This is an after-thought to a review of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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18 August
This is an after-thought to a review of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014)
The things remembered from (or known about) from childhood, which potentially made watching Boyhood (2014) seem like quite likely to be a self-revelatory experience, but which just are not there in your rather golden, cleaned-up States…
Thinking of, in an unordered list :
* Drug use amongst the earlier years when we follow Mason
* Jerking-off competitions
* Anything harder, pornographically, than models in a lingerie catalogue (although there is a nervous moment when some Internet footage was about to be watched)
* Peeing up the wall of the urinal (another form of competition)
* Bullying for being ‘a swot’ (sc. too academic)
* Sweat / body odour
* Peers showing each other their nascent pubic hair (as a film actor did whom I know)
* Guns and playing soldier
* Getting hurt in games (bruises, cuts, etc.)
* Childhood illnesses / vomiting
* Sneaking some of the parents’ booze
* Exploring each other sexually / one’s sexual organs (doctors and nurses), including siblings
* Embarrassment about being seen naked
* Facial hair and what to do with it – likewise coping with voice dropping
* Brighter kids getting their work copied / doing homework
* Awkward / embarrassment, and unwanted erections (hard-ons)
* Chemistry lessons – stealing magnesium ribbon to burn, and child tendencies to delinquency / immorality
* Fussy eating
* Masturbation / wet dreams / semen
* Being asked to perform in front of one’s parents friends (reading / singing)
* Tantrums – getting tired and stroppy
* Not just graffiti in a tunnel, but mucking around with paint at home
* Breaking things and pretending not to know about it
* Feeling awkward about one’s feelings / self-image / appearance
* Crushes on teachers, etc., etc.
Get the point, Mr Linklater ? Now, you didn’t have to cram all of these in, but the vast majority of them are not even suggested in this sunshiny world* – did you, for example, ever see Herr Haneke’s film The White Ribbon (2009) ?
End-notes
* Was the film shot with a bright filter, or has it been colour matched in that way ?
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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