"Boyhood"
Caught the much talked-about flick Boyhood over the weekend. It's an interesting experiment in which the filmmakers tell the story of a child between the ages of six and eighteen, filming a few days each year with the same cast between 2001 and 2013. The major critics have been unanimous in praising it, and even “Rotten Tomatoes,” which casts a wider net, currently assigns it a 99% favorable rating.
There’s not really much to the story. Amusingly, a woman seated on my right in the theatre kept gasping in anticipation of standard screenwriting tropes that never materialized (example: father mentions to son the dangers of texting while driving. In the next scene, the kid is driving and his girlfriend shows him a picture on her iPhone. “Oh, no,” my seatmate moans in a whisper as he briefly takes his eyes off the road. Nothing happens. They drive on without incident). We meet our protagonist as a first-grader, the child of recently-divorced parents, and leave him as a college freshman. He changes; so do his parents and sundry other peripheral figures. An hour into this very long film (165 minutes) I was feeling underwhelmed—not disliking it, but also not really seeing what all the fuss was about—but by the end the cumulative effect of the achievement had got to me. We’ve seen many other depictions of characters aging onscreen, conveyed either by makeup/prosthetics or by actor swaps, but the sheer authenticity of director Linklater’s approach resonates more profoundly than I had imagined even after reading the reviews.
YMMV. What captivated me at last may merely bore others. Also, this is not a cinematic work that demands the big screen and the company of a large audience (we took in a Sunday matinee, and got there early, because the previous evening had sold out: so far as I could determine, this one did as well). You may in good conscience wait for it for it to reach the rental/streaming market without feeling shortchanged at not having seen it in IMAX 3D. I suspect that to present or former parents of teens, the work will resonate even more powerfully.
cordially,
There’s not really much to the story. Amusingly, a woman seated on my right in the theatre kept gasping in anticipation of standard screenwriting tropes that never materialized (example: father mentions to son the dangers of texting while driving. In the next scene, the kid is driving and his girlfriend shows him a picture on her iPhone. “Oh, no,” my seatmate moans in a whisper as he briefly takes his eyes off the road. Nothing happens. They drive on without incident). We meet our protagonist as a first-grader, the child of recently-divorced parents, and leave him as a college freshman. He changes; so do his parents and sundry other peripheral figures. An hour into this very long film (165 minutes) I was feeling underwhelmed—not disliking it, but also not really seeing what all the fuss was about—but by the end the cumulative effect of the achievement had got to me. We’ve seen many other depictions of characters aging onscreen, conveyed either by makeup/prosthetics or by actor swaps, but the sheer authenticity of director Linklater’s approach resonates more profoundly than I had imagined even after reading the reviews.
YMMV. What captivated me at last may merely bore others. Also, this is not a cinematic work that demands the big screen and the company of a large audience (we took in a Sunday matinee, and got there early, because the previous evening had sold out: so far as I could determine, this one did as well). You may in good conscience wait for it for it to reach the rental/streaming market without feeling shortchanged at not having seen it in IMAX 3D. I suspect that to present or former parents of teens, the work will resonate even more powerfully.
cordially,
