Richard Linklater always fights against time. The "Love Is" trilogy uses seven years as a node, depicting a lifeline for exploring love. The beauty of this approach lies in the capture and presentation of love flashes in the first two parts. Moving fire, this kind of splendor is still instantaneous and accidental, and only instantaneous can be eternal (universal eternity may be feasible, timeline eternity does not exist).
In fact, by the time of the third part, he had no way out. For the sake of story and purpose (or responsibility), he could only enter the theme of marriage. And this is the uninspired conclusion that time has given long ago, and it is beyond the control of Linklater's will. He can only use his limited talent to devote himself to the details in the common subject of marriage. Of course, the work is pretty, but it is no longer a creative work.
Linklater fell into the trap of time and was unable to succeed.
"Boyhood" is undoubtedly another of his ambitions against time. This time, the method he took is even more wrong: in the trilogy, he is still constructing in controllable fiction, but in "Boyhood", ambition makes him violate the truth and fiction, and the film tries to do A kind of penetration and connection of the two, but in the end it only photographed a suspiciously fuzzy area, with neither real touch force nor fictional expressiveness.
Yes, many people have been touched, but it must be clear that this touch does not come from the deep disturbance of the audience's heart by the good works, but from Linklater's narrative skills. To make it harder to say, this touch is a calculation. From the very beginning of conceiving this work, this calculation was established. The twelve-year fictional story is hung to simulate the real coat, which will definitely make it cheap, superficial and highly efficient. Moved.
In the process of watching the movie, I was always in a state of anxiety. For the author’s anxiety, I can predict that nothing in this work can exceed expectations. This is just a known movie, known plot, known character trend, known ending, known sensationalism, Even the music is almost known. Sure enough, the movie is over, everything is expected.
The film failed from the very beginning. This method makes the work lose the blank and imagination space, just like you plan to buy a wooden disc from MUJI. If you haven't gone there, you know that you will be able to buy a wooden disc that satisfies you, so you go and buy it. , It is just verifying a certain necessity and satisfying a demand.
In other words, in the narrative process of "Boyhood", accidental flashes can no longer be found. Why should we go to see an inevitable movie? I don’t know if Linklater tried to abandon this work during the creation process. I don’t know, besides the hidden speculation and lazy inertia, what else can make him spend twelve years to complete an uninteresting, Long, uninnovative works.
In the ambiguous treatment of truth and fiction, Linklater inevitably degenerates. The wonderful dialogues in the "Love Is" trilogy and the "Half-Dream and Half-Awake Life" and the talent overflowing between the dialogues are not much left in "Boyhood". This neat film loses the need for an author. A large number of directors who can produce the same neat effect can be caught from Hollywood, but they are more pragmatic and will not do this boring thing.
Perhaps the motivation that underpins Linklater's completion of this work is also his persistent authorial conceit or naive idealism. But it is really undesirable. He lost his rationality in this self-identification.
The essence of equating movie time with real time is to rationally grasp the appropriate scale. Bella Tal's method is a partial correspondence, and this partiality can cause the audience to enter the image space and time, but it is enough. Linklater, on the other hand, got out of control in a larger, year-scale correspondence. The former makes use of the attributes of time, while the latter is caught in the trap of time.
If Linklater does not reflect on and deny "Boyhood" and "Love Before Midnight", the director is no longer worthy of expectation.
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