Monday, August 4, 2014

Now Playing: Boyhood

“It’s the beginning of August, and I’d be a little surprised if I didn’t just see the eventual best picture winner.”  That’s a common saying as summer turns to fall, with quality films finally breaking through the malaise of blockbusters and shallow romances.  It’s understandable really: it’s not easy finding a movie that doesn’t feature a super hero or a Nicholas Sparksesque plot from May-August.  It’s not even that there’s anything wrong with that, but we all know they’re not going to compete for the gold guys come March.

And that’s the situation in which Boyhood hit theaters.  Just like every year, I tend to agree with the early buzz.  Boyhood is an excellent film. 

A lot will be and has been said about the 12 year filming process.  A lot should be said about it.  It takes unflinching drive, passion, and determination to commit to something so long.  No matter the finished product, even having something to show for it, and not an aborted plan 5 years in, is an accomplishment. 

The finished product though, is much more than getting to see an actor grow up as the same fictional character.  Certainly, that’s a great part of the film: wondering how he’ll grow up, and getting to see it.  Likewise, it’s quite a treat to see the world change with the characters. 

But beside all of that, there’s something spectacular about the whole experience.  We have the technology to age people in film.  We’ve been casting multiple actors as the same character to age them for years.  But Richard Linklater opted for neither to tell his story.  What we get instead is both an interesting study on growth and change, and an impressive meditation on artistry.

To make a film like this, you have to be determined and devoted.  But at the same time, it is a film about transformation and growth.  No one can say they’re the same person now as in 2002.  The artist, the writer and director behind all of this, cannot claim to be the same either. 

I don’t know how much of the original screenplay remained intact for 12 years.  I know though, that the mind interpreting it grew and changed.  It had to. 

Annie Dillard notes in the marvelous “The Writing Life” that it takes, on average, 2-5 years to write a full novel.  She goes on to suggest that the work is finished by a very different person- a person 5 years senior- to the person who started it.  That’s true and profound.  But that same artist, as she or he grows, can edit it all across those 5 years.  The finished product, no matter when the lines were written, is a product approved and put forth by the 5 year older version. 

Boyhood and film, however, don’t allow so much control.  To be certain, much editing had to take place after all 12 years of filming stopped.  But recreating scenes from all but perhaps the last year would have been literally impossible.  Linklater was bound to the footage from years 1-11, for better or worse.  That's a fact only film can capture.  This film had to be a film because any other medium could not impose that limit or allow that organic an expression.

To that end, this is perhaps the most unique film ever created from an artistic standpoint.  It gives away some of the director's control, in order to tell the story how it must be told; the film, the actors, the world itself, had to age for the product to be possible.  It means the artist had to incorporate pieces of himself that were no longer himself.   How Linklater (how everyone) saw the world in 2002 is not how he sees the world in 2014.  But he had to show you a bit of how he saw it back then to accomplish the film’s first year.  That’s astounding. 

This is an artist creating a work which, in its own sort of way, creates itself.  It’s a rigid plan strictly adhered to (12 years, no other options) juxtaposed with the necessarily free-flowing line of time and aging. 

There is a plot, but it doesn’t matter.  There are characters you come to care about for no other reason than because they, too, are human.  It’s expertly shot without letting the lines overcome the story.  Linklater’s use of jumpcuts would make Godard salivate. 

But all of that technical excellence aside, this is a masterwork, because it is a master trusting his art to become itself. 

I don’t know that we’ll ever see another thing like it.  We must do all we can to celebrate it while we can.

It’s currently playing all over the place, including at the splendid Capitol Theater on West 65th.

-Zack

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