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Get Up and Go (2014)
Scrutiny of twenties somethings who are as unsure about life as they were in their teens is one that's worth your while
Get up and Go is a day in the life film which follows best friends Alex and Coilin as they meander their way around Dublin City, mingling with their wider circle of friends in trendy cafés and gloomy bars, struggling with the everyman issues such as unrequited love, job loss, job hunting and, in Alex's Case, the rush to make the evening ferry to England so as to escape your recently impregnated girlfriend and a doomed life of pram pushing.
Alex and Coilin, we get the impression, have been friends for a long time and Get up to Go lands in the realms of films such as Adam & Paul and Withnail & I in regards to the wandering brothers in arms, the friendship at its core being a marriage of convenience more so than a common camaraderie or joy in each other's company.
Peter Coogan plays Alex, a recently laid off cinema employee who's mission for the day in question is to procure enough cash to get the ferry (not a plane, strangely enough) to London. Killian Scott plays timid comedian Coilin who we suspect is some way off his big break. He is aiming to firstly get a gig and then woo his soul mate Lola, played by Gemma-Leah Devereux, who couldn't be less interested as she has all her own chaos lined up for the day.
The opening twenty minutes of the film are slow as the two protagonists ponder their plans driving from one location to another. But the film unexpectedly begins to shift into gear as other characters enter the frame and we begin to observe a group of people who are friends by default, we suspect. Friends because they've been friends all their adult life and it's here that Get up and Go begins to reveal a heart and depth at its center even if portions of the film suffer from some Friends TV culture, characters sitting around in pubs and cafés all day, apparently coming and going from jobs as they please.
The film would have suffered further if it weren't for the anchoring performances of Killian Scott and Peter Coogan. Scott is lovably subtle as the awkward loveless loser Coilin and Coogan carries over the bravado and charisma of Love/Hate's Fran without that characters psychotic side. The script, although a story we've seen in Irish film many times before, moves forward with purpose and offers more than a few laughs and intriguing scenes such as when both protagonists are on the point of 'sealing the deal' as Alex describes it but choose not to for their own reasons. The third key character in the film is Dublin City and Vladimir Trivic's hand held camera captures Dublin like we know it from nights out in the city and calls to mind another Dublin set film, Once.
Get up and Go is an enjoyable film with a couple of laughs and recognisable if not likable characters along the way. Its flaws are its lack of originality and the fact that it's a little light weight in parts. However there is a heart at its core and its scrutiny of people in their mid to late twenties who are as unsure about life as they probably were in their mid to late teens is one that's worth your while.
Whiplash (2014)
Poses a difficult philosophical question about the lengths one should go in the pursuit of molding talent into greatness.
Whiplash is a tight, thoughtful and exhilarating film based on director Damien Chazelle's 2013 short film of the same name. It's the sort of movie that sucks the air out of the cinema, not allowing its audience's mind to wander for an instant, demanding their utmost and constant attention. This is partly down to a devastatingly intense performance from JK Simmons as well as the power of Chazell's story and the careful unwinding of the idea at the center of its plot. One of the more riveting and refreshing aspects of Whiplash is it does not offer us a definitive conclusion in its ending but instead poses a difficult philosophical question about the lengths one should go in the pursuit of molding talent into greatness.
Miles Teller plays Andrew, a talented jazz drummer in his first year at a prestigious music conservatory. Miles' talent is swiftly recognized by Fletcher (JK Simmons), a renowned and eccentric band leader. Fletcher's philosophy is that raw talent must be bullied, abused, threatened, and embarrassed or it will never feel the need to prove it's self on an obsessive level and subsequently prosper into true, true greatness. 'There are no two words in the English language more harmful then 'well done', he warns at one point.
In Miles, Fletcher finds a drummer matching his heightened level of obsessive fervor, a young man already lacking in a male role model who is desperate for his approval despite his treatment at Fletcher's hands. Miles' own Father (Paul Reiser) is everything Fletcher is not, happy and loving, positive and genuinely supportive. He's only looking out for his Son and his Son's best interests yet Miles is far more interested in gaining the approval of Fletcher, as his Father lacks his Sons passion and seriousness. The interesting thing is, as an audience we fully understand Miles' view.
Indeed Miles' Father may just be the only likable character in the film. Miles himself is obnoxious and arrogant in equal measure, dismissing the little successes of relatives against his own, breaking up with his girlfriend because she doesn't have it all quite as figured out as he does. Simmons is something else entirely. An utter obsessive and a bully, his performance is as excellent as it is hilarious. It's a strange human trait how inherently funny we find poetic verbal abuse once we're not on its receiving end. The script is tightly wound and although the plot is conventional enough so that we feel some turns in the plot before we take them, the story is such an engrossing one and the performances so excellent that it doesn't deter.
For all the many ways we find Fletcher's character grotesque and heinous, in the end his contention is flawless. His actions lead to Andrew reaching a level of potential that he likely would have fallen short of without Fletcher's methods. His methods of coarse are unacceptable, but Whiplash joy is that it asks the audience the question of whether, in the end, the bad guy was right all along.
Selma (2014)
Impeccably tight, a steady and consistent beat toward the predictably triumphant and emotional finale
From a European point of view, it would be difficult to approach Selma without the knowledge that the film is causing a controversial stir across the water in relation to its apparent exclusion from this year's Oscar nominations. The argument from some quarters in the States is that this proves that inherent racism exists within the Academy, others argue the film merely isn't worthy of the Oscar nods that some feel it deserve and furthermore there is the argument, probably closer to any truth, that the film was released slightly too late to generate sufficient Oscar momentum. However, David Oyelowo's omission from the best actor category is as glaring an injustice as there's been for several years.
Oyelowo, of course, plays Martin Luther King in, Avu Devurnay's Selma which is astoundingly the first feature film based on King's life to garner a theatrical release. Paul Webb's concise script is far from a biopic of King, it focuses solely on his third great political and social triumph, following the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 and the March on Washington of 1963, in 1965 King and his supporters organised several marches in Selma, Alabama in protest against the discrimination suffered by black people attempting to register to vote.
As mentioned, David Oyelowo gives a moving performance as King, his interpretations of Kings rousing and poetic speeches hit all the right notes but it is the more sombre and personal moments in which Oyelowo depicts King's doubts and weariness that make it a great performance. Watch out particularly for the most painful scene in the film where King visits a hospital to console an elderly man whose son has been killed. Oyelowo says little in the scene, but his blood shot eyes depict a heap of emotions.
This is also true of the difficult scenes with his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) which depict the difficulties within King's home life. Indeed these difficulties lead him to vitally miss the first leg of the Selma march. Oyelowo is accompanied by a powerful supporting cast here from Opera to Cuba Gooding Junior, his supporters to his adversaries, specifically a despicable yet engrossing Tim Roth as well as Tom Wilkonson's intriguing take on Lyndon. B. Johnson. The script is impeccably tight, a steady and consistent beat toward the predictably triumphant and emotional finale. There isn't a scene in Avu Duvernay's film that doesn't need to be there, each sequence progresses the story forward at a timely pace.
Selma is everything you'd expect from an accomplished film about Martin Luther King. It showcases the vitriol and evil that King fought against in the form of local Southern law enforcement and officials as well as the added difficulty in playing politics and negotiating Washington bureaucracy. It touches briefly but adequately on his marital difficulties and his own unfaithfulness. What we walk out of Selma with is a sense of King's bravery and courage in such a hotbed of hatrid. 'Our lives are not fully lived if we're not willing to die for those we love, for what we believe,' he states at one point.
It's an enjoyable and gripping film, a tight script enhanced in its accessibility with the inclusion of infamous as well as courageous men of history. It leaves us with wonderment of how far we've come since 1965. It could be argued quite far, given how shocking the violent images of armed white police beating peaceful black protesters are today. However, recent events in Ferguson would lead you to question how far they've come in the Southern United Sates. Perhaps Martin Luther King's legacy still has further bridges to cross.
Men, Women & Children (2014)
An enjoyable little film about the internet, parents and teenagers and the interchangeable struggles involved in those relationships.
The oddly named Men, Women & Children analysis our relationship as well as, the film argues, reliance on the internet and the various social outlets it has spawned such as social media, online gaming, online dating and pornographic websites. I say oddly named as the title Men, Women & children suggests to me some sort of Terrence Mallick visual epic, whereas what we get here is an enjoyable little film about parents and teenagers and the interchangeable struggles involved in those relationships. 'The Internet' and all that entails is added into this equation in an attempt to make a film that questions our relationship with the various new technologies at our finger tips as opposed to a film that analysis our relationships with each other. Although the analysis is enjoyable and the film does make us examine the place the internet holds in our own lives it's only up to a point and you get the feeling director Jason Reitman, who brought us gems such as Thank you for Smoking and Up in the Air, is doing a little too much preaching at times. Reitman's film opens with a needless outer-space prologue and further unnecessary voice over that dips in and out of the narrative at irregular intervals to describe the action to us. The voice-over sounds like it's been lifted from a showing of the film for the visually impaired, ultra serious and ultra monotonous explaining exactly what action is taking place on screen. The narrative hops to varying degrees between several interlocking stories involving five families from the same Texas neighborhood. To explore the interwoven story lines further would be to sour a few of the films genuine pleasures. The relationships between the various Parents are filled with great depth and pain, Adam Sandler in particular gives an impressive against-type performance of a downtrodden middle aged man whose marriage is slipping into stale banality. It's a shame the exploration of the teens in the film didn't reach similar depth. There are all the stock teenage characters on play, from the popular cheerleader to the nerdy hippie, no where do we find such interesting and individual teen characters that decorated Reitman's Juno.
In one particular scene a fifteen-year old is asking his parents how they heard about 9/11, 'did someone just text you,' he asks. 'No', he's told, 'nobody really had phones then'. It's a ham-fisted attempt to re-enforce the films primary theme and one example of numerous times when the film depicts teenagers as being totally clueless. Men, Women & Children is an enjoyable little film; though it goes for the easy targets of teenage stereotypes and comes across slightly heavy on preaching online morality it does leave us with a reminder that we're all responsible for our own online actions as well as some good story-telling and characterization for the adults in the movie. A little less beating us with the internet stick and a little more of a realistic look at the teenage lives on show would have made it a superior movie.
Nebraska (2013)
It's all about Payne's subtle observations
The name Alexander Payne is synonymous with the road movie, mainly thanks to the flawless Sideways, and to a lesser degree About Scmidt. His film, Nebraska, is his third foray into the genre and like both those films it encompasses a lot more themes and touches on a lot more emotions than your average 'road' film. Primarily there's the Father-Son relationship, then family in general. Dig a little deeper and we find a fascinating and subtle commentary on the undercurrent of economic struggles sweeping across small-town America and yet, at its center, Nebraska is a sweet, hopeful, heart-warming film.
The story follows thirty-something year old David, working in a local electrics store, going through some sort of break up; and his Father Woody, a doddery alcoholic who begins to lose his grip on reality when he swallows a scam telling him he's won a million dollars. The scam tells him to go to Lincoln, Nebraska, and so he does.
At first David tries to get it through to his father that he is being conned, however these attempts are utterly futile. Subsequently, recognizing his Father's desire not for the million dollars, but for something to live for, some sort of hope or fulfillment, David decides to drive him to Nebraska.
From here on, Payne slowly and expertly uncovers the layers of the difficult relationship between the two men. Through marvellous and sparse dialogue scenes filled with both humour and pain the audience begins to understand the relationship from both sides.
Bruce Dern's performance is one of those performances where his consistent walk and broken, bumbling, drunken voice seem totally unique and yet utterly believable. Throughout the film he carries on his back Woody's life time of pain and unhappiness. A key scene being where David quizzes his Father over his love for his wife, David's Mother, Woody's disinterest and almost lack of understanding of the inquisition demonstrates his characters life of disappointment and martial disillusionment.
Dern's performance is a treat, but he is backed up by solid supporting cast. Will Forte as his son David gets a difficult role just right. His performance is understated, as it needed to be, and it complements Dern's perfectly. His glimpses of pain over his Father's condition and their broken relationship are wrapped up in a soft-spoken, polite demeanor. It allows for a much more fascinating study than if two alpha males had been scripted in the lead roles.
June Squibb also gives a solid performance as Woody's nagging Wife and David's nagging Mother. As does Stacy Keach, Woody's ex-business partner, and the villain of the piece who comes looking for his dues when he hears Woody's news.
The script is tight and concise. I spent the first half of the film trying to determine the reasons for the black and white photography yet what slowly dawned on me, as Payne revealed more about the world these characters inhabit, is that their world is a very black and white place, in more ways than one.
It's a delightful film, an expert character study and a subtle observation of the difficulties of family relationships. Furthermore it is an analysis of the dread of small town life. Obviously in this case it is referencing small town America, presently. But in truth it could apply to any geographical location that finds itself stuck in a root.
Nebraska calls to mind Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show. There's the black and white photography, used to highlight the total and utter blandness of life, the small town and the meandering characters in search of something or nothing. Nebraska however has more character depth and is an all round more rewarding film than Bogdanovich's, which is in itself a classic of sorts.
The audience comes away from Nebraska feeling an enormous sense of satisfaction with this sweet analysis of family, and specifically Father/Son, relationships.
A friend recently told me that although he felt Nebraska is good, he thought that we've seen this same stuff from Payne before. I disagree, although not as magnificent or hilarious a film as Sideways, Nebraska goes deeper into the pain of its characters and analyzes much more so the pain of the world around them. It's all about Payne's subtle observations.
Jersey Boys (2014)
Eastwood misfires with weak characterizations and clichéd dialog
Jersey Boys is the latest film to come off the Clint Eastwood production line. Based on the Broadway musical the film is the story of four young men who would eventually go onto become The Four Seasons, one of the central doo-wop groups of the sixties. The film charts their rise from petty thievery in New Jersey to chart domination and so-on to the various fall outs that usually raise their head in such music biopics.
I say music biopic, but Jersey Boys gets lost in a chasm between being a music biopic and a musical. It has strong elements of both yet doesn't know which it wants to be. And this is one of Jersey Boys' many, many flaws.
The film contains the same four actors as the Broadway musical. Also, the screenplay was written by the same writers as the Broadway musical. You get the feeling they didn't know which they were going for, musical or biopic. I definitely didn't.
The first half hour or so introduces us to the two key characters, Frankie Valli (John Loyd Young) and Tommy DiVito, (Vincent Piazza) both young musicians trying to make it out of the 'neighborhood' and a supposed life of petty crime.
There are a few sequences around this time bizarrely involving a character that is supposed to be the young Joe Pesci, which is fair enough because apparently the Four Seasons did in fact know Pesci. What is not fair enough is the 'how am I funny?' reference shamelessly thrown in. As well as the fact that he's played as Pesci's persona in Goodfellas/Casino, not as a young Pesci himself. The whole thing is just peculiar.
Eastwood uses a piece to camera story telling technique whereby each of the four protagonists takes turns speaking directly to the audience and talking them through the plot in the style of Ferris Buelar's Day Off and Alfie and surely deriving from the play too. In all fairness we probably need the explanations to catch exactly what is supposed to be going on. But they're handled so poorly it just takes us totally out of any sense of illusion we might have had. Specifically look out for such an example where bassist Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) attempts one of these monologues whilst he is supposed to be in the middle of a stage performance. Awful stuff.
Of the characters that the story revolves around the only one that appears to matter, for the first third of the film anyway, is Tommy DiVito. It appears to be his story; and he is unbearable. Tommy is a boring stereotype of the typical Italian–American mob underling and his character is insufferable. In each scene we hear him before we see him, barking a threat or applying tacky charm. It's only ever one of the two. His testosterone and ego are so over the top that I found him hilarious. He is a ridiculous and unbelievable character. Frankie Valli, to my eye, is given nothing; his character is not explored in any way until about two-thirds into the film, when there is an attempt made to give him some sort of back story regarding a relationship with his daughter. It seems a sub plot squeezed in because it needed to be and because the film makers realized how little his character is explored. It's haphazardly handled and neatly tied up before you know what's happening. However even if this aspect of the film had been handled well and unraveled in a way so that the audience could appreciate would was happening it's still at too late a stage to care about the guy or even want to get to know him.
The script seems disjointed and the dialogue weak. There's far too much time spent on the four protagonists attempts to 'make it' and again this all revolves around the Tommy DiVito character. The dialogue is filled with clichés to such a point that a lot of lines spoken by the characters sound as if they were the first thing that came into the writers head.
The cinematography for me seemed dull and appeared to give the film a somewhat flat and cold feeling. It's strange, when you notice cinematography it's usually because it's good, rich and vibrant or even stark, and cool. But on this occasion I noticed the cinematography because it seemed so washed out and plain. The photography on the film seemed to be trying to imitate the lighting on a Broadway show. Leave one to one and the other to the other would be my thinking.
It's meant to be a fairly light-hearted piece by what I can judge. That could be its only defense. That it's not meant to be taken too seriously. But even still, the weak characterizations and the clichéd dialogue is fairly unforgivable.
The Indian Runner (1991)
Sean Penns accomplished directorial debut demonstrates how our differing points of view can both define and destroy the relationships we hold
I remember my first time listening to Nebraska, the second Bruce Springsteen record I discovered, (after Born to Run of course) laying in my bedroom, imagining each song play out in my mind. That's one of the most appealing aspects of all of Bruce's work, the imagery he projects in your mind. Listening to his music is like closing your eyes and watching a short film play out. One of the most vivid images from the album is the closing verse of the song Highway Patrol Man, from which Sean Penn's directorial debut, The Indian Runner, was inspired.
''It was out at the crossroads, down round Willow bank Seen a Buick with Ohio plates behind the wheel was Frank Well I chased him through them county roads till a sign said Canadian border five miles from here I pulled over the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear.''
Penn's film, which he also scripted, begins with the narrator of the Springsteen song, Joe Roberts (David Morse) preparing for the return of his wayward brother, Frank (Viggo Mortenson) from Vietnam. The cast of supporting characters make up the rest of Joe's family, his wife (Valeria Golino) and his Mother (Sandy Dennis) and Father (Charles Bronson). Frank returns for only the briefest of periods and is gone again. A restless soul he returns to the road to keep at bay what he perceives to be the boredom and absurdity of day to day life. Quite like the Jack Nicholson character in Five Easy Pieces, Frankie is never far away from trouble, never far away from walking out on someone important in his life. He eventually returns with a girl, Dorothy (a fantastic Patricia Arquete), who's pregnant with his child. Frankie decides to make a stab at the kind of life his settled brother has established. But his nature is what it is and chaos is rarely far away from the troubled and semi psychotic Frankie.
I mentioned Five Easy Pieces before and one of the things that struck me about this film, visually speaking, was that although made in 1991 it looks as if it was made in the seventies, in which it's set. I don't just mean that the car's and clothes are of the seventies, which of course they are. But the film itself looks as it was filmed in the seventies, reminding very me much of something like Badlands or indeed Five Easy Pieces. This is a commendable feat from the films photographer and this aspect gives The Indian Runner and its story a grainy authenticity. The story starts off at a slow pace and in the first half hour I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not. But Penn gradually pushes up a few gears to tell a painful yet engrossing story about the relationship between these two brothers and how that relationship is defined by their contrasting perspectives of life.
Joe is the guy next door, a good man with a wife, a child and a steady job. When Joe is called to use his fire arm in the course of duty he knows he does the right thing but still suffers from the guilt of the action. Frankie is restless and cannot subscribe to Joes happy and settled life. He's a candle burning at both ends and no matter how much Joe tries to encourage otherwise, all Frankie can see is the pain and the negativity in the world. Add to that a venomous temper and Frankie becomes a difficult person to love.
Penn accompanies Joe and Frankie with a solid set of fully rounded supporting characters containing just as much depth as the two leads. There's Charlton Heston as Mr. Roberts, Joe and Frankie's father, who plays the angry and somewhat spiteful role with expert subtlety. Patricia Arquette is wonderfully quirky in one of the most intriguing roles in the film, as Frankie's girlfriend, Dorothy. Valeria Golino plays Joe's wife Maria, and their relationship and love appears both genuine and authentic.
The Indian Runner starts off slow but it soon enough pulls us in to an absorbing and not so much an expected straight forward story of this brotherly relationship and how our differing points of view can both define and destroy relationships we have in life. It's also a story of trying to help those who cannot and do not want to help themselves which is always a captivating one.
Gone Girl (2014)
Absurd story yet the underlying themes of marriage disillusionment are very real and the characters are complex, flawed and fascinating.
Gone Girl is not quite the film that I expected it to be. Having not read the book, my predictions were based solely on the films trailer which gives us an awful lot of information and had led me to expect an investigation into marital difficulties following a wife's disappearance. That's what it is for the first hour but it changes gear after that and becomes something else entirely which will come to no surprise to those who have read the book.
On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) arrives home to find evidence of a possible struggle in his home and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) missing. Over the days following Amy's disappearance we learn through Nick's reaction and behavior that he was totally unhappy in his marriage and this leads to the police and perhaps even more importantly the media, beginning to suspect him.
The Police are represented through likable yet hard-nosed Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens). Nick is accompanied by Boney as he tracks the various anniversary gift clues left to him by Amy, which is a tradition she performs each year. Things begin to spiral from there in the best tradition of a thriller novel. To divulge much more would be to sabotage the plot. Let's just say that when writing this piece, trying to navigate through egg shells of plot spoilers I was reminded very much of the warnings that accompanied films such as Hitchcock's Psycho and Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques. Before the end credits rolled, early audiences were encouraged not to reveal the plot twists to their friends. If this wasn't already a hugely successful bestselling novel, a similar warning would have been apt.
The story is ridiculous yet Gone Girl is a thoroughly enjoyable film that I would look forward to seeing again. The plot may be absurd yet the underlying themes of marriage disillusionment are very real and the characters are complex, flawed and fascinating.
Ben Affleck fits into the character of Nick Dunne like a glove. Everything about his body language is languid and fed up. He stands on his lawn, hands dangling by his side, big deep breath, contemplating the darkness of his situation. Nick Dunne isn't a good guy or a bad guy. He's a normal decent guy with some serious flaws, like most of us. And it's this that makes his character interesting and Affleck's performance so compelling. He's more than just the every Joe though. Look out for the emotional depths he must reach when he's told things that shock him about his wife. It's a mixture of feigning anger and disguising the secrets of his marriage as well as genuine shock at times. It's a wonderful performance.
Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunne is an equal yet all together different performance. Amy is intense, intelligent, manipulative and maniacal and Pike plays her full throttle with some of her more severe scenes bringing to mind Heath Ledgers memorable turn as The Joker in The Dark Knight. We don't get to know Amy as quickly as we get to know Nick, so to speak about her performance in much more depth would be to begin to give plot elements away.
Both Pike and Affleck are shored up by an excellent supporting cast. As mentioned Kim Dickens as Detective Boney plays that wonderful kind of detective that seems to almost charm her suspect into guilt. Carrie Coon as Nick's rock of a sister Margo is a completely down to earth, believable character and their brother/Sister relationship comes across naturally. Tyler Perry brings some timely humor as a lawyer in the final third of the film and the supporting cast is complete with Neil Patrick Harris as a rich mama's boy and a high quality creep.
In many aspects Gone Girl holds similarities with David Fincher's previous film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Both are adoptions of best-selling books. Both are plot dominated thrillers. It has been said that both could be classed as adoptions of 'Airport' novels, an airport novel being a fairly long, fast paced thriller/adventure meant to eat up the hours of sitting and waiting. In other words, a book you read to fill empty hours, rather than a book you'd seek out to read. Perhaps the two are not mutually exclusive but it offers an interesting look toward the direction Fincher, one of the most important filmmakers of the last two decades, is heading and whether it's the right direction or not. Zodiac, Fincher's finest film to date could never be accused of being an airport novel.
That said, Gone Girl is a thoroughly enjoyable film, one I'd watch again, a film with characters that we want to know more about and a plot to keep you glued to your chair. It is of course absurd and ridiculous like any good airport novel. But if you focus instead on the wonderful characters and their navigation through this whirlwind plot, you'll find Gone Girl to be another solid Fincher film even it does fall short of being placed alongside his absolute finest.
Boyhood (2014)
Richard Linklater takes the coming of age drama to new heights
There are small, unremarkable moments in life that seem to linger in our memories for far longer than they should. When we think about our lives thus far, there are the obvious milestones that stick out, last day of school, the first time you got drunk, the first time you fell in love, the first time you got your heart broken, so on and so forth. All subjects worthy of a film plot, to one degree or another.
Yet then there are trivial, unremarkable moments in life that linger in our minds memory and yet have no right nor need to be there, seemingly. Fleeting incidents, noteworthy only in their collective banality, and yet they hang around.
Because life isn't really a collection of milestones, as Patricia Arquette's character in Boyhood determines, but a collection of transitory incidents. This is the idea Richard Linklater has built his film Boyhood around, a film in which nothing really happens and it just might be the best film of the year.
Linklater cast the six year-old Ellar Coltrane as Mason, taking a few weeks out of each of the subsequent 12 years to shoot small fragments of Boyhood, so as the audience could view Mason's character grow up in real time. It is a totally unique achievement in feature film-making and in doing this Linklater has taken the coming of age drama to a level it hasn't been to before.
Ethan Hawke, who is one of the films numerous joys as Mason's at first useless then energetic and warm father, described the film making process as being like making a short every year for 12 years. Just consider for a moment the amount of variables Linklater was surrendering to once he committed to this project.
Firstly, there is obviously Mason, whom Linklater could have had no idea at 6 years of age would have developed the talent to hold the character down as well as the focus or interest to stick around.
Take into account the number of changes that occur in our own lives over a 12 year period and we might be closer to realizing just how much could have gone wrong during this production.
Linklater's film captures the feeling of maturing, not just through boyhood but through adulthood in the case of Hawke and Arquette, unlike any film I can remember. The story follows Mason through the various stages of growing up, arguing with his sister, being chastised by his mother, and bonding with his Father.
Ethan Hawke brings the added spark to the film every time it's needed. Patricia Arquette is mesmerizing, most notably having left her drunken husband and in mid melt down when asked by her daughter, 'What are we going to do?' 'I don't know, I don't know what we're going to do', she erupts. Parents don't always have the answer.
They usually think they do though. One of the most subtle and spot on aspects in Boyhood is that Mason is constantly being told what to do by his elders so much so that even we the audience grow weary of it. But it's totally accurate. Isn't this exactly how we all experienced childhood? It very much brought to mind The 400 Blows in this respect.
I touched on the idea of Coltrane perhaps tiring of the project and jacking it in. Although he obviously doesn't jack it in, once he reaches the awkward teenage years you can see a certain shift in his performance, awkwardness encompassed with a hint of disinterest. Whether this is Coltrane's natural teenage awkwardness coming through or a conscious move on the part of him and the filmmakers is unclear and irrelevant, what matters is it works perfectly.
Once Mason reaches the age of 17 he becomes pretty hard going, growing into a dark and difficult young man. This too is surely accurate, however that doesn't mean that his rants don't become a little bit irritating and tiresome after a while. In this portion of the movie the real delight is watching the development of Hawke and Arquette into mid-life.
It's as much their film as it is Coltrane's. Their growing in front of the screen becomes more fascinating as the film goes on, unlike Mason's which becomes a touch harder to bare. Again, maybe this is just totally accurate to teenagers.
The film's idea is well summarized by Arquette in her final scene. Her only Son is leaving her alone in her small, empty apartment to depart for college. She suddenly realizes that her life has been a collection of those transitory moments, the little, seemingly meaningless, moments. And now they're all gone and her only son is departing the nest.
The film is innovative in story-telling and leaves the viewer feeling certain content with life during the hours following viewing. A feeling that we're all in the same boat and all our lives are made up of is those fleeting and seemingly meaningless moments. And then they're gone. Like all great films this film puts a mirror up against our own lives and forces us to take a good, long, look.