When we talk about “Adolescence”, there is no escape from mentioning the upcoming Oscar. Already painfully, Linklater’s new creation in relation to its competitive competitors fits itself into the category of “not bad, but others are better.” The difference from the same “king speaks” or “collision” in a fundamentally different approach to the film process. We are talking, of course, about those notorious twelve years of slavery (not to take literally!), which fell to the lot of the film crew and actors. This method of creating one picture is as simple as it is unique, and in this case it is correct.
Relying on metaphors, "Adolescence" is such a detailed album with photos on the same topic, which flickers through between business over a cup of tea in the company of relatives or friends. Of course, the album is not yours. You will not be able to keep such “singleness” carefully! It's a guest album. So, the perception of this album depends entirely on how nostalgic you are by nature. Not indifferent to the past - the movie is for you! You will review it, admire it, recommend it to other people. Otherwise, the "Adolescence" at best will seem trifling, but the worst will be damned as a waste of precious three hours of life.
If this assumption is correct, Linklater, of course, looks like a spoiler of fate. The praises of his new film began to sing at last year’s Berlinale, continued at all other festivals and will sing, probably, until the American Film Academy distributes its awards. The film is a kaleidoscope of absolutely universal life events of one average American family. He is able to conjure up certain episodes of his youth, but he is not able to fully immerse himself in his world. Linklater spent twelve years shooting small pieces of a boy, his sister, mother and father every year, but in the pursuit of maximum realism he forgot the most important thing that should be in such stories - spiritual excitement, catharsis and the subsequent conclusion: who we are, what we are for this world and in this world, how our perception of the world changes under the onslaught of accumulated experience and the increasing number of years of life.
Unconditionally great here look references to events, one way or another already inscribed in the history of the United States. Here you and the release of the last volumes of “Harry Potter”, and the criticism of the hero of Ethan Hawke Bush policy, and the promotional campaign in support of Barack Obama, and “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd, performed by one of the heroines under the guitar. The presence of such stages as conversations with his father, skirmishes with his sister, a rude stepfather, first love, the first parting, the mandatory drinking of the first bottle of beer with friends at the first party look good only because the very awareness of the viewer of such moments in principle passes on “hurrah”.
Perhaps, with the best leading actor, all these shortcomings would not be so striking. But Allar Coltrane in the role of Mason looks lost on all articles, and therefore any other star, whether it is trying Arquette or beautiful Hawk, although they do not raise any questions about their presence in the frame, but it is not about them in the film.
As a result, childhood has passed, youth is just beginning to boil, and the main acting youth already looks to the future not with fear or admiration, but with longing and indifference. In addition, he enters the adult world, seemingly without learning from the mistakes of his parents. It's kind of sad. The heroes of the famous love trilogy-long-term all the same Linklater met their dawns and sunsets an order of magnitude more interesting.
Well, I will write a review of this pretentious movie. This kind of work, where the shooting days are only 45, but shot in 12 years, definitely deserves attention. But is there anything exciting about it? Something that makes you want to look at the main characters? Nope. It's just a movie about the simple life of typical Americans. You know, while I was watching the movie with my brother, he and I were counting the number of clichés. The film itself is full of stereotypes. Baseball, politics, parental divorce, sex, parties, psycho-husband, American football, fast food, weed, rock music, father on a cool car, huge bills, college and other things, oh yeah, we are all very interesting to watch.
There's no brilliant camera work like Birdman or Obsession, there's no Oscar nominees, there's no cool atmosphere, I didn't see the thought in that movie. But there is a gorgeous project that lasted 12 years. If it wasn’t for him, the film wouldn’t have been nominated. It’s really cool to watch the boy grow up and everyone changes. After watching, I returned to the beginning of the film again to see how cute the main character was and what an unshaven dead man he became.
And maybe there's nothing unusual about it, and it's just my habit of seeing something deep in it. And for some reason we were shown the whole American life through the prism of a boy. And yes, of course, we saw it, the usual problems that everyone definitely faced and somehow experienced. Yes, the film is very lifelike. And boring, watching the film lasted for 5 hours, thanks to constant pauses. A lot of empty dialogue, a lot of empty and boring actions. Americans love such films, so I would not be surprised that he will win an Oscar in the nomination “Best Picture”.
5 out of 10
Before we go directly to the discussion of the film, let me make a small digression.
So, each genre of cinema has its own laws, but at the heart of each film is always the same, the same is the engine of the plot everywhere and always. It's something called conflict. This is true for every feature film, not just drama or action film. Conflict is at the heart of every comedy, every children's cartoon. Conflict is the basis of every documentary film about living beings. The conflict can be obvious both in Roman Polansky’s Massacre, which describes a quarrel between two married couples, and less obvious, say, the conflict between Elena-wife and Elena-mother in Zvyagintsev’s film of the same name.
You know where there's no conflict? There is no conflict in the home video.
And that's what we see in adolescence. In fact, Adolescence is almost a three-hour home video for some reason, filmed with the firm hand of a professional cameraman (very decently shot, notice, visually the film is really good).
The actors are very good, especially Ethan Hawke. The characters are incredibly alive, the environment is alive, the film seems to breathe. Except the script is dead. Increased realism in films is used by the creators in order to place realistic characters from their realistic environment in a stressful situation, to lure the viewer out of his comfort zone, to make them think about the theme “this could happen to me!”. There is one such situation in the film, and it is exhausted by the end of the first third of the film.
In Adolescence there is no main plot, it consists of a confused set of scenes, which are difficult to call sub-sites. There are two conflicts in the film: the second husband of the mother and the breakup with the girl. The third husband in the film is so small that two disputes between him and the hero can not be called a conflict. The second husband is good. Marco Pergli shows one of the best movie alcoholics in my memory.
After watching the film, I found myself thinking that if I missed all the scenes without Hawk and Perlia, the film would have lost nothing. The first plays brilliantly, the second brings to the film at least some conflict.
This picture is hardly fashionable to call a film, rather it is an experiment, certainly interesting. As interesting as the Artist, who ripped off a whole bouquet of Oscars in 2011, but today nobody needs and safely forgotten.
Pros? Acting and camera work, and the notorious 12 years of filming and watching the change of characters (physical).
Cons is one of the worst stories I've seen.
Boyhood is a grandiose project by Richard Linklater. I heard about this project a couple of years ago, but it fell out of my memory. Now the film is considered a key contender for the Oscars, which aroused my interest with renewed vigor.
I was bought by the idea of the director to make a film for such a long period, with one cast. This is a truly unprecedented practice. After watching the movie, I was disappointed.
The fact is that there is no plot in the film. These are really some scenes from the family archive, which were combined into a single tape. Throughout the film, you’re watching Mason’s gradual development and you realize that you’ve been through the same hardships. I think that the film will be close to many only in that in the reflection of the main character, everyone will see himself.
I did not like the characters of Hawk and Arckett. A single mother who is strong in spirit and drags two children on her, but how typical it is to portray a woman who is all her life looking for someone to lean on and be weak. The father, a typical out-of-work alcoholic, drives a cool car and sees the children on weekends, corrupting their stomachs with fries and so on. But there can be no claims to the actors. Hawk squeezed the most out of his character, I believe that he is a father, that he loves his children, I believe that lives. Patricia Arquette, she is a mother, just great. Indescribably, in it I saw my mother who would do anything for the welfare of her children.
Separately highlight Ellar, aka Mason. The guy has not yet decided whether he will be a professional actor, but this role did not succeed. Throughout the film, he lives with one face, showing no emotion, and if he tries, he does nothing. How can a guy not enjoy shooting a gun? Or is it indifferent to the Beatles collection? My mind refuses to understand this.
Soundtrack. He deserves a hundred points out of ten. The soundtrack is excellent.
"Boyhood" is a good movie. He will find his audience, there will be people like me who will see themselves. But nothing more. It's just a film from the family archive. But the film is good.
As everyone already understood, the main highlight of this film was only that it was shot for 12 years and the main characters grow up and change along with the film.
I'll give you 5 points for that.
I think Richard Linklater should talk to a lot of people and learn about their childhood before writing the script. Boys and girls are always playing games. Was that the only way we spent our childhood? Remember your 12 years of life, first love, first kiss, first sex, first cigarette behind garages, boyhood hooliganism, diaries under the pillow, and what about ' Mom's lipstick, big sister's boots...' dolls, cars and plastic pistols. Did Grandpa give anyone a gun? I think it's too much! What about the quarrels, tears and childish whims? Where is all this? My brother and sister, why didn’t they show me the relationship? I didn’t feel my childhood in this picture. . .
Any film in the genre of drama for me is a story that teaches something. Has this film taught anyone anything? Just not having kids? They wanted to show the unhappy life of a woman, the periods of growing up of children, so show me that it caused emotions. I want to empathize somewhere and rejoice somewhere. . .
I only put 5 points for having 12 years, not two years, but 12 years to write a good script, consult with people, change something. And he didn't take advantage of that.
Unprecedented, even reckless at first glance, could seem the decision to make such a long project, length of 11 years, the main characters of which are not even actors. What is remarkable, in this decision, the picture is made purely in an artistic way, without a hint of pseudo-documentality. Documentation is a side view, not a point. Documentation is a view, subjectivity in one way or another. Lack of self-irony. History, for all its art, gives a fleeting look into life itself, inside it, without looking from the outside. This picture becomes the first and, perhaps, for many years, the only one of its kind, to the insanity of sincere and alive.
The story follows a seven-year-old Mason living with his mother and sister. The mother now and then finds a new husband, more for adequate and comfortable growing up and raising children than for love. The real biological father, whose role was brilliantly played by Ethan Hawke, never forgot about these children.
In general, the father played by Hawke plays one of the fundamental roles in this film, being almost the most sincere and open adviser and just a friend of the main character.
The picture constantly presents us with negative, neutral and sympathetic characters, but there is neither negative nor neutral. Life is one indivisible whole and art can afford even such interpretations. In fact, all the heroes of the 11-year process of life know nothing. They know what family is, they know what problems are, they know what love is. Everyone has their own priorities and thoughts on their own account, but no one knows what life is. The feeling of loss does not leave, it would seem, all the characters in this story, but it is most reflected in Mason himself.
“Adolescence” is a name that speaks for itself. The stages of the formation of the main character are presented to us with a series of small (however, not drizzling), important and not very important events in the boy’s life. But they are always something signifying and defining. A passing screen for the separation of time periods and social unrest before us are the political views of Father Mason on the war in Iraq, and the release of the Harry Potter books, and the musical preferences of young people and the character himself. The music here goes with us in the course of the picture and all 11 years of filming now and then changing leitmotif, denoting their time. Much importance is also played by the music that instills the nameless character of Ethan Hawke Mason - country, The Beatles and many really amazing artists.
Dad and mom are nameless characters, do you feel ironic? Ironically, there are things marked, conditional and even branded. And there are forever. Family. The main meaning of perhaps everything that exists in this insane world slaps a palm over the mind of the viewer as a possible message. But immediately I want to say that in the picture there are no deliberately laid messages and specifics. There is a purpose and a desire to show the flow of life. And what everyone will see in this stream, the river with time or even the ocean is up to the viewer.
Neither fleeting pampering with pot and alcohol, nor the first sexual pleasures, love novels do not become the main storyline here. As in our lives, everything happens by itself. Here the main character is fond of photography and you do not know what will happen with this passion in the future. “What can you give the world in your photos that others can’t?” asks his teacher, “Any fool can pick up a camera and press a button.”
First love, first breakup, first can of beer, divorce parents – at first glance, everything would seem perfectly calibrated, but no. Dimensions of the film do not occupy and even with a certain drama, the picture goes on as usual, without letting go of either the hero or the viewer, but goes slowly, with self-irony, with the remaining feeling of loss and inevitability of great changes in the unknown and painted future.
For the first time you see such a sincere film, shot exclusively (not counting the concept itself) in an artistic way, devoid of even a bit of pretentiousness and pretentiousness of author's cinema. Neither the director nor the actors here are going to lie to the viewer from the screen. “What’s the point?” the father asks, “I don’t know what I don’t know,” he jokes. He's not lying.
Throughout the film, the main character is now and then confronted with the opinions implanted by people, the struggle with imaginary authorities, but it is the inner struggle and the attempt to overcome the immensity of later life that will prevail in it. The best reflections on the meaning of being here, perhaps, prevail in the fleeting, fundamental form of dialogues or monologues of the protagonist.
“You know the expression: seize the moment. I think this is the moment that catches us.
“Yes, it's a constant. The moment is always now, right?
Boyhood – if translated from English, it turns out a funny nonsense – “boy’s cap”.
The word “adolescence” will give us the full range of meaning, the importance of this period, as Richard Linklater shows it.
Aut-Rock - has no fate, that is, fate. Everything that will form the fate and life of a man, laid in this period.
By the way: "Ot-rock-o-vic-za" - the one who learns to make a new life in the future (twig, thread, life - the words of one nest in Russian).
After watching Before Dawn, my respect for this director is immense. This is the brightest star in the sky of world cinema in terms of worldview, the owner of an absolutely extraordinary director's "handwriting".
I fully agree with the fact that “Boyhood” is a work on the same level with the novels of L. N. Tolstoy. It's an epic of modern life. Who among us does not return to his childhood? Licklater helped us all return to our adolescence.
Three hours of screen time and the most important part of human life.
For the first time, the director discovered the average American family. As always, the effect of your personal presence and involvement in the lives of its heroes, you seem to observe yourself, very close people, but do not look, but look with your heart, soul.
American teenager. What does his life consist of? However, in the first minutes of the film, it does not matter in which country the action takes place. You just understand that there are specifics and national nuances. What is the cost of singing the anthems of America and Texas before class?
Sweet or bitter memories of moments of fleeting life. "Moments catch us." Bravo, Richard Licklater, you caught a moment, and no matter what, it's beautiful!!
The most important thanks to this unique director and man for the optimism of the perception of a difficult – simple life. His films are so bright and filled with love for an ordinary person!!! This is life, this is how we live. We live.
Rejoice in every moment of your life: here’s your hated, nasty, bullying older sister, and here’s your 16th, and she’s like, “Be happy, Mason!” Here's a friend who will flash in your memories as he flashed and disappeared behind the bushes when you moved to another city. Forever. Here's the boys who come after you in the bathroom. It's terrible. But not forever. Father and mother are fighting. Forever. Here's the father who was with you and his sister every weekend. Always! Here's a mother who, despite the nightmare of circumstances, the crookedness of her sister, remains calm and tired and tries to explain why everything happens this way. All your childhood, she aspired and tried to have a family, had a father, she smoothed sharp corners, saved, made small holidays and just loved. Always. It doesn't always happen to everyone. But it is, it is in this fucking life!
Here's a father who doesn't help financially, he lives with his wife's wallet all the time, but he just talks to you, talks about everything, and he's really interested in you and your whole life. And his new family suddenly becomes your second family. What a few years ago brought pain, comes back a hundredfold and becomes happiness, part of your life.
By the way, the image of Mason - the eldest and his new wife - is another layer of Linklater's epic. He also carefully and very sharply looks at the nuances of adult relationships. And this relationship can become a non-educative lesson, and for someone a discovery of how to live and love. This is a new level of “research” of the director, a kind of addition to “Before Midnight”.
Or how male selfishness and a false understanding of their “male role” in the family can distort the fate of those who gave life.
Or how a woman who has invested her whole life in children, in the house, and looking at those flying out of the nest, asks herself the question: what next?! Life can seem so short, so worthless. And how beautiful and loved she is at this moment.
How many little things are in the mundane or mud of life, or in understanding and accepting the important questions of life. Remember the scene by the pond when Mason and her sister are visiting the parents of Mason Sr.'s wife. As these (well said in one of the reviews “enchanting parents with a Bible and a gun”) are careful in matters of faith, unobtrusive, able to just love other people’s children. And the father said, “Look, son, can you throw stones on water?” No need to complicate, life is such “pancakes” on the surface of a small pond of our lives. Something is about us and something is flying over us. But look, look, I made 5 pancakes. Maybe you'll have more!! Well done, son!
Yes, the film reviewers are right. It is so voluminous that you can write a hundred pages, going back to the episodes of the film, as well as to life itself. No wonder Mason became a good photographer. He can see.
Last shots: wow, how huge and beautiful the world around, this is awesome! And next to a new person, look, he may be interesting.
Remember in The Last Samurai: It’s beautiful!
How wonderful it is not the last moment of life.
How often do we hear, see absolutely banal and familiar things that are actually true? Simultaneous crazy incomprehensibility and simplicity is our life. The truth is simplicity. Sounds pretentious, yes, and fortunately there is Richard Linklater, who, both in his non-chimerical trilogy of love (“Before Sunrise”, “Before Sunset”, etc.), and in “Boyhood”, without resorting to truisms, gives us a chance to realize this.
Twelve years, months, minutes, everything becomes a moment. Situations, people, feelings – they seem to sew medical threads into the heroes, unintentionally creating them, just as this surgical process happens to us every day. Absolutely live. He was raised by the director, actors, film crew, and most importantly - Time. Time gave him music ranging from The Black Keysu to Cobra Starship; time changed technology, people’s lives, their political views, hobbies. The line between fiction and documentary film has disappeared. Linklater created something culturally significant. Ethnographer.
The film obviously says nothing, does not use nefarious moralizing techniques, it is like silence. Silence before revelation.
Surprised by the negative reviews. Objectively, perhaps, this is a reaction to the really empty and meaningless admiration of many of the “concept” to shoot 12 years of one actor, showing how a young man grows up.
I didn’t know anything about the film except for the Metacritic rating, the Golden Globe Awards and the American Critics in Pocket – more often than not, you have to navigate it when choosing a film. It wasn’t until half an hour later that a friend said to me, ‘Dude, I think this kid is played by the same actor.’ That was fun. The director is lucky that no one has died in 12 years, at least from the main cast. I hope others are alive and well too.
Of course, it was cool to watch family members grow up in front of their eyes, but you can watch a video on YouTube, where the guy took a picture of himself almost every day for 10 years, and it is no less spectacular.
I don’t think the director consciously thought about making a 12-year-old movie about growing up and waking up every day with that thought. It's the idleness of clean water. And I don’t think Jarmusch did Coffee and Cigarettes with that approach, 17 years have passed from the first shot to the premiere. It worked by itself.
If you pay attention to the writers - it's Linklater, Delpy and Hawke. All of them are familiar almost since 1995 and to this day in the trilogy "Before [dawn, sunset, midnight]"". I think on some day they just conceived it and started slowly, in between projects, getting together and doing a few scenes a year. So accumulated good material, in the spirit of the family video archive, which Linklater carefully mixed and presented to the public. All. That's the whole point of the movie.
The rest is simple naturalness. People didn't care. The conversations of the characters and situations in the film are simple but close to the viewer. They were not written by seasoned screenwriters and they did not put “deep meaning”, which in our lives so nothing. It is very easy for them to sincerely empathize, especially if there have been similar situations in life. It's a very cool feeling. And now try, as one of the reviewers preferred, sincerely empathize with a poor and hungry African kid. Of course, he has more action in his life. Especially if he lives in Liberia, where Ebola is prevalent, or Nigeria, where children are being stolen by hundreds of jihadists. You will not get anything, except for the feeling for 5 minutes after watching: “What a pussy is happening in Africa.” And then brew yourself a seagull, surf the Internet and forgot. Grace.
It's just a cool movie about a guy and his life, whatever it is. No husks. Yeah, no action, no drama, no tragedy. But I was great. I spent three hours looking at the boy’s life and remembering myself in his years. It was a good trip. From the heart.
9 out of 10
“Boyhood” by Richard Linklater, despite the epochality and monumentality of the plan, the picture is quite quiet, calm, without any unexpected plot twists. There are no important events here again. More precisely, there are, but only talk about them, the events themselves remain out of sight of the camera. For the author, it is not the fact of accomplishment (whether it is the first love or the first bottle of alcohol), but how this fact is refracted in the psychology of a person, how it affects him, how he forms a personality. Hence the contemplative style of narration of the tape.
The picture was shot for 11 years. She didn’t have a clear script, it was texting and changing as the filming progressed. And year after year, the camera recorded the maturation of the lead actor Allar Coltrane (at the beginning of filming he was seven years old, and at the end – eighteen). 11 years is a long time, so there was even an agreement that in the event of the death of Linklater, the film will shoot Ethan Hawke, a regular actor in the films of the director.
Perhaps Linklater himself subconsciously felt that he was creating something more than a movie, something he had never done before. The film is unique and at the same time simple. After all, what is it about growing up as an ordinary American boy? Similar motifs can be found in the classic works of Tolstoy, Dickens, Gorky. And uniqueness, just the same, lies in simplicity, in absolute sincerity, in the truth of what is happening.
You can compare it to your childhood.
Loud slogan, (as if hinting that the film has nothing more outstanding than a 12-year-old attempt), a lot of awards, positive reviews, admiring critics. How not to watch a movie that everyone loves?
Loved by critics, Linklater’s film, which managed to capture many awards this season, in fact turned out to be a big hoax.
Not causing either aesthetic pleasure or pleasure from the plot, the film becomes simply unbearable and boring, more and more intrigued by universal delight.
A godlessly prosaic script, as if written by a neighbor’s woman Nina, who once did not find victims and therefore sat down for writing this creation, would perfectly fit as a sleeping pill.
The story of a boy who just grew up and finally grew up, and thank you for that. Even the game of Arquette and Hawk, trying to refresh and give at least some dynamism to the film, was not able to pull this creation.
A great idea that turned into a complete disappointment for the viewer.
Everything would have turned out very well if the film had not been forced on me and when I began to watch it with very high expectations. For me, the film, even after revision, left one question: Why was it removed?
I'm not a film critic, but I'm surprised that this film will get a lot of this year. Naturally, take a camera and shoot everything you want for 12 years, especially when it comes to growing up. The theme was given to Linkeiter very good, shoot high-quality and do not mock the camera for 12 years.
I can say that my anger lies mainly in the advertising of this film, it is presented as a faceted diamond, but in fact – it would not exactly be a passing film that was shot for film critics and the race for awards.
The audience loved the film, I notice it very much, but when you ask them, will you watch it? They either lie or keep quiet.
I will not scold the actors, the main character played himself very well here, in fact it is so. Ethan Hawke at the same pace with Roseanne survived the film, or rather they tried to do it.
If there’s a movie about growing up, it’s definitely not.
3 out of 10
Here you watch a good film, and everything in it is good: the director, and the actors, and the picture, and then read reviews and comments, and it turns out that most people did not like this film. That's what I did with the movie "Adolescence."
He attracted a lot of attention because he had been filming for 12 years. It’s not every day that someone decides to experiment. And so Richard Linklater did, and judging by the awards, he didn't lose. The film turned out to be surprisingly realistic and real, because the actors really grow up and change, and no makeup artists can do it better than life itself. Yes, the film tells about a completely ordinary life of an American teenager and there you will not find dizzying plot twists and moments when the blood chills and the hair rises on end, but the genre of drama, and this drama is so sincere and lively that I have never seen. They say that if you can’t remember what the conversation was about, it means that it was really good and soulful, and with “Boyhood”, it tells about everything and nothing special at the same time. Throughout the film, we talk about childhood, growing up, parents, communication, friendship, love, finding yourself and your place in the world. Personally, in this story, I constantly recognized myself, recalled my childhood, questions that still remain unanswered, problems that everyone probably faced.
Maybe someone will find the film boring, but it is about each of us, about life as it is, without cinematic incredible turns and adventures. It was a pleasure to watch Mason, his sister and their parents grow up. The film impressed me with its sincerity, truthfulness and warmth. I must have seen it at the right time. I hope it will be useful to you too.
Richard Linklater’s acclaimed film would be very good if it were a documentary. And so, the impression is mixed.
The very idea of filming a growing-up story for twelve years must have required a certain amount of courage and certainly deserves respect. “Boyhood” is a truly grandiose project and an impressive feat on the part of both the director and actors. Watching the characters change is really interesting. Thanks to the constant cast, it seems that you are watching a real family.
The choice of events in the film also contributes to the illusion of reality. There is nothing extraordinary going on in the lives of Mason, his parents and his older sister, nothing that could be the basis for the film. Moving, domestic scandals, mutual grievances, sometimes frank conversations about contraception and how to like girls. Linklater seems to deliberately avoid strong emotions, concentrating on everyday details, which, in fact, is the life of most people.
At first, watching the film, out of habit you expect some dramatic situation, some danger, a particularly violent conflict. But then you realize: none of this will happen. You can run away from an angry drunken husband. Hitting school bullies will settle on its own. Games with circular saw discs will not end in injury. The theft of a sign agitating for the "wrong" presidential candidate will go unnoticed. No sharp corners.
Yes, they are not needed here, because the most important thing happens in the soul of the protagonist. From small details, from words thrown in the heat, from persistent parental demands and soft hints of how to live, from small protests and harmless deceptions, a personality is born. “Adolescence” is a story about the influences a person has experienced since childhood. Mother requires discipline and admires the smart daughter. Dad is trying hard to introduce to sports, to teach how to listen to The Beatles and explain how to treat girls in general and to a particular girl who left you in particular. Grandma gives a Bible for the fifteenth birthday, and Grandpa gives a hunting rifle.
Mason, meanwhile, is desperate to find his own way and meaning. And the “valuable” advice of family and friends is useless, because they are only an expression of someone’s personal views on the right life.
It is tempting to call “Boyhood” a novel of education. This is how many critics and viewers perceived him. Richard Linklater showed the story of growing up, turning a boy into a man, the story of gaining freedom and independence, the story of how a man after long doubts finally found himself. But is that true?
In fact, this impressive picture does not reach the novel of upbringing. Just a little bit, but... The reason is the static nature of the central character. In the pursuit of ordinaryity, the “Adolescence” lost not only an external but also an internal dramatic conflict. This is permissible in documentary, but it does not look winning in a feature film.
Mason does not become a man, does not become free and independent. He learned to argue with his parents, began to have sex and walk at night. He became interested in photography. He graduated from high school, went to college and began to live separately from his parents. But is that growing up? Hardly. Just life stages that by themselves say nothing about personality changes. So in the finale, Mason is still a brooding boy who doesn’t know who he is or where to go. He still accepts the rules of the game. “We are not going to college. You too, by the way.” Mason's still on the lead. Except that the "leader" has changed.
At the end of the year, all sorts of lists of “best films of the season” become a good help for any moviegoer. In December 2014, the vast majority of these sacred virtual manuscripts featured "The Boyhood" by 54-year-old American Richard Linklater. His fellow critics generally amicably assure that Linklater shot a masterpiece. It only took him 39 days to get there and... 11 years of life. Starting the project in 2002, at the age of 42 (according to the calculations of critic Sergey Kudryavtsev - this is the age when filmmakers shoot their best works), he finished it at the end of 2013.
But a whole year after the world premiere at the Sundance festival (the main show of independent cinema in America) and even after the prize for best director at the IFF in Berlin, none of the Russian distributors bothered to attach this tape to our rental. I suspect that the distributors were confused by its duration - almost three hours, although we recently demonstrated in the cinemas even longer timekeeping - "Life of Adele" and "Winter hibernation". Now replicated in the network space, "Boyhood" is unlikely to appear in theaters, and you, like me, will have to watch it from the monitor.
At first, this movie keeps on a long leash: the temptation to stop and postpone the viewing occurs more than once or twice. But then the movie begins to imperceptibly draw into itself, and in the end you do not want to put up with the final credits crawling on the screen. “Adolescence” is the story of the eleven-year-old growing up (from seven to eighteen years old) of a boy Mason from Texas, as well as his sister and divorced parents. Mason's dad is visiting with rare and short-lived attacks, and his mother, time after time, brings him to replace far from the men he would like.
For 11 years, Linklater shot one scene at a time once a year and in this sense the film has no analogues. Before him, no one risked investing in a project where anything could happen to any of the actors, or to the director himself. But Linklater is also a producer here, and therefore, like God, he is responsible for everything. When viewing, an unexpected effect is found: the most ordinary biography becomes interesting if you present it in details reminiscent of the time-lapse shooting technique used usually in popular science films to show plant growth.
At the same time, it is important to note that “Boyhood” is not a documentary, but a game film with a fictional plot about a quite ordinary family, of which, probably, tens or hundreds of thousands. Linklater consciously does not dramatize anything, but just a long observation - "captured time" (to the apt expression of Tarkovsky) - adds up to a drama, or a film novel, if not to say - an epic that can not just attract attention, but also not jokingly capture its content, despite the spontaneity and improvisational beginning of many scenes, not always assumed in advance. The director showed enviable will, never allowing any of the actors to see the footage for all the years of filming.
In fact, the adventurous project turned in the end not into a cinematic performance, but into a big movie, which does not contradict its conceptual plan. "...time, faced with memory, always learns about its lack of rights," wrote Joseph Brodsky. And this line could well become an epigraph to this picture, where film acts as a memory. Having experimented with drama in The Bezdelnik (1990), and with the types of films - animated and game - in The Awakening of Life (2001), Linklater simultaneously led another mega-project: Before Dawn (1995) - Before Sunset (2004) - Before Midnight (2013), where in three feature-length series he tracked the stages of the development of the couple's relationship - from the first acquaintance to the first serious crisis.
And having adapted the literary – Proustian, Joyce – approach to the format of screen art, Linklater, along with his “Boyhood”, has almost officially become the leaders of American cinema, offering a kind of (and possibly promising) middle ground that can reconcile too artificial Hollywood production with the uncompromising indie cinema. Once again breaking the rules that have developed in the cinema for a hundred years, Linklater managed to fit a lot in his last work. After all, in the private history of Mason and his family, the chronicle of the first decade of American life of the early twenty-first century is built into a dense background. Therefore, the "Adolescence" and decades later will certainly be used as a kind of document of the era.
Cinema is the life from which the most boring moments are cut. (Alfred Hitchcock)
When Coldplay’s great song “Yellow” is played at the beginning of the film, you don’t know what to expect. But there are 2 hours and 40 minutes of timekeeping ahead! And how not to remember the interesting words of the great Alfred Hitchcock? "The duration of the film should accurately correspond to the endurance of the viewer's bladder."
"The Boyhood" of Richard Linklater is called the main contender for the award "Oscar" in the main nominations - best film and best director. It was this fact that was the impetus for me to get acquainted with the future (?) triumphant. It is worth writing in advance that after watching there were ambiguous impressions. I will try to explain this in my own text.
Everyone who lived to be over the age of 18 had a period that was the title of our film. Watching the movie, I really remembered myself in different years of my life. I remember how I studied in two different schools, how I communicated with certain people, how I behaved in those days. One reviewer gave a negative review here, criticizing the work of Richard Linklater for eliminating all the emotions that make up our lives. In principle, you can agree. What if we looked from the other side? That is, the director deliberately demonstrates all these, at first glance, meaningless moments of life so that the viewer could find what he needed. It is as if the doors are opened in front of us, and we need to decide which one to open and enter.
At the same time, we do not see the first serious fight, the first sexual experience, the first use of booze and cigarettes. Because it's pretty mundane and obvious. These are also personal moments for each of us. So why would a director share such scenes when they can be hidden? Not everyone, but the majority (or minority) will be able to see themselves in the character of Ellar Coltrane. Without exaggeration, see yourself and be amazed. As Victor Tsoi sang, life goes on as usual. Spectators can only keep time as they can. For someone, this is boring and boring nonsense, and for someone – an interesting and amusing experiment.
I think the fate of Boyhood as the Oscar favorite is that the film is typically American and primarily shows Americans as they are. Many times I have witnessed how Americans behave at home and in public places. Greetings with a raised hand, polite smiles, gatherings with playing the guitar, a festive table with the wording “serve yourself”, love for baseball or American football – all this and not only partially shows us the film. On the one hand, this is a story about a boy, and on the other, about America and Americans. And the fact that the film is not called "American adolescence", as it says that it is available to every viewer. I think so.
Those 12 years spent producing "Adolescences" do not interfere with perception, since I did not mention them. What can you do, for advertising, this figure plays an important role. Even those people who watch a movie, but are not interested in it, will whistle. Ultimately, the product itself is important. I think we need to give Boyhood time to look objectively at whether the film deserves attention and praise in its address, as well as all the awards received. Personally, I'm willing to spend a few nights watching. Although at the same moment another viewer feels nauseous and curses himself for being naive.
I think a lot of people in childhood, when they watched films in which the action unfolds on a long time period, thought that making a film, waiting for the actor to grow up to shoot his character in 10 years. I definitely thought so, and it was a big disappointment to find out that they just found similar actors. That's why this film has attracted a lot of interest.
The story of the boy is nominated for an Oscar, and that’s another reason I watched this movie.
In short, what was in the movie? Father's attitude towards children. A mother’s desire to give children a better life. Stages of growing up.
It's very interesting, but it turned out not to be enough to put this film on the shelf to the masterpieces of cinema. Not exactly in this decade.
The film is nominated for an Oscar only because of its unusual creation history. It was very interesting to watch one real person grow up, but that's the only value of the film. The same effect of growing up an actor we can see in Harry Potter or in some long-running series, only in this case everyone stung up to two and a half hours.
The film is a biography, not of some famous person, but of the most ordinary, like those with whom you greet on the landing or ride on the bus. The normal life of an ordinary person. Yes, with its upheavals and dramas, but not so unusual as to somehow differ from all.
Such a film could be made in a month, picking up similar actors and thereby avoid the possibility of a scandal due to the reluctance to work on projects due to loss of interest (directors should stop taking pictures of their own children) or someone’s sudden death, but then this film would not be anything special and it would pass unnoticed by critics and guilds Oscar.
After all, we are not even observing someone’s real development, but just external changes of actors playing according to the script.
The most interesting hero for me was the father, played by Ethan Hawke, his attitude to life, his love for children made the most vivid impression.
I would also like to mention the heroine of the director’s daughter, who brought out the whole film with her character, or she was so annoying because of the lack of talent.
There was one moment in the film that evoked emotion - when the manager approached the family at the end of the restaurant. There's something inside that twitched and trembled. That's it.
This film will be relevant in 10 years, when the generation who grew up with Mace with nostalgia will remember about Star Wars (if they ever stop shooting), about the release of coveted books about the young wizard and about the clips of Lady Gaga.
6 out of 10
For his efforts, for trying to bring something new to the cinema and for Ethan Hawke. But I still don't like Oscars.
This film is about a young family where a young mother tries to raise two children, Samantha and Mason. Actually, the process of growing up and related problems are reflected in this picture.
Childhood is an ambitious project. Surely many were attracted by the fact that this movie was shot for 11 years and at the same time at a very modest by modern standards means – only $ 4 million. In my opinion, this picture was originally doomed to success. The fact is that this picture will not leave anyone indifferent, the picture will be close to everyone because it touches on the problems through which everyone went. All the experiences of the main character will not remain alien to the viewer, we have felt a lot on ourselves and the questions that Mason asked himself we ask ourselves. I am sure that in many characters the viewer recognizes his family and friends. Undoubtedly, the convincingness of the whole story is added by the fact that we are witnessing the real maturation of the protagonist, the path from a boy to a young man with his own eyes. You can observe with interest the changes in the appearance of the main character and feel what it is like to watch "how quickly other people's children grow."
Convincing acting, always the actual problem of “fathers and children”, the search for the meaning of life and their place in it and, of course, the incredible opportunity to “feel” the passage of time, watching the faces and deeds of the main characters – all of the above makes this film a serious competitor in the fight for the Oscars.
9 out of 10
This is the story of one man and the people who have been with him throughout his life. Nothing remarkable. Nothing unusual. A single mother with two children born by accident. A father of two, still searching for his calling. Ups and downs, victories and defeats, success and failure of one family through the eyes of a boy going through a period of growing up. Such a painfully familiar story of life, when you want the best, and not everything depends on us.
I liked the honesty and open-mindedness with which the picture is shown. There is no obsessive assessment and vision of the director, no inappropriate swings from side to side of teenage heroes, no excessive emotionality around any action. There is a young mother who wishes her children and herself a good life. There is a father who loves his children and wants to be in dialogue with them. There are children whose world has completely changed in 12 years 3-4 times. And there is an infinite warmth that pours from the screen every minute.
I am not sure that the movie will appeal to fans of drive and action, because it is very calm and measured. I can’t say that everyone will like it unconditionally. But I got hooked. Very nice film, soulful and kind.
Richard Linklater never looked for an easy way. Even making films without visual effects, films-drama conversational type, he managed to bother. What is a beautiful trilogy about Jesse and Celine, whose story, both in the film and in life, occurred once every ten years. Also in “Boyhood” the director advocates sincerity and realism. Why look for similar actors to play older/younger characters like other filmmakers? Wouldn't it be easier to wait? It's called growing up as an actor. The project is unique and we all know it. And it's not even about why Linklater month after month with the camera tracked changes in people's appearance, interests, character, whether the film was worth it, it's about the idea, in principle. You can talk for a long time about incarnation, about viewability (after all, not everyone is ready to withstand 2 hours and 45 minutes of such an experiment), but do not note the idea of filming the transience of life and showing it in the most natural form is impossible.
Such a thing with time clings to the heroes themselves, to whom, no matter how hard you try, there is no strong sympathy. They're normal, that's the setting. They search, make mistakes, break up, swear and have fun. There's not even a dramatic conflict. Have you ever seen that at a certain point in your life, as in the climax of the theater, the colors suddenly thicken and all the sorrows that are possible fall on you? That, let's say, is possible. Have you ever seen one area of your life stand out at the same time that bothers you, away from others, and brings you to your knees? No, here everything is at once, all aspects, as it happens with us: family, and studies, and the beloved girl gave up, and her sister has a hangover ... All alive, everyone around also functions as you yourself.
And Richard Linklater’s main attitude is not to catch the moment by the tail, but to go with the flow so that the moment catches the heroes. That's what happens in life, he thinks. It's a constant. Always today. It sounds schizoid, but it is. Every minute somehow affects us, every day is not special, but important, from such days our whole life is built, and you can not choose any separate scenes (although timekeeping requires this, still not a talk show). And all this philosophy of life, which the director constantly skips through his work, reached its climax in “Boyhood” in the very reception of the shooting (not even in the final monologue). Human history is being created before our eyes - only a part of it, which is considered the most important for becoming - growing up. And watching how unobtrusively the scenes change, and with it the appearance of the characters (in the natural way), those who are voted for, those for whom they cheer in sports, and what they read, haircuts, husbands, hobbies change (by the way, all these transitions are made very thinly, like invisible seams), we realize that life is almost as short as this almost three-hour film, it is fleeting, and constantly slips away. That is why Patricia Arquette’s monologue that she expected more did not expect children to become students so quickly, and then only the grave. To some extent, this is the only dramatic component (not counting her second drunken husband, who beat her). The saddest thing is that she's as lost as her freshman son, she's the same kid, but she's already on the decline. Naturally, this is not the end, with its dramatization it runs 40 years ahead, but the main thing is that a person does not leave the sense of the finiteness of his existence. It is not so strong only in adolescence, which Linklater sought to show in his cinematic breakthrough.
In the end, time, not people, played a major role in this picture. I think she got an Oscar nomination for that too. On the technical side, this is phenomenal. Timekeeping is frustrating, as it is insanely unusual to watch a family drama for almost three hours. It seems like an impossible mission to show the fascinating story of one family without much plot. But in many ways, even overpowering yourself at some points, you understand that it is not for nothing that you live such a long film experience with the characters of the picture.
Everything works for naturalness. Therefore, the film does not have a composer as such, only a soundtrack of songs that sound as if by chance, somewhere heard more clearly, somewhere less. But the songs somehow perfectly convey the spirit of history – ordinary American philistine. It all starts with one of my favorite bands - Coldplay, with my mother's favorite song - Yellow, which immediately warms the soul. In recent months, this song has become a family song (of course, when you hear it 20 times a day behind the wall) and somehow got into this mood. In general, Coldplay is always an ideal option for such a genre of paintings, whatever song you take.
I understand why they nominated “Boyhood” for the main nomination, it was impossible not to appreciate the titanic work of Richard Linklater. But for me personally, this picture does not break out among the best paintings of the year. It’s conversational, as I love (by the way, all the scenes with Ethan Hawke are just beautiful in this regard), it’s lifelike. But just very simple, without frills. I wouldn’t give her the championship at the Oscars, but it is useful to humanity. The correct, objective attitude to time.
This is the worst Oscar nominee I’ve ever seen.
Why is “Adolescence” a bad movie?
Why is this a bad art house that does not catch on?
Because:
1. There's no plot. It's just a set of scenes from one guy's life. It seems like they are designed to show us reality, but it is only annoying.
2. Because there's no drama here. Through the display of all these different scenes it was possible to include at least some drama, some experiences of the main characters, but no, this is not. The only person who aspires to make this art house a drama is Patricia Arquette, but she can not pull the whole movie.
3. Two talentless actors, children, then teenagers, they are forced to pull the whole film. The camera is always on top of them and they just don’t try. It seems that Linklater made them play, and did not offer them cookies, or a game of console / comp, etc.
4. Cinema doesn't make you feel anything. It is boring, it is very mediocre, and this movie will soon be forgotten, because it does not carry anything in itself, does not raise any problems, and does not try to solve them.
P.S. He would choose any one interesting story from the life of a guy, then yes - it could work, but this.
This is terrible.
It is better to make a documentary about the life of one family. It will be the same.
I liked the music at the end.
The movie doesn’t stand up to Zach Braff and I wish I was here. He had some drama and some history.
I liked the music at the end, the only thing.
It is sad if the almost masterpiece “Birdman” will roll, and give this talentless brainchild “Oscar”.
5.5 out of 10
Of all the Oscar-nominated films in the 2014 Best Picture category, this one may seem overly personal and sentimental. Linklater did not set himself the task of showing the story of one time, but decided to focus all the attention of the audience on the 12-year history of growing up.
So, in the center of the plot is a completely ordinary boy Mason. Okay. I don't think it's worth saying anything else. Further throughout the film show important events in his life, alternating between them.
Linklater created a kind of experiment, showing mostly life. Unusual, unusual, majestic, harsh, at the same time happy, but most importantly real. The one in which the viewer can easily recognize himself in each of the characters. Characters, dialogues, actions - everything is so vivid and natural that it seems as if you are watching a documentary about real people. You look and you don’t want to believe that you are not ordinary people, but actors. By the way, both Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette deserve an Oscar for their roles. Allar Coltrane, who played the main character “lives” in the film.
Knowing Linklater as a master of unusual storytelling in his films (remember the same trilogy "Before Dawn", "Before Sunset" and "Before Midnight"), we can assume that the continuation of "Youth" will be. And now it does not matter, in 10 years or 12 years, the skill of the director to show life will not go away.
The film deserves all its praise and praise. This is a true masterpiece.
Life in its natural course is much more interesting to observe than the plot contrived by a group of untalented screenwriters.
When a lyrical, almost three-hour drama about growing up claims the upcoming Oscar, it is impossible not to watch it. At least to see if she can compete with other nominees.
The story of the growing up of a boy from Richard Linklater is the best film of the year, he needs to put the maximum assessment in any case, because the picture globally changes the rules of the game in visual art and has already entered the history of cinema as a unique project.
“Adolescence” was filmed for twelve years, and this is not Kubrikov’s perfectionism, but a production necessity: the growing up of the main character throughout these years decided to show in real time, without age makeup, the use of different actors and other nonsense. We watch characters grow up and age, quarrel, break up and meet again. The plot of the film, despite the complexity of the plan, is as simple as possible - the mother of two children (Patricia Arquette) divorces their father (Ethan Hawke), the family moves, the mother finds a new husband, the boy goes to a new school, falls in love, gradually learns the world, and so on. Linklater at the same time keeps himself in hedgehog mittens and does not allow to press a tear. He perfectly understands everything that happens in the heart of the protagonist, and even better knows how to capture us with a demonstration of it.
Each year, the crew would gather for a couple of days, for a total of 39 days (although a different number is given on the CP) to shoot several episodes - without a pre-written script, for the most part just improvising. Speed is certainly not about “adolescence.” Throughout the film, you can see very clearly how everything changes: their appearance, everything that surrounds them, everything that they suffer, everything that they live. But I was most excited about the soundtrack.
I really liked that this film did without all these American clichés about the difficulties of growing up, drugs, vulgarity, and violent temper. The revolt against peace and society was very right, if I may put it that way.
The main character and I are almost the same age, and maybe because I found a special affinity with the film, and maybe that’s why I, as well as millions like me, liked the film so much. The world is where we really lived. People are the same as they were in our lives, maybe we ourselves were.
10 out of 10
We follow Mason’s growing up from 2002, when he was a first-grader, to 2013, when he entered college.
ABOUT THE FILM
Richard Linklater has been shooting this film for 12 years. All the actors in the film grow up and age, Bush is replaced by Obama, iPods become iPhones and so on ... the film is a very bold film experiment that was successful, and at least for that, for such ambition, it should be credited. But at the moment, critics are trumpeting the film, praising it, not separating the experiment from the final product, the film. So what was the movie like?
The movie's bullshit. He goes three hours, which can be summed up in one sentence: he grows up and goes to study photography. The end. What's interesting about that? And that’s exactly what it is. Of course, it is interesting to watch the growth of children, the change of eras, but this is all tinsel, under which there is nothing. The film is boring.
And the first third of the film is quite interesting: there is some drama, you worry about the characters, the narrative is smooth, but then ... the film seems to break down. It’s no wonder it’s been 12 years! It seems that the director faded in the first 3-4 years of shooting, after which he did everything as if on a machine. The only interesting characters in the film are the father and mother of the boy ( Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette act as they should), who really show the interesting dynamics of changing their characters, the brother's sister was a very interesting girl at first, after which she turned into a typical teenage girl.
What can I say about him after watching this movie for three hours? Uh, he's a teenager, he's arrogant, he's self-righteous, he likes to take pictures, kind of like -- erm -- erm -- I give up. Linklater somehow poorly understands teenage life: dialogues are nonsense, the guy has no highlights, nothing interesting happens to him ... he just lives his boring life. That may have made sense, but when I go to a movie, I expect to experience something that I don’t normally experience. And to look at the boring life of a gray guy I can in real life ... heh.
Result
In the end, I’m completely disappointed with this movie, and I’m almost completely sure that this piece of shit will win the Oscar for Best Picture. It's been 12 years! That never happened! Yeah... I hope it never happens again. Cinema is not experiments, cinema is not the backstory of creation, cinema is what we see on screen. I saw one of the most boring films of the year. And he's got 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes! Something is wrong with this world.
The film was shot only 45 days, although it took a total of 12 years.
Absolutely charming creation about growing up and family problems, subtle, accurate, sometimes cruel, sometimes touching, masterfully written and filigree shot.
Amazing children - Dick's daughter - Lorelei, a real beauty and stunningly natural in the frame - a wonderful girl, although how could there be a daughter of L. other (Mr. K. P. Smith's daughter is far from so attractive and clearly simpler - however, soon we will see), and this boy, Allar Coltrane - a beautiful, amazing, already serious actor.
Wonderful work that Ethan Hawke (he is beautiful, he is talented, he is marvelously organic in the role of a father of two children, and, obviously, there is a lot of improvisation), that Patricia Arquette, after sloppy country musician Hawke chooses brutal men, stories with whom end sadly).
The film is a jazz improvisation that brings it together with Lost in translation and Somewhere Sophia Francisovna of the Clan K. Despite the quite American history, the film is very, very European, which is very characteristic for the director.
Amazing OST, a wonderful work of the permanent DP Linklater Lee Daniel, a wonderful editing is also a regular of his “war friend” Sandra Ader, perfectly selected acting types.
Probably, only such films should be made by great artists, when they have actually reached the top of their skills.
And Dick is an absolute master of cinema.
In addition to the fact that it is a pure work of cinematic art, it was shot for only 4 million, and the box office worldwide exceeded the budget by 10 times. I don't think L expected that, but it's a fact. I love when art and commercial success complement each other.
It took me twenty minutes and then I stopped watching. Movies about the growing up of children (with all the organicity of the latter) are usually very traditional, monotonous and frankly boring. To be honest, “400 Strikes” didn’t inspire me, and watching a few hours of conscientious sketches from the life of an average family with an abundance of American famous realities somehow doesn’t pull. What was I waiting for?
“Adolescence” is understood as two and two, and the director is quite traditional. Is the film worth watching for the sake of the reception with the shooting of fragments with large time ranges, as a result of which actors really grow up or age? Mikhalkov has long given to the mountain “Anna: from 5 to 15”, and in this collage just temporary and situational changes to watch was more interesting.
Sallerism in itself, the perfectionism of the director is worth little, if not accompanied by an unconventional, innovative view of the beaten topic. Pulling children mother, charming and unattractive father-gulyak – how many times it is all seen-revisited.
In general, give at least the “Oscar”, the director has done a great job (and the screenwriter – no), let’s award for different age appearance third-rate Arquette – and watch this film no reason to see. I hoped that it would be a miracle, and initially you can see the craftsmanship.
Unconditional 'must see' contemporary cinema. And not just because it has been so long. The colossal directorial work, which deserves an undeniable Oscar for it, played perhaps the most important role in the implementation of this project. After all, it is not enough just to shoot anything, and then cut and the masterpiece is ready. Richard Linklater approached the job with incredible awe. Film sets, scenery, picture, actors - to collect each of the elements and harmoniously reflect all this in the final product - a great art.
The narrative part of the film is also surprising. During the course of the film, our imagination (which has already seen a huge number of films) tries to predict future events in history: '. Well, now they will show the first kiss, the first fight, the first sex, college, etc. But no. The picture is very different. It shows the parts between these events, which is why there is a sense of truth and trust in what is happening. You seem to be watching the history of this family from the outside and involuntarily comparing your life with what is happening on the screen.
Some praise can be pronounced in honor of the brilliant (not afraid of this word) editing of the tape. To begin with, every period of Mason’s life was reflected in pieces that people very often like to nostalgize about: the first Sony TVs, the fashion trappings of modern guys in the form of earrings and checkered shirts for release, black and pink hair for girls, then communicating with their father via Skype on an iPhone. If you grew up at the same time and under similar circumstances as the main character, watching this movie 10-20 years later will be a huge pleasure for you.
However, this work will not appeal to everyone. After all, we are all different, we have different stories, different views, different childhood time, and someone just hates guys who pierce their ears and wear earrings. But we have to give the film credit - nothing like this in cinema has never been, and who knows if it will.
A masterpiece? Everyone decides for themselves. If the movie is not hooked by anything, there are a thousand arguments to fill it with dirt. It is difficult to be extremely objective when it comes to the film 'Boyhood'. If you try to describe it in one word, the best fit is 'Incomparable'. After all, in fact, this tape has nothing to compare, due to its uniqueness. The film will definitely be in my collection.
A great film in the best traditions of American cinema. For me, this is not only an almost documentary story of growing up a young man, but also a journey into the very recent past. Gadgets, car models, house design are changing, and America remains the same. Slightly provincial, searching, constantly seeking something.
It turns out that being a single mother in the US is very difficult, but still possible. Green lawns near luxury homes can have domestic violence. And the relationship between two absolutely normal people may not work out simply because they met at no time or place – the story of the mother and father of the protagonist.
And it may happen that one of the most important things in your life, you do, by chance, in five minutes, in the backyard of your house, repairing a rotten pipe.
But the other main thing, the education of children can take years and the result will be tears of despair.
This is the story of the real middle class in America. And it's not as rosy as we used to imagine. It turns out that after working all your life, at some point you will not be able to pay for the house and move to a small apartment. But nobody makes a tragedy out of it. He doesn't run to town hall, he doesn't whine about how I'd be without my neighbors. People are honest about life and know how to accept it as it is.
I didn’t write about the boy’s story, it’s the core of the film. The film is more than one story.
In fact, perhaps the film is not as good as I appreciated it, but it is simply impossible to make a different assessment. It is so original and deep that it does not lend itself to logical argumentation of its pros and cons. Yes, for some, the film will seem incredibly boring, perhaps even absurd. It only means that you expected a film from him in his simple understanding, and got a look at the life of each of you or your child, embodied on the screen in a fantastic way.
The film was shot for 4,383 days, but only 45 of them were spent on the set. Child actors grew up with their characters and the director showed us that growing up in a genuine way. It was nice to watch. I can compare watching this movie to remembering my own moments in the past. People from 20 to 25 (about) years old can feel the film in its entirety, because they belong to the generation that developed on the screen. And it does not matter that the children of another country are shown, everyone will still see themselves in the film to some extent.
The film shows all the stages of growing up a child on the example of the boy Mason and his sister Samantha. Their childhood hatred in the early period, detachment in the later, neutral relations and so on. Also, the development of the boy against the background of friends, family and many other aspects of the life of each person.
Richard Linklater made a great movie about everyone, which is difficult to judge. It's just there and everything.
For “Boyhood” – a film that was shot for twelve years, during which its main character Mason grew up, and with it his surroundings were transformed and changed, they say mainly because the film was shot for twelve years. In fact, young Americans who have already become students or are no longer students should speak for him. In this film, if properly judged, they must see themselves and indulge in cozy nostalgia, and may become depressed because time is fleeting, and that the twelve years that separate a six-year-old boy from an eighteen-year-old boy can be pinched at three o’clock, but in fact within a few minutes of realizing that you are already an adult.
There are a number of people who won't see innovation in Richard Linklater's film. The creators of long-running series, for example, willy-nilly did Linkleiter's trick, while not setting such a goal. Like Mason, Tony Soprano’s son Anthony Jr., in six seasons before my eyes, he went from being a plump elementary school student to a complex teenager going through a transitional age and then a grown-up guy who doesn’t know what to do with his life. At the same time, everyone notes the scrupulousness and perseverance with which Linklater approached the creation of the film. The director is interested in the passage of time and "Boyhood" is not the only indicator of this fact. After filming Before Dawn in 1995, he continues to return to the story of Jesse and Celine every nine years.
By and large, the story of Mason and his family isn't that important - the background is much more important. Those who write that despite a few dramatic moments, the story of this child is largely ordinary will be right. And Mason himself, does not have a complex character and a special vision of the world around him. Over time, he realizes that wasps are not made from splashes of water, and the older he gets, the greater doubts about his future he gnaws, but this is not the uniqueness of one Mason - this is the uniqueness of any teenager.
Linklaiter managed to do an important thing - he created a cast of the decade. The film is devoid of dynamics, but it flows smoothly, focusing on every moment that is "now and here." “Adolescence” in many ways is a more realistic and less dramatic “Forest Gump”, where the hero, although he does not become a participant in the epochal events of the century, but watches them from the sidelines. And not all events are epochal - some of them did not stand the test of time, but still expensive as memories.
A children’s view of the war in Iraq, the release of a new book about Harry Potter, the election between Obama and McCain, dancing to SouljaBoy, “Breakfast for Champions” by Kurt Vonnegut and “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, instead of the saga “Twilight” by Stephanie Meyer, a party under the BlackKeys and the first alcohol – all this, felt every American child who grew up in the early two thousandths. And in this regard, for older children, “Adolescence” can become an important film in twenty years, when they, already adults, want to remember how it was, and show this documented and neatly decorated period of life to their children.
By the way, in 1992, Lars von Trier began working on a project, under the conditional name “Measurement”, whose goal is to make a feature film, every year until 2024, shooting two minutes. He spoke to Danish filmmaker Stig Björkman in 1995, when he was interviewing the director for his book. So if the director doesn’t get killed by another neurosis or depression, or if he hasn’t stopped working on the project, then in nine years, we have every chance to see a new, very specific “Adolescence”.
8 out of 10
