Kristin Reviews Boyhood

When I finished watching Boyhood, I felt kind of outraged, like I, or someone I cared about, had been taken advantage of. It took a few minutes texting back and forth with Steve for me to put things in perspective and figure out why I felt that way.

It’s not that Boyhood is a terrible movie. I mean, I had to sit through Tree of Life, so relatively speaking, this viewing experience was pretty low on the pain scale.

Richard Linklater’s movies explore human relationships within moments in time – they don’t really tell stories so much as settle the viewer into the middle of some characters’ lives and allow the interaction between those people to reveal a sort of gradual evolution through minimal action and a lot of dialogue. His scenes often feel as if they are unscripted, which is interesting because Linklater is notorious for requiring diligent rehearsals and allowing absolutely no improvisation on his sets.

Boyhood is exactly what it’s meant to be – a series of scenes depicting the growth and maturation of a boy into a young man. The fact that Linklater filmed it as the actual actor grew from a boy into a young man is cool and demonstrates that Linklater and his cast and crew are all focused, dedicated, forest–through–the–trees sorts of artists. It’s successful at being exactly what Linklater set out to do, which is good for Linklater and his team, but not necessarily proof that it’s one of the best movies of the year. In fact, I would argue that it is not even the most skillfully crafted movie of the year.

And this is why I felt so betrayed after watching Boyhood. It wasn’t because I hated it or even because it was not what I expected. It was because everyone else – particularly the people who get to vote for these things – is lavishing praise upon it like it’s a masterpiece. But it’s not a masterpiece, and it seems to me that this should be obvious to anyone who watched it. It’s just a creative way to tell a reasonably interesting, but ultimately too long, story. 

It’s like that time I watched The Sixth Sense and felt the story structure was weak, even though it had a great ending . . . and everyone else watched The Sixth Sense and saw only the great ending. I feel as if everyone who watched Boyhood saw actor, Ellar Coltrane, grow up but didn’t actually see the movie itself.

Honestly, it is baffling to me how anyone who watched Birdman and Whiplash – even anyone who watched The Grand Budapest Hotel, which wasn’t perfect but still wildly entertaining and a treat to look at – could put Boyhood in the same category. Had it not been nominated for awards, and had I watched it on my own, I would have forgotten it fairly quickly.

I believe Richard Linklater will win Best Director, and I guess that’s fair, since this was his vision and he carried it out the way he intended. Patricia Arquette is a fine actress, but she does nothing in this movie that she hasn’t done many times before in many other TV shows and movies. She’ll probably win, though. I will be extremely disappointed if Boyhood wins Best Picture, although I do know it’s a front-runner. Birdman and Whiplash both deserve the kind of praise Boyhood is getting, and it’s just too bad they’re getting shouldered out of the way solely because of a gimmick.

-Kristin
12.14.2014