Man of the Year: Richard Linklater

The magic of film is the manipulation of time and space.  People and events from different millennia, in different countries, on different planets, can be joined across the microscopic span of a single cut, or even the dividing line of a split-screen.  All of human history, everything we've actually done and everything we can't do, the limitless stories and spaces of the imagination, are all mutable, collapsible, connectable.  The birth of the universe can stretch into the mysterious afterlife under the direction of Terrence Malick, while conquistadors and space travel can occupy an epic, economic ninety minutes with Darren Aronofsky at the helm.  The canvas of film is impossible to measure, because there is always the chance for more.  Time is the ultimate tool in a filmmaker's repertoire, a most dangerous and thrilling instrument.

No filmmaker has ever used time quite the way Richard Linklater does.  Whether it's capturing the essence of an era of a human life (like the rollicking specificity of Dazed and Confused) or revisiting lovers every decade or so (the Before trilogy), Linklater understands the power of time to tell stories.  And with Boyhood, perhaps his magum opus, he realizes that time itself is a story.  The lives we lead are amazing, built of seemingly insignificant moments that add up to something bold, unforgettable, somehow unique, ours and ours alone.

Linklater has done a magical thing with Boyhood.  Rather than telling a twelve-year coming-of-age story in the way most directors would - casting different actors to play the leading role at various ages - Linklater had a vision: to shoot the film in parts over the course of more than a decade.  It was a risky gamble, one that IFC was thankfully willing to fund, and one that paid off more than anyone likely imagined.  Linklater has given us the chance to see what life looks like sped up, a microcosm of what we experience everyday when we look in the mirror, at our friends, at our loved ones and think, Where did the time go?  "I thought there would be more," Patricia Arquette's Olivia says at one point in the film.  And by showing less - none of the major life-changing moments one would expect to find in a movie like this are present - that's exactly what Linklater gives us.

When watching one of Linklater's films, it's easy to imagine a set where everything is organic, free-wheeling, veering off-script.  His movies are full of small details, distractions, moments that feel like they had to happen in the moment.  "The moment seizes you," says Mason (Ellar Coltrane) toward the end of Boyhood, but in his writing and directing, Richard Linklater proves the opposite true.  Reading Linklater's scripts, you realize just how thoughtful he is, how attuned to the natural wavelengths and rhythms of walking, talking, living.  He plots what the characters are going to see, where they'll hesitate, where the words will flow and where they'll cease.  He seizes on these moments of rapture and romance and humdrum uneventfulness, playing connect-the-dots until a bigger picture forms.

Which isn't to say that Linklater lords over his actors.  By laying out so clearly what he wants, he gives the actors the chance to play in these very specific scenes and spaces.  They don't have to worry about adding those little touches (though I'm sure they do), since Linklater has already done the nitty-gritty detail work.  So much humanity is on the page, in the words, in the scenes and invisible transitions during which months pass in the blink of an eye in Boyhood, that Linklater frees his actors to dig deeper, to invest, to bring parts of themselves into a supremely vulnerable, relatable light.  Boyhood features so many specific political, historical, and cultural touchstones that it's impossible to not latch onto certain scenes, props, lines, events.  We find ourselves in these characters and what they experience; we sigh and think about what it was like when we lined up at midnight for the latest Harry Potter, when we played Wii Tennis for the first time, when we put Obama signs in the yard and hoped for a better future.

That such turmoil is unfolding offscreen in Boyhood only proves how rich a vision Linklater had for the film.  Even as countries go to war, new men (always men, at least during the events of the film) rise to power, and corruption spreads wider, life goes on.  Our little lives are practically untouched by the wider world, despite the horrific images on our TVs and, now, in the palms of our hands at all times.  Yet another brilliant sort of timeline that guides the film is the advancement of technology, showing how connected we can stay, but how primarily disengaged we still remain from what's happening in other cities, states, and countries.  To read Boyhood as an indictment of American ambivalence is probably a stretch, but that subtext is there if we choose to read it.

That's Boyhood: a movie that can (and will) be read a hundred different ways by a hundred different people.  I saw it three times in theaters, and each time was struck by different lines and scenes.  Always, I was moved to tears.  I saw glimpses of my mom and dad, my brother, myself, the video games we played growing up.  Yet Linklater has crafted a masterpiece that unites us all in that emotional swell, the bizarre waterworks that come from seeing life presented very much like it is, just in a focused span of time.  It's no wonder that Boyhood is topping critics' lists from around the country and world, and is considered an Oscar front-runner.

There was no better year for a documentary in Linklater's honor to be released.  Michael Dunaway and Tara Wood's 21 Years: Richard Linklater is a treat for fans of the director's filmography, with a survey of his films and interviews with many of his collaborators, including Ethan Hawke, Matthew McConaughey, Jack Black, and Julie Delpy.  It's wonderful to hear stories of an unassuming master at work, and to celebrate what has been an astounding career that will continue to flourish in years to come.  In the film, Hawke mentions Boyhood in passing, a secret side project that is about to come to fruition.  No one could have known how profound the final product would be, the culmination of all that Linklater has learned, honed, and perfected over the previous 21 years.  I am profoundly thankful to live at a time when Richard Linklater is making movies, especially one as technically daring and narratively grounded as Boyhood.