"The neck and neck Oscar contenders for Best Picture, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood have both been heavily criticized for gimmickry - Birdman for its long, uninterrupted takes and Boyhood for being shot over the course of 12 years – but the criticism is extremely reductive to these very vital films. Both have individually driven techniques, not gimmicks, to how they approach storytelling, and both are crammed with visionary gusto. But while I was happy that Birdman took home the gold Oscar night, it’s Boyhood that will always resonate with me deeper, the way art that imitates (and nails) life, for me will always win over surrealism.
"Linklater’s premise of capturing the span of childhood to young adulthood, via filming a young actor (Ellar Coltrane) and his co-stars a little bit each year from 2002-2014 works wonderfully largely because it feels like you’re watching real life naturally unfold, albeit in scattered, sketchy fragments at times.
"It’s principally the journey of Coltrane’s Mason, but we got a lot of glimpses of what’s happening in the lives of his family members on the side – his mother (Patricia Arquette, who deservedly won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award), his flighty father (Ethan Hawke), and his sister (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter).
"No titles tell us what year it is, or what age our protagonist is, but every scene has clues whether in the technology of the times, what Harry Potter book is being released, or whose names adorn campaign signs. We get so caught up in the flow, that suddenly we notice everybody is aging, and what would be throwaway, mundane moments in other films are elevated to great meaning. An original title for the film was 'Always Now,' which is telling in what the film’s ultimate theme in its treatise on time is: the ongoing desire to live as completely in the moment as possible.
"The website Screen Junkies echoed a lot of the film’s detractors with its installment of the Honest Trailers web series devoted to Boyhood, which stated: 'It’s a beautiful film, but honestly, if you took the same script and shot it over a few months it would suck.'
"This asinine argument irritates me greatly. The screenplay and the film, despite having acknowledged planned arcs, were developed year by year for well over a decade with the actors contributions to their roles affecting what was written and shot – an ongoing process that the result of which could never have been written and executed in the course of one year. And the film about which that the Screen Junkies speculate, shot over a few months, with what I presume would be different actors playing characters at different ages would indeed suck as it wouldn’t at all be a convincing approximation of real life.
"That’s the very point of what makes Boyhood so special, and why the ‘but if they had done it this other way, it wouldn’t be so great' stance is so stupid. On the other hand, the Honest Trailers’ line about Arquette’s character, set to the tune of what could be considered the film’s theme song, Family of the Year’s 'Hero': 'And there she goes, dating a string of drunk a-holes, should’ve saved a lot of trouble, by choosing her ex - he wasn’t that bad,' is pretty funny and actually accurate.
"Boyhood is, of course, Linklater’s most ambitious piece of work, but it wouldn’t have the emotional effect it has without the sincerity and heart given to its subjects on display. In the writer/director’s first film Slacker, he pieced together a single day in Austin, Texas through the scrambled random yet connected narratives of over a dozen different characters, in the Before series, he’s taking us through the ongoing relationship of a couple of star-crossed lovers who we catch up with every nine years, but with Boyhood, he makes his most profound statement yet. And it’s a simple one too – that everybody, young and old, is just winging it through time." ~ Daniel Cook Johnson
"The versatility and talent of Richard Linklater never ceases to amaze me. I’m sure that no one reading this needs to be reminded of his filmography, but I am continually astonished that the same filmmaker directed Slacker, Dazed and Confused, suburbia, the Before… trilogy, Tape, Waking Life, School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly, and Bernie (not to mention several others). There is an astounding amount of difference among those films, from filmmaking styles to genres to overall tones. Some through-lines do emerge, though.
"With a few exceptions, Linklater’s films tend to be about searching, inquisitive people trying to make sense out of the many mysteries of existence, and more than anything they like to talk about it. The aimless wanderers of Slacker, the philosophical stoners of Dazed, the angry dead-end teens of suburbia (when is that movie getting a DVD release, anyway?), Jesse and Celine from the Before… trilogy, Wiley Wiggins’s otherworldly companions from Waking Life, etc… they talk and talk, in dialogue that sounds both musically precise and loosely off-the-cuff, about everything under the sun (and beyond it), usually not professing to have all the answers but just wanting to ask questions and make one another think, in the process encouraging the audience to think as well.
"Obviously, one of Linklater’s most intense fascinations is with the passage of time, and how it changes and shapes us as human beings. I had thought that the two-decade-spanning Before… trilogy, and its ingenious exploration of how time affects a love affair, was probably his definitive statement on the subject, but then came Boyhood. To say that Boyhood is a great film is actually selling it short. It’s the rare movie that is actually, really not like any other ever made. I would argue that it re-shapes the medium of narrative film altogether, all the while never seeming even the slightest bit pompous or pretentious. It was simply a great idea, executed wonderfully, and no one else ever did it before.
"No, style and technological ingenuity alone would not be reason enough to proclaim it my favorite film of 2014. Boyhood, though, has it all. The performances are uniformly excellent, including Ellar Coltrane as Mason, who, especially in his earlier years, had a thrillingly genuine and unaffected screen presence. He was passed over for awards nominations and most critics’ praise in favor of established stars Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke (who are both outstanding), but the truth is that he’s just as good in perhaps the most demanding role of all. Additionally, Lorelai Linklater is a delight as the wry, sarcastic older sister (the awkward 'sex talk' scene in the bowling alley is one of my many favorite, stand-out moments). The screenplay is great (even aside from the monumental audaciousness of its central idea), and it’s got real, honest-to-goodness heart.
"What stands out to me the most, though, and gives the film its cumulative impact, are the most understated moments. When we notice that a character’s priorities have changed from when we knew them earlier. When we notice that the actors are physically changed by time, watching wrinkles appear and fashions change. The recognition that someone is gradually fundamentally changing who they once were ('You’re not turning into one of those ‘God people,’ are you Dad?') It begins to remind us of our own lives, and how no one is unchanged by time, not the people we know and certainly not ourselves (despite how much we might like to think so sometimes).
"It may not be 100% 'flawless,' (it has a few perhaps-unavoidable rough edges, all of which only serve to make the entire project that much more fascinating to me) but for a filmmaker and a cast to undertake the difficulties inherent in an idea this bold, adventurous, original, and difficult, and for it to wind up not just coherent but great, that’s real art. And in my book, it’s far and away the best film of 2014." ~ Jason Alley
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