2/22/15: Growing Up, Moving On

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2014 Academy Awards, 87th Annual Academy Awards, absentee father, abusive relationships, Andrew Villarreal, Barbara Chisholm, Best Director nominee, Best Film Editing nominee, Best Original Screenplay nominee, Best Picture nominee, Best Supporting Actor nominee, Best Supporting Actress winner, Boyhood, Brad Hawkins, brother-sister relationships, Cambell Westmoreland, Cassidy Johnson, Charlie Sexton, cinema, coming of age, divorced parents, dramas, dysfunctional family, Elijah Smith, Ellar Coltrane, Ethan Hawke, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, Jamie Howard, Jenni Tooley, Jessi Mechler, Libby Villari, Lorelei Linklater, Marco Perella, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple award nominee, Patricia Arquette, relationship, Richard Linklater, single mother, Sinjin Venegas, Steven Prince, Tom McTigue, Zoe Graham

From the outside, indie film wunderkind Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014) seems like a pretty impossible endeavor: filmed over the course of 12 years with the same cast, the film purports to follow young Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from his childhood all the way to his 18th birthday, as he leaves for college. Along the way, we get to witness Mason (and his family) growing up before our very eyes, the passage of time marked by such, real-world indicators as growing taller, sprouting facial hair or any of the endless ways in which children become adults. It’s an impressive bit of filmcraft, no two ways about it, the kind of thing that would, no doubt, earn an appreciative thumbs-up from an experimental filmmaker like Terrence Malick. While the final result ends up being no different from a thousand other coming of age tales, it does nothing to take away from Linklater’s achievement: as the press states, there really hasn’t been another film like this and it’s doubtful there will be another quite like it in the future.

Structured in a loosely chronological manner, albeit one devoid of any easy time demarcations (there are no “Two years later” notes, time/date indicators or anything so obvious, although the use of pop music and culture helps to ground the film’s time-frame in a thoroughly organic manner), we follow young Mason, his slightly older sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), his single mother, Liv (Patricia Arquette) and his absentee father, Mason Senior (Ethan Hawke), as they all go about the process of living their lives. Samantha begins as a shrill, obnoxious kid and grows into a smart, droll and laid-back young woman. We watch Liv’s journey as she progresses from divorced, single mother to new college student and, later, college professor: along the way, she bounces from one bad, abusive relationship to the next, first with her alcoholic professor/husband, Bill (Marco Perella), later with a damaged, former soldier (Brad Hawkins). We see how Mason Senior moves from an aimless, perpetually restless, politically-active roustabout to a centered, responsible fellow with a new family and a desire to get it all right, at least the second time around.

The majority of our focus, of course, is reserved for the film’s subject, young Mason. We follow him through all the vagaries of childhood: first love, schoolyard bullies, family problems, sibling rivalries, making (and losing) friends, developing his own interests and viewpoints (albeit with more than a little influence from his father’s fiery rhetoric) and, finally, leaving the nest to strike out into the world and make his own mark. Through it all, Coltrane proves to be a more than capable actor, as comfortable with the film’s bigger emotional beats (the abusive home situation) as he is with the subtler ones (the scene where he hangs out in an abandoned house with older boys and talks about girls, for one). It’s to Coltrane’s great credit that the young performer always feels authentic: there’s an inherent danger with child actors that they’ll come across as stiff or unrealistic but that’s never a problem here.

To be honest, aside from the over-familiarity of the film, there’s very little to complain about here. The acting is uniformly solid, even if none of the performances really distinguish themselves from the others: while Arquette won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance here, all of the acting is similarly realistic…there were no real standouts, at least from my perspective. The film looks great, with some nice, vibrant colors and the sound design is quite exceptional: the film is very music-oriented (as is much of Linklater’s output) and the use of pop music to establish the time-frame is nicely realized.

Personally, I’ve never been the biggest Linklater fan: I’ve always found Slacker (1991) to be thoroughly underwhelming and Dazed and Confused (1993) has always placed well behind Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) in my personal playbook. To be honest, my favorite Linklater film is actually Bernie (2011), which is probably the least representative film in his canon. My major issue has always been that his films seem more content to keep up a constant verbal barrage than to actually mean anything: it’s always come across as a ridiculously pompous combination of Kevin Smith and John Cassavetes, at least to my non-discerning ears. While Boyhood is less guilty of this than past films, there’s still plenty of wheel-spinning, especially once we get to Mason’s numerous “philosophical” discussions with girlfriend Sheena (Zoe Graham).

Ultimately, I enjoyed Boyhood, although I certainly wouldn’t rank it as one of the best films of 2014: minus the “twelve years” gimmick, there really wasn’t anything here that I hadn’t seen before, certainly no great “insights” into growing up. In many ways, this was very much a basic coming-of-age film with a slightly glossier top-coat. I was also rather unhappy that Arquette’s character, essentially, was summed up by her various bad relationship choices: it seems slightly mean-spirited that the film allows her to progress from single mother to student to college professor, only for her to keep making the exact same relationship mistakes at each and every turn. It’s almost as if the film is saying that no matter how much Liv progresses, learns or grows, she’s still just a woman who needs a guy in order to feel complete…and can’t even pick a “good” one, to boot. Her final breakdown seems even more reductive, in this light, as if her entire life is defined by others, whether husbands, boyfriends or her own kids.

There’s a lot to like here, without a doubt: very rarely has a family/relationship drama felt this realistic and the actors all have tremendous chemistry together. At the end of the day, however, Boyhood is not appreciably better (or more insightful) than any number of similar films: at the end of the day, I have to wonder…was it worth the twelve years?

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2/14/15 (Part One): Hurting the Ones You Love

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aliens, Ben Huber, body horror, cabins, cinema, co-writers, dark films, directorial debut, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Hanna Brown, Harry Treadaway, Honeymood, horror, horror films, husband-wife relationship, isolated communities, Leigh Janiak, Lovecraftian, Lovely Molly, low-budget films, Movies, Phil Graziadei, possession, relationship, Rose Leslie, writer-director

Every relationship has its “honeymoon” phase: whether weeks, months or years, there’s always a sweet spot in any new union where cloyingly sweet pet names are common, arguments are unimaginable and every couple seem joined at the hips. These are the times when lovers can while away an entire afternoon just staring into each other’s starry orbs, whispering sweet nothings while hand-feeding one another grapes. While the honeymoon is always great, it’s never where the actual meat of a relationship lies, however: once the initial “puppy-dog” phase is over, couples have to actually get down to the business of dealing with each other, a process which misses as much as it hits. For every couple that grow old together, there are plenty that implode after the rose-tinted glasses (and gloves) come off. Being with someone during the good times is easy: you know that you’ve found a partner for life when the bad times are equally appealing.

Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon (2014) is, both literally and figuratively, about this happy little time: we pick up with the film’s lead couple right as they arrive at their honeymoon destination, immediately following their wedding. Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway) are that aforementioned google-eyed pair of lovebirds that make everyone else gag and roll their eyes: he calls her “honeybee” and she “buzzs” while lovingly touching his face, every comment is some sort of “sassy” quip. They’re obviously in love and perfect for each other, the kind of “quirky” renegades who serve Indian food at their wedding as a reference to their first-date food poisoning and have a cake made out of cinnamon rolls. She’s an outdoorsy-type who spent 12 years as a Girl Scout, he’s a city boy who doesn’t know how to fish…it’s the ultimate meet-cute, as if we’re beginning with the triumphant conclusion to any number of generic modern rom-coms.

But then, of course, little cracks begin to appear in the smooth surface veneer. Paul makes an extremely odd comment about Bea’s “womb” which seems to surprise him as much as her…a childhood friend of Bea’s, Will (Ben Huber), lives in the nearby town and there seems to some underlying sexual tension between the two…the swamps and woods that surround Bea’s childhood home seem to be teeming with life, yet we see very little of it. Things come to a head when Paul discovers Bea missing, one night, and frantically searches the woods for her. Upon finding her nude and crouched in the dirt, Paul is (rightfully) worried but Bea passes the incident off as mere sleep-walking. As Bea’s behavior becomes ever stranger, however, Paul is confronted with the disturbing notion that something terrible might have happened to his wife in the woods. Was she attacked by Will or is there something altogether darker involved, something with motives no rational human could comprehend?

After a somewhat shaky first act (Bea and Paul are so nauseatingly cute and broad, at first, that the first 15 minutes or so almost play out like a parody), Honeymoon smooths out into a reasonably tense, atmospheric chiller, albeit one that manages to be both a little too vague and a little to on-the-nose (no mean feat, if you think about it). While none of the events in the film are ever really explained, there’s a point, towards the end, where Bea still manages to give us a recap, of sorts, similar to the point in many films where we finally “see” how all of the events transpired. If it reads a little confusing, it actually plays even more so: rather than wrapping everything up with a bow, she just re-explains what we saw, without the benefit of any new insight whatsoever. It’s similar to asking someone for the score to a sporting match and then having them recap said match without ever mentioning the final score. I’m certainly not a fan of hand-holding but Honeymoon’s many “clues” come across as red herrings simply because we’re never given quite enough to go on.

Even if Honeymoon ends up making imperfect sense (I hope it’s a rather clever, subtle take on Lovecraft’s Shadow Out of Innsmouth but it could also be a much less interesting alien visitation tale…I’m really not sure), there are plenty of creepy scenes here and some genuine pathos to the relationship between Bea and Paul. While Leslie and Treadaway aren’t always convincing as a couple (Treadaway, in particular, has a certain way of delivering lines that renders particular moments rather artificial, especially when he gets more agitated), they have a reasonable amount of chemistry together and the final scene packs a fairly hefty wallop. Leslie, known mostly for roles in hit TV shows like Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones, strikes a nice balance between kooky, sweet and distracted: when it all comes together, she projects a quite winning balance between aloof and vulnerable.  While Treadaway isn’t quite as impressive here as he was in either The Disappeared (2008) or Cockneys vs Zombies (2012), he’s still solid and largely sympathetic.

As a film about a relationship, there’s plenty of authenticity to Honeymoon. More than anything, the film is about the subtle little ways in which couples feint and maneuver around each other, digging into past injuries, hinting around bigger issues and feigning smiles when in-depth conversations might better serve. In some ways, the film can be seen as a microcosm of a fledgling marriage, with the crisis that befalls Bea and Paul serving as their first real “issue.” One of the subtlest, most effective scenes in the film is the one where Paul stares surreptitiously at Bea as they toast marshmallows: even as they’re supposed to be having fun, we can see the pain and suspicion festering in his eyes. Despite the couple’s desire to just enjoy their time together, their internal dialogue speaks volumes. In a genre that’s often criticized for being about “nothing,” Honeymoon actually has something to say, which is a nice change of pace.

As a horror film, Honeymoon is also effective, although it often feels like a modified take on a traditional found-footage film, minus the subjective camera element. We get plenty of staples from that sub-genre (shadowy figures appearing behind Paul, security cam footage, the notion that things are happening just out of frame) along with some (subtle) Lovecraftian elements and a particularly slimy ode to either Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession (1981) or Scott’s Alien (1979)…take your pick. Throughout the whole thing, first-time director Janiak (who also co-wrote the film with Phil Graziadei) displays a fairly deft touch with establishing mood and tension. That being said, I couldn’t help but feel that the film could have benefited from a much darker, grimmier tone, ala Eduardo Sanchez’s knockout Lovely Molly (2011): aside from the ending, Honeymoon never digs the screws into the audience (or its characters) as much as it could, which ends up being a little disappointing.

That being said, there is a lot to like here. While Paul ends up being the focus of the story, in many ways, it’s always refreshing to watch a horror film that gives equal screen-time to the female lead: much of the body horror here is feminine in nature, which provides another parallel to the aforementioned Possession. The film is never out-and-out terrifying, so to speak, but it’s certainly a slow-burner, worming its way under your skin and culminating in a suitably sad, striking finale. For a low-key, low-budget indie horror film, Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon strikes plenty of right notes: here’s to hoping her follow-up continues to raise the bar.