Boyhood

It’s strange to find a Richard Linklater film at the top of most critics’ lists. I’ve always loved his talky, slow, meandering films. I made a class sit through a double feature of “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” once when I was teaching in France.

Some loved it. Others, not so much.

Now that he’s made his masterpiece and everyone loves it I’m in the weird position of wanting people not to appreciate it so much since his best films have always appealed to a select few, and I don’t want our small group to get overwhelmed.

It’s as if everyone started liking Godard, Rohmer, and Truffaut, Linklater’s most significant influences. It doesn’t quite put Beatrice in mind from ‘Much Ado About Nothing’: “You are too expensive to wear every day.” Not quite. Most of his best characters are scruffy, untutored thinking people who talk a lot. They aren’t intellectuals. But still, there’s a thinking quality to these films that most people don’t want in a movie. In a book, sure, but usually not in a film.

I remember going to see Slacker when it made its debut in Austin at the Dobie Village theater in 1991. It wasn’t exactly a premier. The film had done well at Sundance. But it was still a small, strange film that most of the Austin audience loved because it was so Austin. We saw all our favorite places, and loved how strange people acted (this was before “Keep Austin Weird” became a slogan. It was just a reality).

Since then, I’ve liked most of Linklater’s films. I can watch Before Sunset over and over. Paris has something to do with that, but only a little.

I’m about to direct my first documentary at age 50, and look to his works as examples to follow. I look to his influences as well. Agnès Varda, the only woman director of the French New Wave, is my favorite documentary filmmaker. I’ve watched so many French films from the 1950s and 1960s. So, yes, I like Linklater, but it’s more like I’m drawing on the same influences that he did.

And there’s my Wes Anderson side, too, but that’s another post.