Boyhood

Over the last several months, I’ve given myself the ongoing task of catching up on important and influential films that anyone who considers themselves to be an informed moviegoer should have seen. I started in the early silent era with Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates from 1919 and moved forward in time, watching one film from each decade. Today’s show brings me up to the present day – back to the teens again – with Richard Linklater’s 2014 film-like-no-other, Boyhood.

 Just the project of the film itself makes Boyhood notable. Linklater decided in the early 2000s that he wanted to make a film tracking one kid from first grade through the end of high school, filming once a year for twelve years, and having the film culminate with the protagonist heading off to college. Not a documentary but a narrative fiction film with the same actors, watching them age, mature, and change over time. Miraculously, he finagled ongoing funding for this unheard-of project to the tune of 200,000 dollars a year for twelve years – or 2.4 million – and shooting began in 2002.

When Boyhood came out, much of the talk was about the novelty of it. A secret movie being filmed under industry noses for over a decade? A child growing into a young man on screen before our very eyes? One of the longest production schedules in history? Amazing!

But the real story of the film is not the gimmick. Instead, it is the emotional resonance and verisimilitude of it that is striking. Speaking both as a former boy myself and as a parent of kids struggling to mature and grow before my very eyes, some of the scenes in Boyhood are the realest things I’ve seen on film.

Ellar Coltrane stars as Mason Evans Junior, the boy of the title. He begins the film as a first-grader. His parents, played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are divorced and struggling to make ends meet and raise kids while they are trying to figure out their own lives. Mason is curious, observant, and sensitive. Like any kid, he fights with his sister, zones out sometimes in class, and hangs out doing idle, vaguely destructive things with his friends.

The film doesn’t have a plot exactly, but it’s not shapeless either. It checks in with Mason about once a year as the various events that make up a life occur. They move to a new town, his dad comes for his every other week visit, his mom remarries, he meets a cute girl at school, his mom divorces, his dad remarries, there are bullies at school. Individually, these events don’t necessarily have much resonance but taken collectively and held together by Ellar Coltrane’s remarkably organic performance, they accumulate over the course of the film’s nearly three hour running time. 

Eventually, this collection of seemingly unimportant events feels epic and powerful. Eventually, all the little things that don’t seem to mean anything at the time come to mean everything. It is kind of like life in that way.

This is the element that makes Boyhood so unique and compelling. Even though it is fiction, even though it is fragmentary and somewhat meandering, watching these characters age and struggle and evolve over the course of twelve years gives it a heft and meaning that transcends the story itself. The movie isn’t just about Mason or even his extended circle. It’s about life and the passage of time; the ongoing back and forth between joy and disappointment; and the flaring, momentary beauties in lives made up of mostly boring, everyday stuff.

Suggest a Movie!

In the four years I’ve worked on Moviehouse, I’ve occasionally run a feature called “A Movie You Might Have Missed.” It’s my chance to highlight a film, new or old, that just didn’t get the appreciation it deserved when it first came out. Sometimes it’s a smaller, uniformly excellent movie that never made it to nearby theaters like 2017’s modern-day western, Wind River. Sometimes it’s just to highlight one aspect of an interesting but flawed picture, like Robin Williams’ fantastic but tiny cameo in Kenneth Brannagh’s uneven 1991 noir tribute, Dead Again.

Movie culture has always been about making money, but particularly since the 1970s and the advent of the George Lucas/Star Wars marketing machine, it has become increasingly hyper-focused on tent pole pictures, summer blockbusters, and the box office returns horse race. If a movie isn’t backed by a big star, a multi-million dollar marketing campaign, and doesn’t have a good opening weekend, it usually disappears. And marketing and millions are hardly the measure of a good movie, especially if you’re looking for something unique and interesting.

So there is value in finding and talking about movies that haven’t received as much attention or that have been forgotten. I have my own preferences, of course – old favorites from growing up, obscure movies I encountered in grad school, or just the occasional lesser-known movie that vanished from theaters before its time.

But now I want to try something new, and I hope you, the people who listen to and follow this show, will be willing to help out. I want to hear your suggestions for films to use for the “A Movie You Might Have Missed” feature. What movies have you seen that you love, that you re-watch, that you think everyone should see so you can talk about it and point out your favorite parts together? What movie do you appreciate that you think too few people have seen, that nobody knows but everybody should know?

If you’re willing, take a minute in the next couple of days and send me an email. Send me a suggestion for one movie or a dozen, and if you’ve got the time, tell me why you’re suggesting them. What is it about your films that you think more people should appreciate? Why is your movie underappreciated?

Part of why I’m doing this is I recognize that everyone’s taste is limited, including mine. I like what I like – old film noirs, comedies from 80s, literary adaptations, sci fi, and superhero movies. But who’s to say that I might not like something that you think is good?

So dust off your old DVD collection or have a look at the “previously watched” list on your streaming account. Think back to the movies you watched over and over again as a kid. Identify the ones you enjoyed that maybe aren’t mainstream or that not enough people have seen. Chances are, even as you’re listening to this, you have an idea in mind, a movie title that’s got you thinking, “More people should see that one.”

If you have one suggestion or twenty, send me an email and tell me about it. I want to see more movies that I’ve missed and let everyone who follows this show hear about them. My email address is really easy to remember. It’s markbrown@delta.edu. Just put “A Movie You Might Have Missed” in the subject line and tell me a little about it. I’ll do my best to see it and write about it. Hopefully, you can help me introduce a movie we might have missed to everyone else who actually did miss it.

A Star Is Born

One of the elements I appreciated most about the new version of A Star Is Born is how accurately it captured the ecstatic state of live music. The word ecstatic comes from ancient Greek roots that basically translate to “standing outside of your own mind.” That rapturous, oceanic, out-of-body feeling that accompanies seeing really good music played right in front of you is hard to replicate, and yet, in his first outing as a director, Bradley Cooper has managed to repeatedly capture it as he retells one of Hollywood’s most beloved myths. This is the fourth official version of this story following the ones released in 1937, 1954, and 1976 and there have been even more unofficial remakes over the years. The story is always basically the same. A fading star meets and falls in love with a talented newcomer whose fame eventually overshadows his own, and things inevitably end badly.

 

In this version, Cooper plays Jackson Maine, a 70s flavored songwriter/rocker who has lost his zeal for performing, his sobriety (if he ever had it), and his hearing. After just another night on stage in front of thousands of screaming fans, he retreats into the nearest bar possible. It ends up being a drag bar which happens to feature a performance by Ally, a former waitress who still comes back to sing once in a while. Ally, of course, is played by an earthy, de-glammed Lady Gaga. Maine is immediately smitten and the two spend the night getting to know each other, talking about music, songwriting, and celebrity.

Within days, Maine flies Ally to his next concert to have her duet with him onstage with a song she wrote. The song goes viral and Ally’s rise to stardom begins. The two are passionately in love with each other, despite Maine’s inability to stay sober for long. They tour, perform, and write together, and soon a slick manager approaches Ally about having her own career. Her meteoric ascent is directly connected to Maine’s dissolution.

The performances are genuinely great across the board. Cooper’s character is grizzled and half-in-the-bag for most of the film but it’s never boring or one-note. His affection for Ally is always clear and fully-realized, and his rediscovered love of performing and music is exhilarating. Lady Gaga as Ally is down-to-earth, smart, suspicious, and loving all at once. She seems like the kind of person and performer someone could fall in love with after one song.

It is Cooper and Gaga’s film, no question, but all the other roles, small as they may be, are rich and fully developed. Greg Grunberg as Maine’s limo driver, Andrew Dice Clay as Ally’s father, and Dave Chapelle as one of Maine’s old buddies are each standouts who do so much with a small amount of screen time.

Besides all of this or perhaps even before all of it is the music. Cooper clearly never met a shaky handheld close-up he didn’t love, but in this instance, that closeness and immediacy really captures the vitality and excitement of the music and live performances. The concert sequences feel electric and, frankly, ecstatic. From the thunderous opener, “Black Eyes” to the tender ballad “Maybe It’s Time” to the tearjerking final number “I’ll Never Love Again,” each song is worthy to stand on its own as a piece of music but also propels the story forward and gives movie goers sitting in your average multiplex the feeling of seeing really great music played by talented, passionate musicians live on stage.

 The new A Star is Born appears to have made a compelling, authentic actress out of Lady Gaga, a skilled and visceral director out of Bradley Cooper, and a fresh version of a story that’s been told in one way or another for over 80 years. It’s worth seeing and hearing.