My birthday was this week.
Writing this in a somewhat different, more indifferent sort of mood than what dominated my birthday six years ago. (Oddly enough, I disagree with relatively few of the points I made back then). Some change is to be expected, right?
'Indifferent' sounds a bit negative. I don't feel lethargic, defeated, no more cynical than what is healthy. A year has passed. Obviously it's nice that people remember and congratulate. I've previously lamented the callous passing of time on multiple occasions, and those feelings probably still govern some small jurisdiction of my soul, but it's Monday and the twenty-odd years I´ve now managed to pack in aren't exactly the most noteworthy milepost. Furthermore, like I said, I guess my perspective on ageing has changed. Youth itself can only take you so far. Now I can safely say that there is no need for hyperbole of any sort. Birthday's are allright! Let's leave it at that.
Cue in: an awkward transition to movie criticism.
I recently watched Richard Linklater's acclaimed Boyhood (2014). Most people probably remember the main idea of the movie: it's about the childhood and adolescence of a kid in Texas, actually filmed from 2002 to 2013. I tend to watch movies after the hype has fizzled away, and according to rigorous empirical research, big movie hype has a half-life of about two years. After that, you've got some convenient distance from all the distracting buzz around the movie and you can safely voice your criticism to... well, mainly astounded responses of: "That came out, like, ages ago!"
Anyhoo, Boyhood got almost unanimous praise from critics. Critics out of step with their peers were so scarce they spent a considerable portion of their columns wondering if their dissent was a sign of some character flaw on their own part rather than honest, penetrating movie criticism.
After watching this tiresome full feature movie equivalent of a Youtube time lapse video, I fully share their unpopular opinion.
Of course Linklater's decision to cast very young amateurs to a project so lengthy was risky, admirable even, but it can't - and won't - absolve him from the outcome, which in this case is simply bad acting. Lorelei Linklater and Ellar Coltrane are so aloof that their characters border on emotionless. They take out all the intensity from every scene they are in, and Patricia Arquette's and Ethan Hawke's ungrateful job is to carry them through. Arquette's and Hawke's acting, even with their characters written to be quite stereotypical, is strong, but it can't save the whole movie, especially when the movie centers around Coltrane's character Mason. Ironically, it's Mason's story, his boyhood, that the movie fails to really tell anything about. Real progression, at least some notable emotional fluctuation, is only seen in the characters of Arquette and Hawke, but they actually get to do and say something; to Coltrane's and Lorelei Linklater's credit, there is very little to do with characters as passive as theirs.
And so we are only served a series of vignettes, unredeemingly boring and even harrowingly sterile in their underlined "normality". I had great difficulty to become emotionally involved with the events, and I can't help but see this as a major flaw, especially since the topic is so close to my life (I, too, was a boy once, in a developed western country, around the same time as the main character, in the early to mid 2000s).
Boyhood is weirdly aversive of all the emotional highs and lows and hormonal tempest that rage behind the facade of even the most docile teenager. Where are all dem feels? I didn't expect car chases and explosions and murder, and I can see that maybe Linklater wanted to avoid a kind of arc in the plot, but these kind of arguments are a lousy defense for a crime this movie commits, a crime no movie, however good or bad, should commit. It was utterly boring.
In the end Boyhood's sole calling card is Linklater's decision to film the same cast for 12 years. If you disagree, think of the movie without this feature. How much of the movie's allure would last without it? Would there actually be any good reason for yet another male coming-of-age story, especially one as unimaginative as this?
Linklater has stated there was no strict script for the movie in the first place. The scene where a photography teacher gives the shiftless Mason a speech on motivation is fitting; he might just as well be talking to Linklater himself, who seems content to rely solely on one trick. It's a lazy cop-out. Linklater could have done brilliant things with his chosen method, he could have elevated a great coming-of-age story to brilliant heights with this method, but in Boyhood, what should serve only as a special effect becomes the whole picture. Boyhood is simply an indie drama equivalent of a blockbuster movie too enamored with its CGI tricks.
In my opinion Abdellatif Kechiche's 2013 movie Blue is the warmest colour manages to convey the fleeting bittersweetness of youth far more effectively, without props such as the one Linklater relies on. Its ending scene, too, a perfect allegory of the haphazard, coincidental nature of life and the relationships (not to mention all of the possibilities of relationships) in life, is light years ahead of Boyhood's lackluster ending, which is built around a line akin to the inspirational quotes you find on refrigerator magnets. (It's not surprising, really, that this mawkish scene was actually one of the few that were, according to Linklater, in the script right from the start. It sticks out in a bad way.)
It's safe to say Boyhood's allure is strongly tied to the visible passing of time, as we get to witness the cast age as the movie progresses. I really don't think Linklater's decision is original nor does the movie manage to pull at any heartstrings that those Youtube videos of people aging already haven't. Actually, I find those videos, in their tightly compressed, insoluble melancholy much more effective.
Interestingly enough, here are some of the top voted comments on that particular clip:
There are also some reheated jokes, bot ads and the obligatory homophobic slur in there, of course, but you get the idea.
The fact that this simple recording of ageing and the visible effects ageing has on people seems to generate such strong sentimentality in us is interesting. What do we talk about when we talk about youth, and being young? And when confronted with ageing, what kind of thoughts are we left with?
Writing this in a somewhat different, more indifferent sort of mood than what dominated my birthday six years ago. (Oddly enough, I disagree with relatively few of the points I made back then). Some change is to be expected, right?
'Indifferent' sounds a bit negative. I don't feel lethargic, defeated, no more cynical than what is healthy. A year has passed. Obviously it's nice that people remember and congratulate. I've previously lamented the callous passing of time on multiple occasions, and those feelings probably still govern some small jurisdiction of my soul, but it's Monday and the twenty-odd years I´ve now managed to pack in aren't exactly the most noteworthy milepost. Furthermore, like I said, I guess my perspective on ageing has changed. Youth itself can only take you so far. Now I can safely say that there is no need for hyperbole of any sort. Birthday's are allright! Let's leave it at that.
Cue in: an awkward transition to movie criticism.
I recently watched Richard Linklater's acclaimed Boyhood (2014). Most people probably remember the main idea of the movie: it's about the childhood and adolescence of a kid in Texas, actually filmed from 2002 to 2013. I tend to watch movies after the hype has fizzled away, and according to rigorous empirical research, big movie hype has a half-life of about two years. After that, you've got some convenient distance from all the distracting buzz around the movie and you can safely voice your criticism to... well, mainly astounded responses of: "That came out, like, ages ago!"
Anyhoo, Boyhood got almost unanimous praise from critics. Critics out of step with their peers were so scarce they spent a considerable portion of their columns wondering if their dissent was a sign of some character flaw on their own part rather than honest, penetrating movie criticism.
After watching this tiresome full feature movie equivalent of a Youtube time lapse video, I fully share their unpopular opinion.
Of course Linklater's decision to cast very young amateurs to a project so lengthy was risky, admirable even, but it can't - and won't - absolve him from the outcome, which in this case is simply bad acting. Lorelei Linklater and Ellar Coltrane are so aloof that their characters border on emotionless. They take out all the intensity from every scene they are in, and Patricia Arquette's and Ethan Hawke's ungrateful job is to carry them through. Arquette's and Hawke's acting, even with their characters written to be quite stereotypical, is strong, but it can't save the whole movie, especially when the movie centers around Coltrane's character Mason. Ironically, it's Mason's story, his boyhood, that the movie fails to really tell anything about. Real progression, at least some notable emotional fluctuation, is only seen in the characters of Arquette and Hawke, but they actually get to do and say something; to Coltrane's and Lorelei Linklater's credit, there is very little to do with characters as passive as theirs.
And so we are only served a series of vignettes, unredeemingly boring and even harrowingly sterile in their underlined "normality". I had great difficulty to become emotionally involved with the events, and I can't help but see this as a major flaw, especially since the topic is so close to my life (I, too, was a boy once, in a developed western country, around the same time as the main character, in the early to mid 2000s).
Boyhood is weirdly aversive of all the emotional highs and lows and hormonal tempest that rage behind the facade of even the most docile teenager. Where are all dem feels? I didn't expect car chases and explosions and murder, and I can see that maybe Linklater wanted to avoid a kind of arc in the plot, but these kind of arguments are a lousy defense for a crime this movie commits, a crime no movie, however good or bad, should commit. It was utterly boring.
In the end Boyhood's sole calling card is Linklater's decision to film the same cast for 12 years. If you disagree, think of the movie without this feature. How much of the movie's allure would last without it? Would there actually be any good reason for yet another male coming-of-age story, especially one as unimaginative as this?
Linklater has stated there was no strict script for the movie in the first place. The scene where a photography teacher gives the shiftless Mason a speech on motivation is fitting; he might just as well be talking to Linklater himself, who seems content to rely solely on one trick. It's a lazy cop-out. Linklater could have done brilliant things with his chosen method, he could have elevated a great coming-of-age story to brilliant heights with this method, but in Boyhood, what should serve only as a special effect becomes the whole picture. Boyhood is simply an indie drama equivalent of a blockbuster movie too enamored with its CGI tricks.
In my opinion Abdellatif Kechiche's 2013 movie Blue is the warmest colour manages to convey the fleeting bittersweetness of youth far more effectively, without props such as the one Linklater relies on. Its ending scene, too, a perfect allegory of the haphazard, coincidental nature of life and the relationships (not to mention all of the possibilities of relationships) in life, is light years ahead of Boyhood's lackluster ending, which is built around a line akin to the inspirational quotes you find on refrigerator magnets. (It's not surprising, really, that this mawkish scene was actually one of the few that were, according to Linklater, in the script right from the start. It sticks out in a bad way.)
It's safe to say Boyhood's allure is strongly tied to the visible passing of time, as we get to witness the cast age as the movie progresses. I really don't think Linklater's decision is original nor does the movie manage to pull at any heartstrings that those Youtube videos of people aging already haven't. Actually, I find those videos, in their tightly compressed, insoluble melancholy much more effective.
Interestingly enough, here are some of the top voted comments on that particular clip:
i don't know why ,but watching this made me feel sad
Amazing and sad at the same time... i mean we are nothing against time, we are just a moment...
There are also some reheated jokes, bot ads and the obligatory homophobic slur in there, of course, but you get the idea.
The fact that this simple recording of ageing and the visible effects ageing has on people seems to generate such strong sentimentality in us is interesting. What do we talk about when we talk about youth, and being young? And when confronted with ageing, what kind of thoughts are we left with?
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