Boyhood (2014)

(This review was originally written in July 2014)

I've probably been interested in this film longer than most people have known about it. I remember crawling through Wikipedia's upcoming film section 4 or so years ago, and finding some intriguing film with no poster, no release date, no synopsis and very few details about it titled Boyhood, promising to explore twelve years through one boy's (Mason) adolescence; but, rather than casting actors for different stages in his life, we actually progress over 12 years of shooting with the same actors. The Independent's review likened it to 7 Up, and in a sense it's kind of true; we step off at different, important intervals (e.g. birthdays, first loves) in a child's life; the difference being that the intervals are annual, or at least months, and we never see Mason reach the drinking age.

Richard Linklater is a name you guys might recognise: he's the guy who directed The School of Rock, which just so happens to be the first Jack Black film I saw, way back in '03; and some of you older folk might know him from stuff like Dazed and Confused.

Boyhood sets a different tone, though. It's not a comedy and it certainly doesn't have family audiences in mind, although some scenes are comedic in tone (imagine telling your 13 year old biological kid about sex in the middle of a fast food place.) But it does make a break from 'dark' films, because overall it's quite uplifting. The audience was mainly grandparents, which is understandable; see what happened to our kids again. See our grandkids. But it's relatable to me, too. The boy who we see the film's eyes through is basically my peer, give a year. We start with him as a kid in 2002, and we end with him starting college in Autumn last year. (The film's promotional materials show him as a 6 year old, but by the time he turns 14, he starts to become really attractive. Just a heads up.) I can relate to his love of photography, his awkwardness with relationships and deep thought, and the fact his period of maturation was the noughties. He likes Spider-Man, and boy did I love Spider-Man then too.

The film's designated year might be (2014 film), but it really isn't. It's (2002-13 film), through and through. Because it always remains contemporary. Just as the boy grows older, so does the fandoms and technology, the political scene, and the style of filmmaking and quality of camera. It doesn't just look like the 2000s, it is the 2000s, and that's what sets this apart from other films with a similar theme. We start with film grain and we end with macro close-ups and slick panoramas. It's a real nostalgia trip to go from Spider-Man and Chamber of Secrets, Britney Spears and Gameboy Colors in 2002, to The Half-Blood Prince in 2006, to The Dark Knight and Tropic Thunder in 2008, and into my present of iPhones and Facebook and everything. It isn't 2002 looking ahead to 2013, because the script changes to suit the time, and neither does it retrospect and try and build a picture of years earlier. Like, their politically charged biological father is anti-Bush and ends up, 4 years later, pro-Obama. The existence of Facebook becomes a narrative point a year ago. But despite this, it's still quite a timeless narrative. There's no captions at all; no flashback framing device or narration. With each passing year, we have to work out when it is for ourselves as viewers, rather than have the screen anchor it for us. It's an experience rather than a movie, really. We don't have exposition, and it flashes between conflict and resolution and normality before finishing in an optimistic denouement. We see actual characters develop because they actually age; there is no suspension of disbelief in forcing a 30-something year old to also exist as a 50 year old. It's an entirely believable experience. I'm a proponent of making films as realistic as possible, by limiting CGI, doing your own stunts and just overall not faking stuff. This does that.

It's a really really great movie. 

Lilting (2014)

There's a film which was released recently where the film could simultaneously refer to rainbow flags being paraded down the streets or a documentary about lions.

So, I didn't see Pride. There's something about a bio-comedy with miners striking, campaigners and Bill Nighy which doesn't sit right with me. It's probably going to end up being named the best LGBT film of the year, but let's hope not.

It's a reason called Lilting. Ben Whishaw, known as the most attractive Q yet to teenage fangirls everywhere, and to AS English Literature students butt naked as the androgynous Ariel in Julie Taymor's The Tempest, appears here as Richard, whose long-term boyfriend, Kai, has recently died. Now sporting a beard and plaid shirts, he is the crush of my dreams and, were he not in a civil partnership, I would find a way to see if he would get with some nerdy 17 year old half his age.

What surprised me was the audience. Elderly, heterosexual couples. Like, it's a film about two gay men in a long-term relationship, so where are the gay couples using this as a date movie?

I was approaching this from the perspective of Richard, as a young gay male looking forward in time to when I'll be wearing beards and plaid shirts and be in a long-standing same sex relationship, and be looking after aging parents even though I have a life of my own. Their entry point is through the mother, as the one being cared for by the son figure (Richard, who attempts to take on Kai's role) even though their son has a life of their own, and the search to find love again, the feelings of loss and their unconditional love for their children.

What I was expecting was an extended monologue, where Richard recounted to Kai's mum the story of their romance (cue extended flashbacks to Kai and Richard's developing romance), whilst changing a few names and disguising the nature of the romance in the process.

But the film isn't that. The film is so many different things. It's an exploration of different loves, different losses, age, memory, and so on.

It's refreshing. It really is refreshing. So many LGBT films are focused on the teenager growing up and understanding their sexuality that it drowns out the committed adult relationships which, you know, there are a lot of. That the idea is you'll have everything sorted out in your teen years and you can cruise through adulthood. And yet the film revolves around characters in their 30s coming out. It acknowledges that coming out isn't a process of one act; as Richard says, they're coming out all the time by the very fact they are two romantically attached guys hanging out in public together. Yet at the time it's closeted to the parents, maybe the new friend, and so on.

The film is not 'Kai and Richard make out for 90 minutes', although I'm sure that has its audience; they are not its protagonists, but its catalyst.

It's a film about communication. Kai's mum seems to find love in an older English man in the care home, who spends his time telling her how much he wants to fuck her (etc.) to her incomprehension, as though she speaks 4 different Chinese dialects, she doesn't speak English. Richard decides to hire a translator, a young woman with no training who ends up altering the meaning of words because she thinks it helps and ends up ruining things, when he would have been better off with a more objective professional. The film is about Richard breaking down those communication barriers and the lies of "he was my best friend" to be able to be honest. What I'm sure a lot of you will be able to relate to is the anxiety over coming out and the tension and worry about what happens if your parents disown you. These aren't issues expressed exactly here, but it's a theme which is there and in the end the worry has caused more trouble than it was worth, because in the end the parents still love you for what you are.

Lilting: The tacky flowery wallpaper in the relic of a care home, juxtaposed against a songsung on vinyl and a shiny silver CD player, a relic of the early 2000s.

The past is not a foreign country, but is simultaneous, inseparable, continuous, at one with the present. The flashbacks aren't the past but the present; in one scene the camera pans between rooms as Richard lays in bed with Kai, the doorbell rings, he gets up and puts on underwear as a shirt, only for him to open the door and find Kai's mum and the translator, weeks later. Which is much how flashbacks work in real life, really. You get so engrossed in what happened before and then suddenly reality shakes back at you at the most unexpected of times.

ALSO RICHARD'S HOUSE IS AMAZING OMG I WANT THOSE LIVING QUARTERS

It's a good film. It doesn't feel entirely perfect, and it is criminally short, and yet it gets so much right from the art of each shot to the message it's trying to portray and Ben Whishaw.

Check it out.