Review: Boyhood

Year: 2014
Director: Richard Linklater
Screenplay: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater

Synopsis is here

Describing Boyhood feels like it should be a gimmick. A fictional chronicle of a boy’s life from age 5 to 18, filmed with the same cast over a period of 12 years. Collaborated in a way in which we are literally watching the boy (Ellar Coltrane) grow up in front of our eyes, as his parents grow older. The parents are actors we know and have seen in films from before, so to see them slowly alter and change, plays havoc with our knowledge of them as performers. If we place the film's plot down in words, its uniqueness seems to fade. The narrative strands are not particularly out of the ordinary. Though to watch the film play out is to watch a cultural marvel due to its conceit. The ambition is not in the words, but on the screen itself. Linklater’s Before trilogy only hinted at the ambition. Boyhood helps cement his place as one of the most valuable documentarians of modern relationships.

Boyhood does what Linklater's films love to do: have people talking. The film lets things play out in the simple, natural way we often expect from the filmmaker. We watch the kids natter about childish things, and their (unmarried) parents argue. We note the hint of determination in the Mother (A never better Patricia Arquette), and the brashness of the Father (Ethan Hawke). The conversations they have may not be exactly like the one your family have had, but they certainly feel like ones a family would have. There’s a beauty in how Linklater gets such engagement in the seemingly mundane. It also makes the small rises in conflict (involving divorce, alcoholism and sibling rivalry) feel so profound.

It’s after we get comfortable with the quirks of these people does the subtle power of Linklater’s direction occur. The use of form found in Boyhood is beyond grand in scale and thought. Music choices and product placement are suddenly valuable time signatures. They not only tell us the year we’re situated in, but help signify the cultural changes and growth of this boy’s life. Is Coldplay’s Yellow an obvious choice of song? Easy to sneer at now. Yet that single feels synonymous with the year it was released, as does Mason’s sister murdering Oops I did it again. By the time we reach Lady Gaga on an iPhone, Linklater has subtly shown us the gradual shift of what media has changed (or stayed the same) and how it’s consumed.

Elsewhere; we watch young friends fleeting away in wide shots, only to be sharply cut from the view. When the family move away, the Mother swears they’ll be back to visit, yet we never see them again. Does Mason? Ask yourself about some of the people you knew at similar ages and how your relationships ended. But its accuracy of how Mason’s viewpoint is portrayed that’s so impressive.

The characters seem unaffected by the slow evaporation of time and yet they slowly succumb to realisation. We watch Hawke’s immature, forthright young man morph into a figure of some maturity (sweetly symbolised by what he drives). Mason’s Mother takes a hint of determination and utilises it to help shatter a typical outlook of the single mother. All the while, the human landscape changes. We see the beginnings of Bush’s war before we witness Obama placards on lawns.

How Linklater keeps hold of these strands and textures is remarkable, but his ability to keep the drama as honest as he does is astonishing. As facial features and certain elements of personality grow and form, we’re still aware of their flaws. It’s amusing to see Mason issues finishing homework follow him throughout his life, but it’s notably perceptive to view his Mother’s trails in relationships. Repeat patterns of ill behavior follow and flow through the family in the same way that it flows through our own. The conflicts never feel bogged down or over dramatized, while every performance is instinctive no matter which part of the time they occur. As stated in other reviews, could Linklater have any clue at just how well Ellar Coltrane would carry a film that would span his adolescence?

That said, this is the kind of film Linklater has been working up to. From the Errol Morris vibe given off in Bernie (2011) to the feeling of nostalgia that comes with Dazed and Confused (1993). By the time we see Mason in his teenage years, he’s well on his way to being the type of gentle philosophizing Linklater protagonist we’ve seen in Waking Life (2001) or the Before series. Yet in all of the films I’ve seen of the director, I’ve never experienced something that plays with such conviction of its scope and understanding of its textures. Cinephiles will be well aware of the similar features (Up series, The Apu Trilogy, Truffaut’s films of Antoine Doinel), yet the intertwining of the cultural observations that Linklater uses, make this a landmark that deserves a place to stand with them. At a time in which Hollywood is wrestling with its love/hate relationship with arrested development, Boyhood stands out as one of the most mature and moving films about adolescence and family I’ve seen in a long time. Can the U.S keep Richard Linklater safe, please? He’s a cultural asset.

Review: Before Midnight

Year: 2013

Director: Richard Linklater

Screenplay: Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Synopsis is here:

In other films they are Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. With Richard Linklater, they are Jesse and Celine. It’s hard to envelop characters so well that the actors literally become them. Here in this third entry into Linklater’s long running romantic saga, Hawke and Delpy once again slip into these characters as well known as the shoes on their feet.

The audience knows this couple as well as the actors do. Many have grown with them from film to film, and to know them is to love them.  It’s difficult to enter the scene now, three films in. I've spoke with some who have tried and found it odd. Of course, it’s like interrupting an intense debate unannounced, just to try and attempt to start the conversation once more. Ever watched Harry Potter/Twilight in the middle of the series, with no prior knowledge? It’s that sense of confusion.

But to those in the know, we've had another nine years pass and we catch up with Jesse and Celine at a new turning point for them. Now approaching forty, the starry eyed views and dreams of the two have dulled slightly, yet their passions have remained.  Their hopes and fears have changed and matured and we now see the couple at the most distressed and at points, their most emotional.

Richard Linklater has never been known for visual flights of fancy, but once again, like previous works, he and the cast; show off the beauty of words with an elegance that many romances never seem to achieve. Before Midnight only really adds up to around 6 scenes (give or take), but the sharpness of the dialogue reveals an unbelievable amount of depth. The headstrong nature of Celine and the laid back American goofiness of Jesse have not left their personalities. Instead their traits have helped pushed their relationship into new pitfalls with the actions of their intimacy effecting who they are and who they may still come to be in the future.

Linklater has always been a director who understands the elegance of conversation and it once again shows here. The camera leisurely strolls around the characters, taking in the beautiful Greek sun as the couple once again delve into what they relationship means to them. We never really move away from a mid-shot (the trademark shot of the series) but we never need to, so absorbing are the performances.

There is a small break from structure that we've not seen in the previous films, with new secondary characters gaining more screen time. Yet even then, this only benefits the emotional resonance that takes place. One of the most interesting elements of Before Midnight is that now older and wiser; more people enter and influence the lives of these people. The beauty of the film is that no matter who enters their orbit, it is always Jesse and Celine doing what they do best.  Even now; with many considering this to be the end of the journey, Linklater’s film leaves us with a shot of ambiguity. Leaving the couple, and us wondering what lies in store for the years ahead.