Boyhood
Oh boy. I know that I haven’t seen many movies this year, and amongst those I am not sure if any of them will make it into my list of 30 favorite films of all times. Nevertheless, I thought “this is the best movie I have seen all year” multiple times: The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Painted Veil, Coming Home, Like father like son, Inland Empire – all of those would have been candidates. But honestly, so far “Boyhood” actually deserves the title best movie of 2014.
When people were pissed that “Bai ri yan huo” got the Golden Bear and “Boyhood” mostly got snubbed, I was sceptical about the film. All that Linklater love weirded me out, and I thought it was just a hype. We are always suspicious of big name Hollywood films at the Berlinale. Nevertheless, it was a Linklater so I had to watch the film. I feel so lucky to have seen it with Shii! It was at a super comfortable, old-style movie theater and the movie was so good that I did not fall asleep during it, despite having an average 1.5 hours of sleep the four nights before. It may also have been my sleeplessness that made me love the film even more. But, just a few weeks later I was able to put that to a test. Pip, Pixelmatsch, another friend and I went to see the film in my beloved International, and while Pip and I got there 10 minutes late, I spent the entire rest of the film mesmerized by it again. The film is essentially a slice of life, so I didn’t care one bit about whether it was suspenseful or not. In fact, because the film is composed of vignettes from Mason’s life, I spent most of the film looking forward to certain scenes I remembered, and there were a lot of those scenes. One of the most memorable moments was Samantha’s embarrassed face when her dad says “Force Garrett to use a condom!” Priceless.
Perhaps my favorite part of the film was Mason’s relationship with Sheena. The way it grew and then ended absolutely hit me, perhaps because they went from hugging at dawn to breakup argument in like an instant. Nevertheless, it was the mom who was my favorite character. Somehow she had even more depth than Mason and it’s just as much her film as it is his. They should have ended the film at her breakdown when Mason moved out.
When I watch a movie on vacation, like the PIFFs, a film is automatically elevated into the special feeling of being on vacation. In this case, “Boyhood” and Vienna are forever intertwined, because Shii and I decided to spend those few precious hours we had on a 3 hour long movie. But remembering how we put the legs up in the cozy Gartenbaukino, laughing together at the many funny scenes, was just so worth it. Nevertheless, rewatching the film just two weeks later didn’t make the film any worse and I was convinced that it would be that way. I think this kind of impact of a film is unprecedented. Best film of 2014 after all.