Richard Linklater's BOYHOOD

The idea of shooting a film just a few days each year over 10 or 12 years is a great one and I'm glad I was able to see BOYHOOD in a theater, which I don't get to do much these days: see movies on the big screen. (The Laemmle Playhouse theater in Pasadena had some projection errors, digital skipping which bordered on "give me back my money" annoying.) While the film doesn't live up to claims of being a Masterpiece, it was a pleasant experience that mirrors some of my own life attitudes and the presentation of Ellar Coltrane, as the Boy under the cinematic microscope, was remarkable, or just plain good luck, that he turned out to be such a likable young man.

Watching a three-hour movie about a family feels a lot like watching condensed television, which allows the longer-term intimacy of years of growth or "development", to use industry jargon falsely. In my mind, Linklater has succeeded in taking a television timeframe, Texas split family grows up with hardship and happiness over the years, and condensing it to fit into a movie concept. There is not a lot about this picture that couldn't have been done for television. There is some language and there is some dope and cigarettes and alcohol, but the drama is pretty straight up: narrative cutting between characters talking about life issues and growing up. And this is a big part of life: how parents impart to their kids the information needed to navigate life's ups and downs. Some do it more successfully than others, we do the best we can, etc. Linklater shares what he knows of parenting and his daughter plays the Boy's sister. I think she did a good job.

The film is entirely chronological. We see the Boy (named Mason in the film) fluidly grow year after year and never move backwards. The ceaseless Forward-ness of BOYHOOD is what drives the film and any "message" that is built in. Mason expresses the fact that everyone is constantly telling him what to do in a scene with his mother's 2nd or 3rd husband, and it is here that the difficulties of parenting and being a child overlap. It is so hard not to keep telling your child to watch out for that sharp knife, don't touch the matches, stay on the sidewalk, sit down and eat, don't drink your milk so fast, brush your teeth and get in bed, watch out. We are self-programmed out of fear to forever over-protect and it becomes hugely annoying to the growing-up child. So you back off, try to give the child space. Imagine a camera trying to do the same thing for its subjects. Add a drone or two with GoPro cameras to watch the children for a few hours every day.

Stan Brakhage talked about a child who is filmed every day of his life and a filmer who films, or must always watch that child growing up. There is no "Brakhagian" optical invention in BOYHOOD, in the way that Terence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE had hallucinatory creation sequences. (I just discovered this: http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/the-secret-experiments-inside-the-tree-of-life after looking for an article I read about an antique lightbox construction Malick used to create galaxial images for that film, which I can no longer find.) Perhaps it's good that Mr. Linklater doesn't raid the experimental toolbox... I do think that BOYHOOD shares something with TREE OF LIFE beyond their lengths. Film and Life are parallel processes. BOYHOOD raises some of the same themes and issues outside of its basic story, and without resorting to lightshow.  It is a traditional, narrative movie benefiting from the unusual timequirk of punctuated filming.

Boys experience peer pressure, to smoke and drink and talk raunchily about sex, but some make it through with their dignity intact. The meatgrinder of modern life tenderizes but doesn't always destroy the sweetness of youth.

Linklater's signature approach to film is in the random voices he gives chance to rant on pet subjects, conspiracies, and there is some of that in BOYHOOD. The fluid hand off from one character to the next from SLACKERS (editing/narrative strategy) is replaced by the fluid appearance of Mason from one year to the next and the viewer begins to seek out that moment, when the camera has landed on the next new Mason. It is a fun hop, skip and jump across a life. But it is presented rather matter of factly; no fireworks were abused in the making of this movie. It is a sober assessment of Growing Up but Springsteen did not supply the soundtrack. Many bands did provide songs for the soundtrack: Wilco and Arcade Fire, it is a survey of current pop carnations. It works like television music. Soundtrack available on Nonesuch Records.

LEGO Movie Delivers!

OK, it doesn't bring pizza to your seat, but there are plastic croissants and hotdogs, super-expensive coffee, a TV show called "Where's My Pants?" and diverse LEGO theme-neighborhoods all united by a script of high level parody and seeming self-awareness. Made by the creators of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie is NOT an OFFICIAL LEGO production, like Ninjago or Chima which are featured on the Cartoon Network, but is instead a product of Warner Brothers' animation department. The creators explain that they wanted to make an homage to the many LEGO videos made at home by fans, with a wink to the crude animation techniques used in fan videos, rather than the streamlined computer rendered productions usually made with LEGO's imprimature these days. As Ninjago begins a new series run on CN, it's fascinating to see a full-length animated feature made with the bricks but independent of the Mothership, at least on initial inspection.

The LEGO Movie has its own look, something between the stop-motion of fan videos and the seamless computer graphics of the LEGO video franchise. Perhaps the closest analogy I can make for the current explosion of LEGO video would be the waves of water which wash through The LEGO Movie. There's not a lot of water, like there is in LEGO CITY videos, rendered as digital liquid. In The Movie, the water is clearly made of individual lego bricks, often the small 1-block barrels sliding or glissading (sliding on ice) over each other in water forms. The LEGO Movie traverses many realms, as if its mission is to step on all territory. Which is exactly what LEGO appears to be doing: there is so much lego product out there now, they have cornered such a large section of toy market, that it sometimes seems the DNA of the world is turning to LEGO bricks. (Even Frank Lloyd Wright is memorialized in a lego set or two.) Don't forget that a giant plastic ocean is off the coast of Oregon. The Movie is both a celebration and a not-so-subtle critique of the prodigal bricks.

It's chaotic. The Movie starts up in the town of Bricksburg, where Emmett Hardhat begins his workday along with legions of other minifigures. It's a lockstep world where the masses are encouraged to always follow instructions yet keep a chipper attitude, as voiced in their mutual feelgood theme song "Everything is Awesome" (A Katy Perry-esque anthem) and the reality TV hit "Where's My Pants?" There are a lot of laughs as one scene follows the next in seemingly increasing speed and humor. The humor has a distinctly dark character, on a level written to adults, like old Warner Bros cartoons. There's something for everybody. They threw the kitchen sink at this project. Mark Mothersbaugh (DEVO) did much of the music. Morgan Freeman voices the blind mystic AND there's a Wormhole that Emmett must fall into to recover the important Piece of Resistance. And then there's Will Farrell. It just keeps on going. Throw something at legos and it will stick.

The grand conflict between Order and Chaos is unleashed upon the audience as a tsunami of little bricks. Adults tell kids what to do all the time, kids just want to have fun. A subtle critique of lego sets where every piece has to be placed according to instructions, which is VERY fun for my 6-year-old, but only once! Then, you can take it apart and it's recombinant DNA. Or a huge bin of undifferentiated legos clogging the universe until kingdom come. A storm is brewing on the horizon.

Kids definitely thought The Movie was too long, although I tried my best to get Evan to stay for the credits, a mainstay Extra for animated films since Pixar began making use of the closing screen time. It's great to see new animation powerhouses open shop; I think Pixar is highly over-rated and have not moved the medium forward in almost a decade, since their Renderman software was a novelty. The good vs. bad morality dramas seem like ancient history. And while LEGO Movie does fit within that Rubric's Cube to some extent, it also explodes enough of your expectations to open new windows. It's great to see a fun hybrid (live action/computer) movie that tries to do so much and gives at least two sides of the story to some extent. The pros and cons of a great toy gone viral. Perhaps it's from outer space after all.

If you haven't seen The LEGO Story, a unique 17-minute history of the company, I highly recommend it: http: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdDU_BBJW9Y