12 Years a Project

The story begins with Richard Linklater shooting a movie about a boy that follows him as he grows up, picking up bits and pieces, at his leisure, for 12 years.

After a 30 year career, Linklater has never surpassed the promise of his first two features--no sophomore slump for this dude: Slacker (1991) and Dazed and Confused (1993).

Boyhood (2014, Richard Linklater) feels like captured life, especially the nuances of the ordinary normally taken for granted. As a model of filmmaking this is the farthest from my own ideal--spiritual, melodrama, brutality, and subversive exploitation.

Boyhood feels like Bresson without the spiritualism, brutality, or economy (and with pop music).

However, after 2 and a half hours, Boyhood is astoundingly, the uhh stuff that memories are made of.

About 2 hours in it is also apparent how much time MASON (Ellar Coltrane) spends in school, listening to music, changing his hairstyle, and getting to know the various stepdads and stepmoms his divorced parents subsequently shack up with. That's real life. No frills. But, don't movies need frills? This movie stands apart because it's just trying to show life and 4 good people.

Mason, his sister SAMANTHA (Lorelei Linklater), and their parents, played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, are all good people trying their best; but, for real, not like "The Brady Bunch," or "Step by Step."

The real life growth of the actor playing Mason hits you more if you've seen the film twice because it really is something for a character to age from 6-18 in a single narrative feature. Documentaries are different. When the fuzzy-headed little boy asks his dad questions like: "Dad, do you have a job?" or "Dad is magic actually a real thing?" it exhibits something acting alone cannot--the portrayal of innocence by a child whose own innocence is authentic.

The other items on the shopping list are: peer pressure, new religion, first shitty food service job, first truck, and first love. And there's a lot of pop culture references that offer that gimmick where the novelty lies in recognition and nothing more, but it's cute. "She didn't even like any of my favorite three movies of the summer: Tropic Thunder, The Dark Knight, or Pineapple Express!"

Boyhood opens with a shot of Mason laying in the grass as Coldplay's "Yellow," plays on the score. This is the exact time I stopped listening to music. When I was 12 my boyhood had something like "I Wanna Sex You Up," or "Gonna Make You Sweat," as its score. So it's weird, all of the music pop culture references are unfamiliar to me. But this is Linklater's movie and you know, he's sweet. There's gotta be some room for that.

Some Linklater flavor (his accumulated films display his personality) in Boyhood to point out is that the clerk at the gas station where the alcoholic first stepdad sends his kid in is the very same actor Wiley Wiggins buys from in Dazed and Confused, I reckon. And Mason's rant's like about how facebook isn't healthy or important or the NSA matching freshmen according to their private records is told in the subtly Texan accented, Alex Jones-like, Linklater diatribe. Watch Slacker again and you'll get what I mean.

To try not to completely contradict myself, I'm trying to say that I don't enjoy this movie, it's not entertaining, it's too long, and it lacks dramatic conflict; yet, I am impressed by it and even touched.

--Dregs

Angel of Death

Richard Linklater seems to have good taste in movies. I think I read him say he wished he could have lived and worked in the classic Hollywood era, being assigned different projects, not having to worry about financing or distribution; but, I may be mistaken.

Once when I was 13, I was sick with a fever and could not get out of bed. My dad surprised me with a VHS of Dazed and Confused (1993, Richard Linklater) he'd rented and I watched it twice in a row. I've still never watched the same movie twice in a row. But nearly 20 years later, I still have not discerned a Linklater style or developed an appreciation for any of his work since I was a teenager and crazy over Dazed and Confused.

Bernie (2011, Linklater) is one of those films that you watch and think to yourself hey, this is actually damn good; it's like the kind of movies Hollywood made in the 30s; the characters and setting are modern yet authentic, and we haven't seen them before like this; cool, Linklater's doing his homage to 30s rural Ford comedies, like he did with The Newton Boys (1998, Linklater) and Bogdanovich did with The Last Picture Show (1971, Peter Bogdanovich) and Paper Moon (1973, Bogdanovich).

But you might also realize, yeah, wait a minute, is competent handling of a quirky black comedy worth 10 wing wangs? Is it worth 100 minutes?

Tough to say.

Bernie's like one of those jokes someone tells and you aren't compelled to laugh, but perhaps produce a sympathy grin or chuckle for the effort.

It almost could have been funny. For me, the funniest moments are when Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine) begins abusing Bernie (Jack Black), but they're too fleeting. I'd also laugh harder at five minutes of Andy Dick's old sketch from The Andy Dick Show on MTV, where he played a character based on himself who assaults his Hollywood intern assistants relentlessly though too. Shirley MacLaine's face is maybe also one of the last to have survived classic Hollywood, coincidentally. She looks great in Bernie and we can recall her youthful features from appearing in something like The Trouble with Harry (1955, Alfred Hitchcock) at a time when Hitchcock'd still be waiting to enter his pinnacle.

The extras all look, dress and talk like gaudy real Texans. Sonny Carl Davis and McConaughey's mom are both excellent and are the only other part of the movie I think came off as genuine comedy.

The detailed exposition of Texas and funeral directors, and the detailed production design and art direction, prove Linklater took special care to research and prepare Bernie. It looks great, seriously. I guess it was just too alright for me. Jack Black as the weird-in-a-real-life-way effeminate, pants up to his waist-wearer is continuously interesting, but isn't he supposed to be funnier? Or is this supposed to be dry? Depends on your taste.

Matthew McConaughey as D.A. Danny Buck Davidson has the meat of the film's theme summed up in his final prosecution when he drills Bernie about whether or not he is accustomed to the "fancy" life. That's what sells the drama authentically and hit the story home. It defines the conflict of Carthage and doubles up the ambiguity over which of the townsfolk are for or against Bernie and Marjorie and a big part of what their speculations on the couple focus on.

To close, somthing silly: when Bernie describes the preparation of a cadaver before its final rest, he mentions things like, left hand lightly placed above the right crossed, head slightly turned to the right... And during his tranquil oration about its significance I eerily realized that's exaclty how I was sitting in the theatre. The black box, as Godard said.

--Dregs