[YMS] So, I just watched Richard Linklater's 'Boyhood', and it was pretty good.
Now, I've been excited for this movie for quite a few years because of its concept.
Basically, he cast a young child actor and filmed the movie piece by piece over the course of twelve years.
The point is to have a movie that shows a character growing up without actually having to switch out actors.
It's pretty experimental, to say the least. Just the concept for how they filmed the
movie was reason enough for me to want to check it out. And yeah, I will say that I got my money's worth.
Because of the style of filming, there are a few extra things to appreciate about the film
that you might not appreciate in others. I mean, let's put aside the fact that there's a huge room
for error when making a film like this.
"Naah, I'm not really feeling that first scene, maybe we shoot reshoot-- Oh, wait..."
But the film was unique in a sense that it was essentially making a period piece without actually
having to pretend it's further back in time than when they were filming.
It was a very smart decision to include so much pop culture within the film;
having a few hit songs show up, making references to politically relevant events.
And it was also interesting to see that part of growing up included the gadgets that the characters were using.
Like, is that even a product placement anymore? How does that work? Did Nintendo
pay them to use a Game Boy Advance SP for a film that wouldn't even come out until long after it was discontinued?
Anyway, it was nice that the product placements in the film emphasized a time period rather than being gratuitous.
And it's really interesting to think about how they must've anticipated that.
And speaking of anticipation, it was really cool to see things being reincorporated,
especially during a particular reincorporation that wound up affecting the plot on the second time.
Personally, I enjoyed the movie, but I do not feel as though it lived up to the hype.
And at the same time, I'm not sure how much I should be expecting from it since it's already
so much of an achievement on its own. Going into the movie, I understood that some of the
actors might not be that great once they grow up since they're initially cast as children,
so when the main character's sister was really "eeh" in a couple of scenes I was more or less forgiving.
But when a character shows up to only be included in a couple scenes taking place in the same year,
and they can't act for shit, it's really difficult to blame the filming style for that kind of choice.
And not only that, but given how ambitiously you've chosen to make this film, you'd think
you would have been more careful with things like that. For me, the first half of the movie was pretty great,
but I found it getting really contrived and repetitive around the second half.
And yeah, I guess the repetition is kind of a point in a way, but quite a bit of
the dialogue and quite a few scenes seemed really forced and kind of preachy.
Most of the dialogue throughout the film was pretty great and, depending on the
scene and the actors in the scenes, a lot of the scenes felt very natural.
But when you've got a runtime of 165 minutes, and taking out the poorly acted and/or forced and preachy scenes
wouldn't have affected the story that much at all, it's difficult to look at this
as just a good movie, rather than a good movie that could've done a lot better.
Don't get me wrong; I enjoyed it for what it was; I felt the resonance; I related to a lot of the scenes.
But despite the ambition and its filming style, part of me wishes that there was more to it.
It's a really great experimental film, but I wish that I were able to call it great without the experimental style of filming.
The style did wonders in terms of helping us relate to a character and understanding the impact of reincorporation,
but I feel as though if this same style were used for a better story, this very well could have been
my favourite film of the year. At this rate it's debatable whether or not it'll make the tail end of my best of 2014 list.
So it's still good, it just missed the opportunity to be a lot better than it was.
If there's one saving grace towards how scattered and unguided the story became during the second half of the film,
it's that there's a few lines of dialogue from more than one character near the end of the film
that give us the impression that it was intentional. Now, I'm not going to say which lines those were,
because it'll become pretty obvious when you watch the movie, but it's good to know that even if there's some
choices that were made that I disagree with, that at least they had some purpose.
I enjoyed it for what it was and I'm glad that I saw something that felt unique.
I, for one, think it's great that this film took risks to deliver us something different.
And this one's getting a seven out of ten.
Also, to keep you guys posted, 'YMS: The Host (Part 3)' should be viewable the first week of August,
and then I'll be trying to finish up my 2008 list for September.
And then finally I can get back to reviewing that one TV show.
Don't worry, there will be plenty of other stuff out in between, I just have to plan ahead for the bigger releases.
This stuff takes a long time to make, guys. Well, not as long as 'Boyhood', but - yeah, you get it.