I was laughing when I thought of how my dad would have reacted to a three-hour movie that ends with Mason's clarifying thought--but just the overall feeling, and the smile on the girl's face. (I was also jealous that I didn't look like Mason--where were all these girls throwing themselves at me when I went through university?)

I was listening to the Wussy album in the car today, and this song felt like it contained some of Boyhood.

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

Actually my audience of Brooklyn elitists laughed initially at the final lines, thinking it "druggy" and then bringing themselves up short when they realized the intent was Serious. These are the type of people I blame for the Before Trilogy Cult.

It did have some drugginess to it, for sure, but I thought it walked right up to the point where you might laugh it, where it could have been something Cheech or Chong would have said, but worked perfectly--as a summation of the film, as perfectly true to the characters, and as just a nice note to go out on. It had a touch of lightness to it (as opposed to, for me, the dreariness of Tree of Life).

Kevin Turan of the LA Times had a nice dissenting opinion review of it recently, but it seems to be behind their paywall. I kind of agree that while I liked it a lot, I don't think it's a great movie or even a top-10 of the year movie. And I can't help but think that if it didn't have its 12-year, same actors thing, it wouldn't be getting all this adulation.

I disagree with most of it -- too many equivocations and apologies.

My initial reaction to the film was that this was good...has some cringy moments, but not bad and certainly nowhere near amazing.

It seems most on this thread liked it but I hear no one raving that this is a cinematic masterpiece.

So why the unanimous critical rapture ?

― oscar, Tuesday, August 5, 2014 7:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because many critics are parents who feel sad about their kids leaving the nest

Pinning down the Boyhood game:

https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/which-astros-game-did-the--boyhood--characters-attend-164003306.html

I may be way off here, but I think the movie may rehabilitate Clemens somewhat in the public eye. Clemens, at this point, has been reduced to a symbol and a caricature. I know as I watched the scene myself, he was just Clemens again--it was the person, and it felt immediate.

― clemenza, Wednesday, August 6, 2014 5:43 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

UPDATE (August 5): Steve from the Astros got back to us after doing some digging and confirmed the above theory. On August 18, 2005, the crew went and shot the game Clemens pitched. The following April, on the 17, Ethan Hawke and the other actors went to the game where Lane homered to left. A big thanks to the Astros for confirming our detective work.

lies, so many lies, simply disgusting

I agree that Turan spends too much time setting up his review, but it felt honest, and I related to some of it (independent of Boyhood itself). Just in terms of ILX, I didn't post much on The Tree of Life, The Master, or The Wolf of Wall Street. I don't enjoy being a contrary voice either. There was a time when I did--I wrote a long fanzine piece in the mid-'90s detailing all the things I didn't like about Pulp Fiction (conceding that I loved some of it--and like Turan, I'm still basically in the same place). I felt like I was absolutely right, and enjoyed railing on about it.

I don't have the energy anymore, and it always does feel a little contrived to me when I'm in that position. I still say my piece, but I try not to belabor the point--it's not like you're going to change the mind of anybody who loved something you hated, and really, why would want to?

they actually shot one pitch per game over the course of an 81 home-game season

I've written more than my share of against the grain reviews and when I was an editor commisioned them, and never with the intention of changing anyone's mind. The point, I think, beyond the pleasure of writing such an appraisal, is to raise questions, examine points missed by others, provoke second and third thoughts. Turan's skittishness was the wrong approach. Just grit your teeth and say what you mean -- don't apologize to readers for not getting it.

I agree with that. I got where he was coming from within a paragraph or two, and he didn't need four more rephrasing the same set-up. I thought his specific objections to the film were well stated, but he also said he liked things about it, and he should have spent some time on that.

shit, I've read a few intelligent demurrals and dismissals on this thread.

my main problem aside from the Obama-sign stuff was that THE INSTANT Drunk Husband #1 is seen in that first classroom scene, everyone can say "Oh there's a dick."

I didn't.

And I think it was nicely done, the way they show her teaching at San Marcos and it's very visible that she's learned from and to some extent adopted his style as a teacher, even as he turned out to be a drunk asshole and she got rid of him as a husband.

Yeah Drunk Husband #1 didn't strike me as immediately dickish

tend to think going out with a student is dickish even if the student is a real adult and not a teenager

Fair point, but I don't think one sees the mom as a fool for not anticipating what kind of dick he'd turn out to be. It's not a "don't open that door you idiot!" horror movie situation.

Similarly, the fact that some of the characters are depicted canvassing for Obama doesn't read, except to a few nutjobs, as evidence of zombification being passed between generations.

In the scene in his classroom, he seemed awkward and maybe a little bland to me, but I didn't foresee that he was going to be this tyrannical drunk, no.

I liked the Obama scene. Nothing particularly to do with Obama, I just thought the way the guy said "Do I look like a Barack Hussein Obama supporter?" was funny. Reminded me of the NWA line, "Do I look like motherfucking role model?"

BTW I am one of those people who thought this was a really, really great movie. Surely the best I've seen this year though tbf I haven't seen many movies this year.

I noticed during Arquette's classroom lecture that she's indirectly responding to husband #1's behaviorist tendencies.

It's not a "don't open that door you idiot!" horror movie situation.

That's exactly what it was for me

I liked the Obama scene. Nothing particularly to do with Obama

yep, you're Canadian

Before the Jim Beam-behind-the-Tide scene Husband #1 came off as bland and overeager, infatuated with the idea that in his own mind he's a good professor: exactly the man whom a woman in Arquette's situation would choose.

I'm still not sure why Arquette then took up with a second (albeit milder) drunk. If the idea is the obvious interpretation, that there was something about her character that sought these men out, that doesn't jibe with Hawke.

(xpost) We're gonna let that one pass.

Professor, yes, was the one case where she seemed to clearly be striving to build a family the responsible way. I read war vet as a backtrack to the same girlish attitudes that paired her with Hawke.

I thought both of them exhibited a certain maturity, integrity and discipline (at first obv) that would make them good stepdads...unlike hawke

there was also a whiff of the shorthand of Maladjusted War Vet that mildly rankled me.

Professor/Drunk Husband's classroom lecture had a I'm-funny-and-hot-shit air that would lead me to demand a return of tuition, or perhaps just get someone to take notes for me in absentia.

you haven't been to college either

I meant if I was going now in the wisdom of middle age obv

idk where yall are getting this "professor seemed cool at first" shit i immediately thought he was presented as sinister and a bit creepy

also lol at "does she seek these men out" wtf literally neither of them presented any sign of alcoholism until post-wedding from what we see, but sure let's find a way to blame her on some level

"obvious interpretation" gtfo

Where'd you get the idea he blamed her?

To choose these two guys doesn't mean she was a masochist

What are you talking about, Zach? If, in a film or a book, a female character becomes involved with two men in a row who turn out to be two versions of the same basic character--one extreme and one mild--of course it's an obvious interpretation that the director or writer might be saying there's something in her character that causes her to do so. If it's a man and the same pattern, same obvious interpretation. That's basic. On top of which, I was questioning the interpretation--pointing out that Ethan Hawke didn't fit the pattern--not endorsing it. A couple of people offered possible explanations that both seemed reasonable. Your indignation's a little misplaced.

quickest explanation: Texas

how in the world does she "seek out" two men who are nothing alike aside from their varying levels of alcoholism when both present themselves as perfectly charming and sensible men with no hints of impending alcoholism until much later in their relationships? how does that work as an analysis of her aside from some weird subconscious drive she has towards traits lurking deep in the depths of men

now i can sort of understand, and i suspect, that linklater was going for some variation of "poor single mothers tend to overlook/ignore early warning signs in their relationships" but your wording was that she "sought out" these men, which puts a bizarre amount of agency on her

If, in a film or a book, a female character becomes involved with two men in a row who turn out to be two versions of the same basic character--one extreme and one mild--of course it's an obvious interpretation that the director or writer might be saying there's something in her character that causes her to do so.

like how is it so easy to put that interpretation on her agency rather than her environment, her context and the opportunities they offer her? mb you are used to books and films that stick characters in a vacuum

If you had another interpretation--and I'm glad you do, and aren't going to try to argue that the similarity is meaningless, or an oversight by the director--then that's all you have to do: state it, without all that "wtf" and "gtfo" nonsense.

both present themselves as perfectly charming and sensible men

I didn't see the alcoholism coming either. But clearly there are people right on this thread who disagree.

i'm sorry i said wtfgtfo

this was very good
it made me anxious and uncomfortable in the first half and i'm trying to understand just why that is.

the whole point of this film is that there's no patterns to life, shit just happens. she ended up with two alcoholics and it could have been better, could have been worse. a lot of people in the world are alcoholics. mason turned out ok and so did she.

Maybe I'm making the mistake of treating it like a conventionally scripted film, where if A and B happen, and they're linked, they must happen for a reason. And it's not that kind of film, so maybe there's something to your randomness argument.

There was one part that really underscored for me how you're conditioned to expect certain things in movies, and Boyhood avoids that. (I'm not claiming it's revolutionary or anything; in general, good films avoid that.) It was the scene where Mason and his friend were sitting around with the high school guys, karate-kicking the planks and telling lies about all the girls they'd slept with. Towards the end, when his friend stood up to hold a board, he was positioned right in front of that sharp projectile already lodged into the wall. I instantaneously heard murmuring in the theatre where I saw it--"Oh no, there's going to be an awful accident here." That was my first reaction too; I just expect those things in movies. Of course nothing happens, and it just moves on to the next scene.

haha yeah I forgot about that scene and had the same reaction