No 4 - Boyhood
My whole top 5 has moved around a dozen times since I started to write these blogs and in the end Boyhood has JUST missed out on a medal and I will explain why at the end but for now I will briefly concentrate on why it HAS made the list. I haven't seen a lot of director Richard Linklater's efforts and the ones I have seen, I doubt they would be considered his best. After seeing Boyhood, I'm definitely going to catch up on his work. For those not in the know, the plot is a simple coming of age story. The device used however is one that has to be admired. The cast members met up once a year for over a decade to film 12 short films and then they were spliced together to make one movie where we see the actors age before our very eyes. The thing I liked most about the film is the way in which we jumped ahead in time. Not by a poxy One Year Later but by choosing a song which represented the year in question. The second you hear the songs you know our characters have progressed and you yearn to see where they have landed.
Boyhood has been winning end of year awards left and right and is certain of Oscar nods and rightly so. The performances are central to these accolades and even though most seem
to be aimed at the elders, it's the boy (now man sized) actor that needs to walk away with statuettes. To find a child with the attention span to be filmed every year for 12 years and still be compelling is rare luck and that's what they found.
The ONLY reason which is why it's not higher is the age device itself which I have just lobbied for. The fact that the film is being lauded for its unique production technique kind of waters down the core value that what should make a film great is what's in front of the camera, not what happened behind it. This may not make much sense but if they had done the exact same film with several different actors portraying different ages, would it have been so acclaimed?
Adam Yates
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