Boyhood (2014)

It finally came via Netflix, and boy (heh), am I relieved not to have seen it in a theater. Oh, I've sat thru longer movies without breaks and felt fine about them, but when the action takes place across 12 years with 143 scenes, not always clarifying the year, it sure feels longer than 2 hours and 45 minutes. A $2.4 million budget across that time won't get you much in the way of visuals, either. I started getting uncomfortable in my seat about half an hour in.

Not to say it bored me. I didn't find myself waiting for something great to happen. And yet...nothing great does happen. It's never especially funny, intense, heartwarming, or tragic. Like in same director Richard Linklater's Before trilogy, the apparent point is to keep everything credible -- pretty much the opposite of escapism. That's basically the whole advantage to the 12-year shoot: no fake aging and no anachronisms. IMDb trivia indicate that the makers threw in some personal elements from reality to boot. You can call it sweet; I just say, "That's all well and good, but how is it for art and entertainment?"

I understand that Linklater changed the title from 12 Years because of last year's Academy Best Picture. While I approve that change, I wouldn't have chosen Boyhood. Protagonist Mason's possible twin Samantha (played by Linklater's own daughter, no less) gets almost as much attention, despite the actress temporarily wanting to leave the project out of lost interest. And Patricia Arquette as their mother puts on the most vaunted performance.

So what do these seemingly ordinary lives offer for recurring themes? Well, since the parents are divorced before the beginning, Mom must struggle to handle things in general, and the kids must contend with each other and a lack of decent male role models. Their biological father (Linklater mainstay Ethan Hawke) can show them a fun time but does a lackluster job with responsibilities, sometimes encouraging misbehavior like stealing campaign signs from yards; Mom's second husband is uptight yet prone to getting "tight" in the old slang sense; and her next boyfriend keeps reminding Mason who owns the house, implying a threat to kick him out if he crosses a line. (We never see her break up with the last one, which makes for one of many awkward transitions in the film.) It's quite a while before we meet any grown men I'd care to meet in RL.

Unsurprisingly, Mason and Samantha both grow fairly rebellious by their teens. They don't join gangs or anything; they just do marijuana, drink under age, have trouble in school, probably lose their virginity...that pedestrian sort of sin. (Religious sources voice mild concerns about the examples set for viewers.) Mason wins more of our sympathy, because despite his habitual near-smile, he has reason to feel like everybody gets on his case all the time. The night after I watched, I dreamed of finding curse words in various places I didn't expect, probably because Boyhood has a considerable count.

Alas, these themes go only so far toward tying the movie together. Many moments serve only to bring, I guess, more character to the characters, or else to establish a precise year, like the bookstore festivity for the debut of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I can only imagine how many scenes were cut and whether any would make the gestalt feel tighter, albeit at the further cost of brevity. The ending doesn't look like an ending; if I didn't know the runtime, the credits would've taken me by surprise. When I told a co-worker about the movie later, he asked what the message was, and I couldn't really answer.

So, the Oscars? Count me on Team Birdman, both for personal preference and for prediction. For all the other awards Boyhood has already garnered, I don't see anything so meandering joining the Academy pantheon. Of course, Birdman may look pretty out of place there too. Maybe they'll finally give the top prize to a movie with a gay protagonist, The Imitation Game. Maybe they'll go the relatively "inoffensive" route with The Theory of Everything. The Grand Budapest Hotel is too much of a quirky comedy, American Sniper is too conservative, and Selma and Whiplash just don't have that much support.

I read that the Academy Awards get their best viewer turnouts in years when the ultimate winner is obvious from the outset. Guess most TV-tuned filmgoers hate surprises. Me, I enjoy the suspense. But don't expect me to review the results on this blog.