Now that awards season has begun in the US, some thoughts on the wonderful ‘Boyhood’, an Oscar frontrunner.
In the Before movies, Richard Linklater’s signature trope (if you want to call it that) was the walk-and-talk. The couple kept walking, the couple kept talking. And at some point, I was reminded of how Woody Allen likes to do the same thing. Almost every film of his has a walk-and-talk – and when I made this weird connection, I also began to think about how similar Allen and Linklater are in some ways. Both make human-sized movies, targeted at adults. Both have figured out a way to do their own thing and – more importantly – keep doing their own thing. Both have fashioned enviably long-lasting careers, with what appears to be unlimited creative freedom, in an industry that’s grown increasingly infantile. Both adore actors and write great parts for them. And both have their share of hits and misses, and because the hits are so good, it’s easy to overlook the misses.
Linklater’s latest film, Boyhood is most definitely a hit, right from the opening scene. It’s Aspiration Day at school. The sky is a clear blue. The grass is a bright green. There’s a boy lying on that grass, staring at the sky. The boy is Mason, and it’s the journey of his life – moments from his boyhood to adulthood, filmed over 12 years – that we’re setting out on. His mother Olivia (who’s separated from Mason Sr.) comes to pick him up. In the car, we learn that she’s had a chat with his teacher, who’s complained to her about Mason ruining a pencil sharpener by putting rocks into it. Olivia asks Mason why he did this, and the boy says he wanted to sharpen rocks. Olivia asks him what he will do with sharpened rocks. She has the kind of smile that suggests she’s amused. She probably regards this as a silly antic. We are primed, too, for a bit of lightheartedness. We think Mason will say something “cute” and make us laugh at the darnedest things that kids say. And then the boy says he wanted to make arrowheads.
Suddenly, the mother is looking at him differently. And we are looking at him differently. So it was not something foolish, after all. At least, there’s some kiddie-sized logic in this act – after all, if a blunt pencil can go into a sharpener and come out with a sharp tip, why not blunt rocks? Boyhood is filled with moments like this, moments that make you look at life just a little differently. I expected the film to be like the Before movies or like Michael Apted’s Up series or like Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel episodes (which, like Boyhood, used the same actor to chart the story of a fictional character over decades) – but despite a similar preoccupation with the passage of time in a life (or lives), Boyhood is a different beast. It’s filled with “nothing really happens” moments – Mason plays video games; his sister does homework; they go to buy the new Harry Potter book; the family plays Charades; Mason Sr. takes them bowling; Mason has sex; Mason Sr. sings; Mason’s boss screams at him; Olivia sells her house. But these moments aren’t “dramatic,” in the sense that they aren’t a result of the previous scenes and they don’t lead into the next scene. They’re just moments. They’re just there. They just happen. Time just happens.
Most films – most dramas, at any rate – are in the business of manipulating time. This episode, which isn’t important, is condensed. That one, which has the potential to affect the audience, is expanded. Time, in Boyhood, isn’t measured out. It just… flows. And the evidence is in the utterly ordinary milestones – a voice that’s just a shade deeper; a haircut that’s just a little different; a frame that’s just a little taller; thoughts that are just a tad more philosophical. (You can easily see Mason, who’s a “creative”-type, growing up to be the character Hawke played in the Before films.) And these moments are filmed in a style that’s equally ordinary, a fly-on-the-wall style, without a background score.
All this might suggest a documentary, but Boyhood isn’t that either. There’s, at times, a sense of scripted drama, especially in the melodramatic passages (melodramatic only in content, not in tone) that describe the domestic life of Olivia and her second husband, an abusive, alcoholic teacher. (He’s one of those Gothic monsters whose behaviour could have shaped any of Tennessee Williams’s sensitive young men.) So in one sense, this is a “plotted” film, woven around various “episodes” in the story of a boy growing up. And yet, the film doesn’t give us the closure we expect from scripted drama. The “arcs” aren’t tidily resolved. Mason and his sister become close with their stepdad’s kids and when Olivia yanks them away and leaves her husband, Mason complains that they won’t see those kids again – and they don’t. There’s no happy reunion, a few months or years later, waiting around the corner. Or you think that, when Mason’s Sr.’s second wife turns out to be religious, there will be some kind of friction when the kids ask him, “You’re not becoming one of those ‘God people’, are you Dad?” The storm isn’t even allowed to gather. The wife, seated at a distance, simply says, “I can hear you.” She laughs. So do we. Or you think that Mason Sr. is simply teasing his son when he says he’s sold the car he promised to give Mason one day. You think that, when the big birthday scene arrives, one of the gifts will be a set of car keys. But that car is gone. People make promises they can’t (or won’t, or don’t remember to) keep, and that doesn’t make them bad people – just people.
And real people. Boyhood comes closer than most films to showing us that the way forward with adult-oriented drama may be just to remove the… drama. Early on, we get a scene where Mason Sr. and Olivia have an argument – but we don’t hear the argument. We barely even see it. Instead of heated lines and impassioned performances, we just see – from the viewpoint of the kids inside the house – Mason Sr. and Olivia gesticulating and talking outside. But over time, there’s a sense of softening. Mason Sr. and Olivia seem to have learnt to coexist – and then we discover that seem is the operative word. At Mason’s graduation party, Mason Sr. pulls out his wallet to offer some money to Olivia. She doesn’t say anything, but her face is a sight to behold, a tight lid over a thousand questions, beginning with “Where were you when the kids were younger and I didn’t have a steady job and we really needed money?” At times like these, the title feels almost constrained. This is as much Mason’s film as it is Olivia’s or Mason Sr.’s. It could easily have been called Peoplehood.
Or Adulthood. Most of my epiphanic moments from the film came from watching Ethan Hawke as Mason Sr., who comes off, at first, like a deadbeat dad but slowly becomes the film’s most affecting character. Hawke, to those of my generation, has always been one of us – in the sense that he seemed to be in school (in Dead Poets Society) round about the time we were in school. At that time, I too thought, like the Hawke character did, that everything inside me was worthless and embarrassing. I don’t want to get too much into this now, but to see Hawke age here, and reach a point where his temples are grey – I was in tears. Suddenly, this wasn’t Mason’s story or Mason Sr.’s story but my story – at least, it could have been my story. That cliché about the universality of some art… sometimes it’s not such a cliché after all. Mason Sr., unfortunately, gets saddled with the film’s sole false note, a kind of “summing up” scene when his son asks him what the point of all this is. Suddenly, you sense an attempt to tether a free-floating film. But luckily, the moment doesn’t linger. The narrative loosens up again, aware that there really is no point. We just keep going till we can.
Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2014 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Devarsi Ghosh
December 5, 2014
@brangan Did you realize this was a close to 3 hour film while watching it? For me, when it ended I was like “Whoa, that was fast. Just ninety mins, I wish this went on longer” and I later got to know it was 2 hr 45 min movie.
Also, Boyhood is bagging Best Film at The Oscars. For sure.
LikeLike
Nidhi
December 5, 2014
Strange. The one moment that brought tears to my eyes was Olivia crying over her empty nest. I’m not married or have kids yet, but watching her age over the period of the film was kinda profound. I thought the movie could have been called ‘Single motherhood’.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ramya
December 6, 2014
A beautiful review for a thoughtful, contemplative movie.
I have to admit that this free-flowing, “nothing happens” format took some getting used. For example, I kept expecting for quite a while that the step-siblings would somehow turn up in the future, before finally making my peace with the fact that they wouldn’t.
Like Nidhi above, the part that moved me the most was Olivia crying when Mason leaves. The whole “I thought there would be more” sense she feels, it just made me incredibly sad.
LikeLiked by 1 person
KaaviyaThalagani
December 6, 2014
Surprised how similar I felt about the Ethan Hawke character, and the sudden sense of closure.
The way you captured the idea of real people in your writing through these indivuals is quite beautiful.
However, what I didn’t see come through in the film was the very idea of time that permeated throughout. I felt that it is these beautifully scripted standalone moments that drive this film and lend it its gravitas but what I don’t understand is this. Why wait 12years with the same cast if the journey was never really captured? Or showcased with the same mature subtlety that these moments are?
Yes, we saw life a little differently through a subtle lens. But at the cost of what? The meat in that journey was just..absent. The growth was physical, the relationships on screen were as fluid as ever. But this is when the actors take over completely, over 12 years of THEIR time.
The characters however seemed come to a halt. Towards the end except for the “Ethan Hawke” character, we stop looking at these characters altogether and just these performances. The disjoint was quite overwhelming and that defeats the purpose of using the same actors over this large period of time. You start paying attention more towards their baggage and that brings forth an unintended kind of connection that has to do only with the actor and never the character.
A calculated change in makeup or a different cast could have brought the same level of emotions that the film deals with. An example of this, though a little more dramatic in constrast to the dramatic void in this film would be the transformation of the Madhavan character in Kannathil Muthamittal.
There the character’s journey and transformation spoke volumes with respect to the full growth of his child and how her presence changed him, although filmed through a much lesser passage of time.
The film is an outstanding experiment but hardly the subtle, real and grounded cinematic triumph of these lead characters that this amount of time warranted.
LikeLike
venkatesh
December 6, 2014
I saw this movie of all places on the plane next to sleeping, eating, living passengers and it just seemed like an extension of any one of those. This could be happening to any one of us.
LikeLike
pradyumnamukundan
December 6, 2014
Seen this? 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Vishak Bharadwaj
December 6, 2014
Mr. Linklater films most of “Before Sunset” with the shot that has been his signature since he emerged with “Slacker” in 1991: the camera precedes the characters as they walk, looking back and holding them in a loose two-shot as they talk and react to each other. Only when the action becomes stationary, as when they stop at a cafe or visit Celine’s apartment near the end, does Mr. Linklater introduce the alternating, over-the-shoulder close-ups that most directors would use to film dialogue. It’s a smart, unobtrusive stylistic choice that suggests Jesse and Celine are truly together only when they’re in motion, moving through life rather than trying to seize and stabilize it. There’s not much else in American filmmaking to compare to this beautiful miniature; it’s as if an Eric Rohmer script had been directed by Max Ophuls
That wasn’t me, It was Dave Kehr.
LikeLike
PS
December 6, 2014
I was thinking about this movie for several days after watching it. Been waiting months for a review from you. Thanks!
In other (unrelated) Hollywood rumblings, there’s been a series of interesting essays/interviews…have u read:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/top-five-filmmaker-chris-rock-753223
LikeLike
Prakash
December 7, 2014
@rangan
I first heard about this film from your site(I just read the first few lines of this post and decided to read the rest after watching), and decided to see it after seeing the universal acclaim and all that.
Before going into that, I thought I should share the following with you.
Some time back, when I had some free time and wanted to catch up on any good tamil movies I had missed over the past 3-4 years, I made a list of films based on critical reception(including yours), one of which I finally did watch was Attakathi.
I ended up loving that film, so much so that I consider it one of my all-time tamil cinema favorites now.
The reason why I am bringing it up here is both Attakathi and Boyhood share a loose similarity in that they are coming-of-age films that track the protagonist’s life at different points in time.
But I am afraid the latter failed to engage my attention as deeply or as consistently as Attakathi did.
The earlier portions with the kids were fascinating, but the characters just seemed to get progressively less specific and more generically good to seem real. For instance, while the episodes have their soul and flesh intact in the scenes involving Samantha and Mason fighting at the bedside as kids, when they learn that they are moving out as their mother has to pursue her studies, or Mason hanging out with older boys in his eighth grade, I couldn’t say this of some later portions like the philosophical exchanges that Mason is shown to have with his girlfriend(s), that come off as staged, pretentious and worst of all, shallow.
But my more serious grouse with this film was that it was, dare I say it, boring. Not all of it, of course, and mostly not in the first hour, but considerable stretches from there on were a pain to sit through. It made me wonder, is it just unimaginative writing or are these people in America really all leading such dull lives.
With the limited(and much-seen) material it had to mine, Attakathi showed things from such a fresh perspective that Boyhood’s final lines “the moment seizes us” is truer in the case of the former rather than Boyhood itself where I witnessed those moments but never felt as if I was impacted by them. The moments were all there, but the emotions, the flavour, the rush of nostalgia… I didn’t savour much in this bland fare that turned out to be Boyhood.
Would be glad to know your thoughts on this.
LikeLike
brangan
December 8, 2014
KaaviyaThalagani: So you’re sticking to that nick, huh? 🙂
I did feel the time-passage being captured, and the “meat in that journey” was very much there. There’s Olivia’s growth, for instance, from somewhat irresponsible single mother to a respectable professor, even if other things (like her ability to zoom in on loser-husbands) don’t change. So I did feel there was a steady accretion of things that lent to everyone’s overall arc.
I didn’t feel that I needed other actors, because we *do* see the ageing in everyone, not just in the children.
Prakash: I’m not sure what to say. I see that the film didn’t work for you, and you found it boring — but that’s okay, right? We all don’t have the like the same things 🙂
About the comparison you make, though, I’m a little uneasy. Both films have different ways of achieving emotional effects. One dramatises everything — you have songs, emotion, comedy, sparkling lines, high-energy performances. The other one de-dramatises everything so you get a verite feel.
Of course, it’s your prerogative to say one approach works for you and the other doesn’t, but I don’t know if a direct comparison is very useful. It may make more sense to compare “Boyhood” with “Stolen Kisses,” for instance.
LikeLike
Prakash
December 8, 2014
@rangan
Thanks for the response. Yes, I suppose there are fundamental differences in treatment that make the comparison awkward.
A small part of my bias may also owe towards the fact that, as a fellow member of Tamil society, I can identify a lot with the events in films like Attakathi and, at the same time, discern finer shades and tones that marked the film out differently from its peers, like the fact that Attakathi subverts much of its dramatic plot by its light-hearted narrative style, turning prime tragedy material into a fizzy tragicomedy that is remarkably reflective of the times and places that we live in.(God, I really need to write start writing reviews, instead of posting blurbs disguised as comments on your site 😉 )
This may also be the reason why I hate many Manirathnam films where characters whisper in clipped short sentences as this seems to stick out like a sore thumb in a film that is otherwise (intended to be) realistic to the local milieu.
But then, I am not sure this “social mooring” reason holds water since many Indian critics like yourself have also liked Boyhood. But then again, you also tend to like Manirathnam’s Madras Whisperies so I don’t know… 😉
It might also be that verite just isn’t my cup of tea. Would have to catch up with a few more films to confirm that however. Not sure if/when that would happen.
LikeLike
KaaviyaThalagani
December 8, 2014
I’m not sure what I missed here but all those arcs (including Olivia’s time passage), Linklater wasn’t really deconstructing their passage of time (or an entire generation’s stepping stones, so to speak) but merely reminding us of them.
Him using the same actors “over such a massive period of time” is only justified when these arcs inspire reflection and not just mere recollection.
Also since you mention Stolen Kisses, I think there’s a reason Truffaut made 2 more films in that series after this one – the central character developed apart from the physical growth of the actor, in extremely evocative ways as opposed to Linklater’s piece where none of the moments were bold enough to suggest these experiences being universal. For me, even that portion of meat seemed informative as opposed to evocative, is all.
Anyway, it’s nice to understand another justified perspective to this film. Thanks for the reply!
LikeLike
Raghav
December 8, 2014
sorry to be nit-picky but it should be ” a fly-on-the-wall style, without a background score.” 🙂
LikeLike
Nidhi
December 9, 2014
This was also the benign movie-version of reading all four of Updike’s Rabbit novels back-to-back (which I did some time ago). Watching the same family grow (or not grow) over time and how they influence each other in their growth/non-growth.
LikeLike
S
December 9, 2014
Hi, you have a typo. The film is Dead Poets Society. No apostrophe.
LikeLike
Karthik
December 10, 2014
Somehow I didnt find the club scene as a false note. It actually felt like a perfect culmination of the boy’s journey. As a child, he’s seen life repeatedly throw curveballs but never was he responsible for the actions or choices that led to those. Right when he was about to enter life as an adult- an independent life that he can truly shape- he’s faced with HIS first real heartbreak. It is only natural that he wonder out loud if there’s a point to it. That moment was all the more poignant happening at the stage where his father could have been, had he not chosen to throw his dreams away.
If I were to pick a false note, I would choose the scene with the mother, where the plumber turned hotel manager walks up and praises her in front of the kids- that felt a bit forced even if the emotions were as understated as in the rest of the movie.
LikeLike
brangan
December 11, 2014
Thanks for the typo catches, folks.
Nidhi: Oh, I could keep talking about the Rabbit books endlessly. When I reached “Rabbit at Rest,” I was practically rationing out the pages, knowing this was the last book. I kept going back and reading stuff 🙂 Felt really sad when I read the coda “Rabbit Remembered.” Easily among my favourite fiction.
LikeLike
brangan
December 12, 2014
Recent search terms that led to my blog. Just saying…
rang rasiya nipples pics
nandana sen nipple at rangrasiya
christmas brain on vacation
grand masti boobs
www madhuri f**king photos
LikeLiked by 4 people
brangan
December 17, 2014
http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/how-boyhoods-saddest-moment-came-together.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nidhi
December 19, 2014
A.O. Scott on the Rabbit novels.. https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/19/reviews/001119.19smcgt.html
LikeLike
ramitbajaj01
December 21, 2014
Ethan Hawke compared Before series with Rabbit series.
To the question, “Should one watch Before Sunrise and Before Sunset before watching Before Midnight?”, he replied, ”The idea of the movies is that each one can stand entirely on its own and also function in a set. In a way they work a bit like John Updike’s rabbit series: they can be read individually, but probably function best when read in sequence.”
https://www.quora.com/Should-I-watch-Before-Sunrise-and-Before-Sunset-before-watching-Before-Midnight
LikeLike
c4c
December 25, 2014
I want to erase this movie from my memory, so I can experience it again. This is vaera level cinema.
LikeLike
brangan
January 3, 2015
American Cinema Editors Release Their Nominees:
http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/american-cinema-editors-release-their-nominees/
LikeLike