2 hrs & 45 min,
color, 2014
Who
does this upstart Richard Linklater think he is? The domestic drama he has given us just
cannot be for real! It is a floating
freak, an offshoot of the most incredible and shameless realm of improbability. How could they have let him spend twelve
years making it? All that time, and he
has never caught on to how cinema is supposed to play in the second decade of
the twentieth-first century A.D. The
chronicle of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), an American boy, from elementary school to
college entrance just does not know how to follow the unwritten law. This writer/director had the better part of
three hours of running time, and nowhere in it does he make any room for the
weird, the grotesque, or the scandalous.
You
would think the picture would at least have given us one money shot. You all know what a money shot is, I presume,
but in case anyone does not, I will try to envision it for you. Steve Martin invented the term in one of his
many movies (“Grand Canyon” maybe?).
That is where the school bus driver is assaulted on the bus with a
military style rifle and his brains and blood are scattered all over the kid
passengers. We are completely deprived
of teenage weir wolves or vampires. The
kid we see growing to adulthood is not even allowed to get a girl pregnant and
complicate his and her life. He has an
older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), and the most of foolishness she is
permitted to portray is getting a little drunk.
Where is that unwanted babe?
Where is that cuddly statistic?
And neither brother nor sister has to do battle with drug addiction, or
even the beginning of drug addiction.
How up-startish can you get?
Nobody
gets mugged in the film; nobody gets killed; there are no fistfights, no
suicide attempts, not even on the part of his divorced single mother (Patricia
Arquette) in spite of how harrowed she becomes dealing with not being
appreciated while trying to make a living and a life for her children. Did Linklater ever consider making the
absentee father (Ethah Hawke) an ex-con, a drunkard or a narcotics dealer? Does he have to be so loving and caring as he
is, despite his record of bad choices and his awkwardness and sometime inappropriateness
at self-expression? I was just waiting
(or was I?) for that apocalyptic fight between the parents that would have
carved an additional hole in the Ozone Layer.
They have a few snappy moments and disagreements but the gloves never
quite go on. Yes, the mother gets
remarried and discovers too late that the second husband is an alcoholic and
abusive. All right, now we are getting
somewhere, right? No? She does not fold under the stress of having
to break up a second household? She
bravely delivers her two children out from under the tyranny of their
stepfather? Really? What a missed opportunity! What is domestic drama coming to?
“Life’s
little moments!” That is what Linklater
calls the focus of his attention in this modest epic. (Did I say epic? Yes, I said epic! If I said it, I must mean it.) Believe it or not, he insists on writing
about the people next door, about the private events that society at large
never sees, about family outings and camping trips between father and son,
about a mother going back to school and getting the degree she missed when
unwelcome pregnancy pushed her into premature matrimony. Mason is not some super genius or some jock
or some master musician or some future hunk of a movie star. He does acquire a skill at photography that
earns him a scholarship, but he still has to face what one character so
eloquently and poetically calls the “voluptuous panic” of choosing the road to
his future. Puny stuff by today’s
standards – right? Well, am I
right? Where is the high drama, the
bizarre confrontation with danger on the highway after he gets his driver’s
license, the broken bones, the night spent in a jail cell that deters him from
a life of petty crime? So much is
missing. So much the hungry maw of the
movie-going public craves! How could Linklater
let us down like that?
And
if all this was not enough, he had the absolute effrontery to win Golden Globe
Awards for Best Movie Drama and for Best Director, with the promise of a good
bidding at the Oscars. Honestly! Gems like this (Did I say gems? What is getting into me?) just do not win
Academy Awards. Or do they not? On further inspection I guess I’ll have to
eat these words. (I am thinking “The
Hurt Locker.” Oh yes, that!)
We
have all heard of long shots in cinema creation. A chance is taken on an unknown actor in a
high profile film that turns out to be a lucky shot. (Think Dustin Hoffman in “The
Graduate.”) A little known production
company goes after a screenplay that no major studio has the nerve to try to
mount and strikes it rich at the box office.
(Think “David and Lisa.”) Where
would our treasury of motion picture classics be without brave starving artists
going out on a limb, defying the studio system?
Long shots fire our imaginations and many times pay off. But Linklater has virtually rewritten the
meaning of the term. Twelve years in
production! You cannot take a shot
longer than that. Unbelievable! The same cast used throughout! We watch Ellar and Lorelei literally grow up
before our eyes. Suppose one of these
continuing players, young or older, had died?
And
we never see any seams. A seamless
tapestry of unsullied storytelling that somehow manages to keep us on our
mental toes moment by moment! Linklater
counts on the little surprises to hold our attention, and grab our affections
and summon our most tender emotions. The
heart gets hooked. The little things
move us. Who in some quarters would have
thought it? I guess the reason they do
hook us is that they are so close to home.
(Now who am I to know anything about that? I am supposed to be poking friendly fun at
this movie. I should have known that I
would end up giving away the secrets of my heart and mind instead.)
All
right, let me be direct. I was struck
most of all by how superbly we are put into the shoes of an adolescent. Who would have thought that the ordinary
struggles and frustrations of growing up would hold adult interest for three
hours of running time? And what a
script! Or was there a script? I will bet that the kids themselves
contributed to its formation. Kid talk
and parent/kid talk never sounded so accurate and on the mark and
spontaneous. We share with Mason the
feeling that everybody is on your back, that nothing you do is quite enough,
slow to realize that all this pressure comes from adults who love and respect
you and see beneath your mumbling, slurry, self-conscious inability to express
yourself. How I wish, as a writer, I had
thought of the movie’s closing line.
“Seize the day” is the old time-honored maxim, but these kids rework
that idea, in fact reverse it: “It’s the day that seizes you.” Or the moment, the hour, or whatever! I am jealous!
Okay,
I concede! This nervy guy Linklater has
done the miraculous. I just wonder what
subversions of the Zeitgeist he will be attempting next. Whatever they are, all I can say to him is
BRING THEM ON! And good luck with the
Oscars.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn
about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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