Anticipating Linklater's "Boyhood"

An awkward compromise between dramatic storytelling and omniscient observing.

I don't know if this was Linklater's intention at all, but I saw the film as being about the narrative that everyone imposes on their own life.

i expected to find this movie hugely moving no matter what, just because at the start of the movie the kid is only a little older than my son is right now, so the idea of following a kid from that age to 18...

Yeah me too. I did find some of it very true-to-life (kids fighting scenes, the sort-of wannabe profundity of teenage Mason), but never really got moved in the way I thought I would. OTOH, broke into tears while watching the original Muppet Movie on Saturday (at the Castro theater) with my boys.

There was definitely something interesting going on with all those moments of tension -- the board doesn't break in the kid's face, the texting while driving doesn't cause an accident, the second stepdad gets a little menacing but not violent, otoh the first stepdad does get violent. I felt like there was something there maybe about randomness/chaos theory, the way each moment has the potential to lead to multiple outcomes. Most dangerous moments don't lead to harm, a few do.

I also thought the kid's passivity was not only relatable but made sense as a response to his life -- he was someone who had learned to go with the flow because so much was out of his hands.

the overall experience of this film outweighed any particular flaws

i guess i had the opposite reaction, my general boredom outweighed the mildly charming or moving moments

i mean there's no way that i actively disliked most of this movie, it's too good-natured and the actors too affable for that. but given all the accolades i think it's understandable that i expected a lot more. or... actually... i didn't expect a lot more, necessarily. i got more or less what i actually expected. but the critics really seem to be reviewing some other, much more achieved, film.

the last few music cues were pretty overbearing, i thought

in general i thought that the last 45(?) minutes betrayed the film's concept, at least what i understand to be its concept, in that the dialogue was constantly circling around questions of life's meaning... and of the changes that were taking place and were about to take place in mason's life. it felt like a very self-conscious, and very conventional (and tedious!) coming-of-age film. something a little more random, stranger, and/or less forthcoming would have been more interesting.

i dunno, i guess my general feeling is that good intentions only get you so far, and this film was running mostly on good intentions. :(

and honestly i've been kind of revising my opinion of linklater's films lately and this one doesn't help matters. the only one i really like anymore is slacker, and maybe i'll keep the torch burning for before sunrise. but i'm scared to revisit it.

I liked Arquette a lot, in part because the disappearance of intimate moments with the kids in the middle stretch were a result of the movie's shift in pod to Mason, so we see her through his eyes as a woman who by the time of her second marriage is good at her job, confident, and an excellent host. That's why her bitter confession in the last 15 minutes had more power for me. For about an hour we've thought she'd found fulfillment beyond her children.

*shift in pov

i think that's really otm and also what made my heart break for my many mom friends

Yeah, I'm a sucker for "Is That All There Is" moments.

me too

hopefully she'll spend the rest of her life breaking out the booze and having a ball

My wife and I had differing reactions to that moment, she was like "this is sad and tragic, she didn't find a companion and wound up alone in spite of her best efforts" I was more like "this is how she feels atm because her kids are leaving but she still has healthy life ahead of her, and we all die alone anyway." Neither seems "wrong."

tough but fair, salud

Hold up. You told your wife "we all die alone anyway"?!

lol yeah, it's no darker than the stuff she says

jeez Eric i thought you liked the Addams family

the first drunk dad was fine bc believe it or not over the course of 12 years a kid will often have to deal with one or two straight up villains in their lives and sometimes (against the notions of a lot of quiet, nothing-happens cinema), excitement (the bad kind) happens. also i don't understand the urges people have to making mason's story more indicative of what's "normal". sure, keep the era and cultural cues around him normalized for common experiences (i don't really like that either) but there's no reason for that to bleed into his individual story, when individual stories never actually reflect ultimate, lowest common denominator normalcy and it'd be creepy if linklater was going for such universality

also youth trauma is not "mythologized" get that shit out of this thread

Sorry I think "mythologized" is not really the right word for what I'm talking about. More like making certain "traumas" central to the childhood narrative, as though all people are shaped primarily by the relative presence or absence of "trauma" in their childhoods, as though the defining categories of person are "person whose parents divorced" and "person whose parents did not divorce" or "person whose parent hit them" and "person whose parent did not hit them."

I went into this movie with excitement, which I've never had with a Linklater film. And even with shared childhood experiences, drunks and abuse, for some reason I wasn't moved by much. I don't know why. It was a nice movie.

What is Boyhood?

There are nods to Linklater’s previous films dropped in for fun (David Blackwell reprises his role as the liquor store clerk who sold Wiley Wiggins’ Mitch a sixer in Dazed and Confused), but it’s the feeling that Boyhood functions as part-autobiography that’s most intriguing. Linklater was born in Houston and raised in a lower-middle-class environment by a single mom (who was surely the model for Arquette’s Olivia), and the economic constraints of the family’s living situation that we see in the film are depicted in a way that seems to come from first-hand experience. Beyond that, Linklater has remarked that specific scenes—such as when Mason Jr. digs up a bird that he buried a few days earlier to see how it’s decomposing—are recollections from his own childhood. Mason Jr.’s development as a photographer, however, is distinct from Linklater’s trajectory as a high-school baseball prodigy: if the film were strict autobiography, Ellar Coltrane’s character would have evolved into a jock who goes to college on a sports scholarship.

http://cinema-scope.com/features/boyhood/

I was hedging on seeing Boyhood a second time--I got through it once and liked it, and thought I might be pushing my luck--but I did tonight and I’m really glad. Removed from all the build-up, and from sitting there the first time measuring it against whatever masterpiece I thought it was supposed to be, I just found myself appreciating the many great moments (not a detached appreciation, though; I was very moved at times). I won’t make a long list. My favourite would be a half-minute probably no one else would even notice: Mason and girlfriend leaving the late-night restaurant as Yo La Tengo’s “I’ll Be Around” plays.

There was still the occasional thing here and there that bothered or puzzled me, but not much. I’ll stand by something I wrote earlier: Patricia Arquette breaking down crying after Mason shrugs off the photo is exceptional, and what she goes on to say by way of explanation is not necessary.

One thing I like much more than other people on this thread is the scene in the restaurant where the guy thanks Arquette for changing his life. I think it’s an important scene. In a way, the film is much crueler to Arquette than Hawke; his second marriage is a dream, he’s given that scene where he and his new wife and the kids all sing together--domestic tranquility--and by the end of the film, when he talks to Mason about Mason’s break-up, he’s like a font of easy-going wisdom. Arquette, meanwhile, is always scrambling around, and she doesn’t get a whole lot of sustenance from the two kids. The guy in the restaurant is the moment where someone really stops and appreciates her. What he says to the kids--“Listen to her, she’s a smart lady”--is a great, necessary moment.

And the ending--the sustained last shot after "It's like it's always right now" (Google autocomplete already kicks in if you go to check that)--is as good as it gets.

I had a long post about this but ILX ate it for some reason. So I'll just say I liked this; drunk dad was too hammy and a big overactor though.

nice post clemenza

I had a long post about this but ILX ate it for some reason. So I'll just say I liked this; drunk dad was too hammy and a big overactor though.

― akm, Monday, 8 September 2014 22:55 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no way dude, his Charades game was next level

couldn't figure out why i felt differently from everyone else re: arquette/restaurant scene till clemenza nailed it just now, kudos

Thanks, schlump and gr8080.

Arquette had such a look of gratitude when the restaurant guy says what he says, and she has it again (though a little more ambiguous--there's a trace of "You're telling me this now?") when Hawke thanks her at Mason's graduation party; she really is overlooked by almost everyone in her life.

Something else debated earlier: whether or not the drunken father's eventual behavior is telegraphed immediately. Again, I don't think there's any indication in his first scene at the university: the worst you can say is that he's bland and kind of full of himself. It's the next scene, where he seems a little too sharp at the restaurant about his son's unfinished homework, that a red flag is thrown up. (But it's not a straight line from there--in the charades scene, he's a good guy again.)

she really is overlooked by almost everyone in her life

this point was not lost on me btw
i didn't type it out bc it was too depressing (and i thought clear?!) but yeah

Arquette had such a look of gratitude when the restaurant guy says what he says

I like your read of the scene and all, but I did not get that from Arquette at all.

To me it felt like a mix of gratitude and surprise/shock. The one thing I'll say is that I think it's a film that deserves a second look; felt I got much more out of it the second time. (The three hours went by unusually quickly, too.)

Arquette had such a look of gratitude when the restaurant guy says what he says

I'm with Eric, it was more like "Who IS this guy?"

Patricia Arquette breaking down crying after Mason shrugs off the photo is exceptional, and what she goes on to say by way of explanation is not necessary.

This doesn't make any sense to me either; words are necessary sometimes, and her dialogue is what reveals the point of her reaction and what the writer and actor intend (if I'm correctly assuming you wouldn't have gotten "Mom realizes she will die alone" from the crying).

I'm with Eric, it was more like "Who IS this guy?"

It's possible to think both: "Wow, that's sweet. Who IS this guy?"

if I'm correctly assuming you wouldn't have gotten "Mom realizes she will die alone" from the crying

I might have, I might not have. I prefer it that way. (To use an exaggerated example, Stanley Kramer always tells me exactly what to think.)

I'd have to look at it a third time to be sure--I'd never even considered the other possibility--but to me it seemed clear that Arquette knew who the restaurant guy was.

Because she's a teacher and she remembers people!! It's a job skill. Her transformation from student to teacher was rly poignant IMO.

I mean, I sometimes have a hard time remembering students when they come up to me five years after they've left my school--sometimes just the name, but sometimes who it even is--but there you're talking about people I knew when they where 12 or 13 who are now 18; the change is sometimes incredible. I thought the restaurant guy looked more or less the same as when he was working on Arquette's house.

For the record, she didn't teach that guy for an entire year. More like she said two sentences to him while standing outside her house.

That's all we see, but fair point--we don't really know how long he's been doing work for her. Could be a few weeks, but maybe it was just one afternoon.

i really don't think they showed her advising a guy to go to school and then showed him thanking her for advising her to point out that she DIDN'T remember him

this is a richard linklater movie not a todd solondz movie

it was part of the whole "belated appreciation of mom" element of the last part of the film, and it resonated for me

i really enjoyed the film, and enough rang true that i don't want to critique the parts where i'm not in a position to say whether it did (i.e. mom's bad boyfriends). But I will say I felt less and less sympathy for the guy as he became more and more of a babe magnet.

Like, when his roommate shows up with two models and mushrooms ON THE FIRST DAY OF COLLEGE, he could have been shot in the head and i'd have been like, "welp, he had a good run...guess heaven needed an ethan hawke jr...lets get dinner"

i think linklater was totally aware of that though, based on hawke's reaction to the break-up

I know! But it isn't absurd to think she might have remembered him bc they had a meaningful interaction.

Todd Solondz's Bernie might've been good.

ll you were x-posting to eric, right? cuz i'm definitely on Team Mom Recognized Waiter (at least by story, if not on sight).

as a teacher myself who also sometimes forgets students I learned it takes a while to develop the public face when a stranger approaches and praises me; Arquette captured that awkwardness.

i'm definitely on Team Mom Recognized Waiter

let's have a softball game

as a teacher myself who also sometimes forgets students I learned it takes a while to develop the public face when a stranger approaches and praises me; Arquette captured that awkwardness.

otm. my mom was a prof and used to laugh about these kinds of public interactions. If anything I think she'd be more apt to remember this guy's story than she would a student she didn't have much personal interaction with.

otherwise the implication would be that arquette was blithely going around pitching night school to everyone she meets, and i don't think that was the intended takeaway