Forget for a moment the Cannes Film Festival darling you saw last May. Throw out that sneaky, insightful summer flick that none of your friends watched. Today, I'm keeping things shamelessly mainstream. If you’d really like to hear my thoughts on Last Days in Vietnam, shoot me an email. We can discuss heroism and fear in the film industry over artisanal cheeses and a glass of Sonoma chardonnay.
Among Mainstream Movies, the 2014 crown is currently a two-flick race: Richard Linklater’s Boyhood versus David Fincher’s Gone Girl. No doubt, we’ll see some sharp competition as we head into Serious Films season (read: November and December), but our temporary leaders deserve a late-October boxing match before we all drown in Oscar positioning and award-baiting. Let’s break this down in six rounds.
Among Mainstream Movies, the 2014 crown is currently a two-flick race: Richard Linklater’s Boyhood versus David Fincher’s Gone Girl. No doubt, we’ll see some sharp competition as we head into Serious Films season (read: November and December), but our temporary leaders deserve a late-October boxing match before we all drown in Oscar positioning and award-baiting. Let’s break this down in six rounds.
Round #1: Accessibility
Purists will tell you that accessibility doesn’t matter. Purists will say that films should stand solely on their artistic merits. Purists will be wrong. Accessibility is just as much a part of a film’s art as story or character development. Regardless of a movie’s subject matter, it’s the filmmaker’s job to draw us in, to quickly create tension, to make us curious, puzzled, intrigued. Even discomfort is its own form of accessibility. Whatever the hook, a great director will bend audiences to her film’s world, and rapidly so.
Boyhood opens softly, but confidently. We start with a shy six-year-old, who is staring in wonder at the clouds above. He’s marveling about the size of the universe, or maybe he’s just daydreaming about Legos. The film is at once dream-like and ordinary, depicting glimmers of youthful imagination next to things utterly ordinary. We may not be enraptured right away, but the emotional beats seep in slowly and steadily.
Conversely, Gone Girl opens with the deliberate thumps of a heartbeat, ticking off its title sequence, then cutting, almost rhythmically, from one scene to the next. The pulse quickens, then stalls, then skips a beat, all in the first five minutes. The control here is classic David Fincher: tight, unswerving, even treacherous.
Boyhood’s first ten minutes will leave you in a fuzzy state of wonderment, but Gone Girl’s will haunt you. Here, spookiness beats coziness.
Winner: Gone Girl
Boyhood opens softly, but confidently. We start with a shy six-year-old, who is staring in wonder at the clouds above. He’s marveling about the size of the universe, or maybe he’s just daydreaming about Legos. The film is at once dream-like and ordinary, depicting glimmers of youthful imagination next to things utterly ordinary. We may not be enraptured right away, but the emotional beats seep in slowly and steadily.
Conversely, Gone Girl opens with the deliberate thumps of a heartbeat, ticking off its title sequence, then cutting, almost rhythmically, from one scene to the next. The pulse quickens, then stalls, then skips a beat, all in the first five minutes. The control here is classic David Fincher: tight, unswerving, even treacherous.
Boyhood’s first ten minutes will leave you in a fuzzy state of wonderment, but Gone Girl’s will haunt you. Here, spookiness beats coziness.
Winner: Gone Girl
Round #2: Acting
Both well-acted overall, Boyhood and Gone Girl share one rarity: the leading man is the weakest link. Boyhood’s Ellar Coltrane (Mason) is sometimes fantastic, but occasionally awkward and gangly, and not just because he’s playing a boy going through puberty. In a handful of scenes, you can spot Coltrane among the actors around him: he’s the one guy who’s intermittently self-concious about his expression, his gestures or his lines. It’s tempting to excuse Coltrane—after all, his 12-year-long performance is unprecedented, and he does a far better job than most probably would in his position. For a non-actor to blend in with professional thespians as often as Coltrane does is admirable. But TheCroakingFrog isn’t a charity, and Boyhood must ultimately be judged for what it is: a theatrical production. Overall, Coltrane is simply good, not great.
Meanwhile, Gone Girl’s Ben Affleck plays the dopey, misunderstood Nick about as well as any character he’s ever played, which is to say, merely competently. Like Keanu Reeve’s Neo in The Matrix, you tend to feel like the role is bailing out the actor, the character’s shortcomings perfectly matched to the actors’. Nick is by turns moody and eager to please, frank one moment, inscrutable the next. In other words, he’s Ben Affleck. The performance is neither memorable nor offensive—capable, but never compelling. We’ll call the leading man debate a wash.
The supporting roles, conversely, are all quite good, from Boyhood’s Ethan Hawke (goofy, surprising, rebellious) to Gone Girl’s Kim Dickens (the shrewd, skeptical, small-town detective). My personal favorite? Gone Girl’s Tyler Perry, who plays the flashy lawyer with a $100,000 smile. Once again, the two films fight to a draw.
In the end, then, it comes down to the two most prominent female roles: Patricia Arquette as Mason’s mom in Boyhood versus Rosamund Pike as Nick’s wife in Gone Girl. Arquette delivers a raw, pragmatic performance, trying to do right, to find love, to raise her children correctly even as her own life bends, breaks, or even shatters. With a burst of desperation in her final scene, Arquette underscores an already stellar showing, proving the best, most memorable character in the film. It’s a near-flawless performance.
Pike’s Amy Dunne, in contrast, is delightfully nasty, then sickly sweet, then venomous, a role that sidles up to the cliffs of caricature, before tumbling off merrily, even deliberately. I wanted to be mesmerized by Amy Dunne, but I ended up incredulous. Arquette wins this round for Boyhood.
Winner: Boyhood
Meanwhile, Gone Girl’s Ben Affleck plays the dopey, misunderstood Nick about as well as any character he’s ever played, which is to say, merely competently. Like Keanu Reeve’s Neo in The Matrix, you tend to feel like the role is bailing out the actor, the character’s shortcomings perfectly matched to the actors’. Nick is by turns moody and eager to please, frank one moment, inscrutable the next. In other words, he’s Ben Affleck. The performance is neither memorable nor offensive—capable, but never compelling. We’ll call the leading man debate a wash.
The supporting roles, conversely, are all quite good, from Boyhood’s Ethan Hawke (goofy, surprising, rebellious) to Gone Girl’s Kim Dickens (the shrewd, skeptical, small-town detective). My personal favorite? Gone Girl’s Tyler Perry, who plays the flashy lawyer with a $100,000 smile. Once again, the two films fight to a draw.
In the end, then, it comes down to the two most prominent female roles: Patricia Arquette as Mason’s mom in Boyhood versus Rosamund Pike as Nick’s wife in Gone Girl. Arquette delivers a raw, pragmatic performance, trying to do right, to find love, to raise her children correctly even as her own life bends, breaks, or even shatters. With a burst of desperation in her final scene, Arquette underscores an already stellar showing, proving the best, most memorable character in the film. It’s a near-flawless performance.
Pike’s Amy Dunne, in contrast, is delightfully nasty, then sickly sweet, then venomous, a role that sidles up to the cliffs of caricature, before tumbling off merrily, even deliberately. I wanted to be mesmerized by Amy Dunne, but I ended up incredulous. Arquette wins this round for Boyhood.
Winner: Boyhood
Round #3: Technical Merit
Comparing the performances in Boyhood and Gone Girl was largely an apples-to-apples exercise, but contrasting the technical merits is almonds-to-grapefruit. Boyhood’s breezy flow comes only from a decade of preparation, strategy, and pacing, the sort of long-term craft that makes a great American novel read like poetry or a brilliant software program run like butter. Linklater creates a sense of effortless art, but only through 12 years of organic development.
Fincher, meanwhile, shows us every jagged edge, every seam, but all in service to his confident, unwavering mastery of the material. Fincher’s framing, pace and cuts are precise, sharp and even diabolical. He dares us to keep up, then leaves us behind if we can’t.
So which deserves the award for technical merit? The artist or the scientist? The poet or the military commander?
In the closest call yet, I have to give the edge to Fincher (Gone Girl). Linklater’s free-spirit approach is bold, daring and successful, but its true strengths are artful, not technical (which we’ll see shortly). On technical merit alone, Gone Girl’s precision triumphs.
Winner: Gone Girl
Fincher, meanwhile, shows us every jagged edge, every seam, but all in service to his confident, unwavering mastery of the material. Fincher’s framing, pace and cuts are precise, sharp and even diabolical. He dares us to keep up, then leaves us behind if we can’t.
So which deserves the award for technical merit? The artist or the scientist? The poet or the military commander?
In the closest call yet, I have to give the edge to Fincher (Gone Girl). Linklater’s free-spirit approach is bold, daring and successful, but its true strengths are artful, not technical (which we’ll see shortly). On technical merit alone, Gone Girl’s precision triumphs.
Winner: Gone Girl
Round #4: Storytelling
Each film deserves praise for its storytelling, but for opposite reasons. Gone Girl perfects an existing genre. Boyhood reinvents one.
With Gone Girl, Fincher sets out to make the ultimate detective procedural. We get (literal) clues, a hard-boiled investigator, a skeptical sidekick, and some tempting red herrings. Every once in awhile, the proceedings threaten to become formulaic, but Fincher adds a touch of humor or an ounce of dread at just the right time. We’ve seen it all before, but we’ve rarely seen it done this well before.
But then Fincher goes further, turning the murder mystery on its head just halfway through the film. As the story winds and twists through its second half, Gone Girl becomes all the more devious, daring us to move, to breathe. The interrogations become ragged and desperate. The music grows harsher and more grating. And then, just before the film’s emotional (and physical) climax, we wait in petrified silence—for five unsettling minutes, the film’s world is calm. You simply won’t find this sort of commanding, confident control in any modern detective series.
Meanwhile, Linklater’s Boyhood throws out the typical “coming of age” tale. Sure, we’re watching a boy become a man, but we miss all the familiar, dramatic moments. Where is the life-altering car crash? The first sexual encounter? Hell, I’d at least expect a rousing speech at high school graduation.
Boyhood has none of these things. Instead, we simply watch Mason’s life in all of its mundane, silly and organic moments. We don’t see Mason at his high school graduation, but we do watch as he drives home afterward, chatting casually with his high school buddy. We don’t watch Mason visiting classes at a potential college, but we laugh as he chats with his older sister later in a local bar. What’s more, Linklater sees fit to linger with his characters, longer than Hollywood would normally advise. Fincher might cut constantly, but Linklater stays put, letting Mason sit for ten, fifteen seconds longer, after the primary action of a scene has played out. These small moments say more about Mason’s life than a big party or funeral service ever could. For Linklater, it must have been a risky decision, but it says more about the human experience than even Fincher’s most dastardly edits. Boyhood tells the more human story.
Winner: Boyhood
With Gone Girl, Fincher sets out to make the ultimate detective procedural. We get (literal) clues, a hard-boiled investigator, a skeptical sidekick, and some tempting red herrings. Every once in awhile, the proceedings threaten to become formulaic, but Fincher adds a touch of humor or an ounce of dread at just the right time. We’ve seen it all before, but we’ve rarely seen it done this well before.
But then Fincher goes further, turning the murder mystery on its head just halfway through the film. As the story winds and twists through its second half, Gone Girl becomes all the more devious, daring us to move, to breathe. The interrogations become ragged and desperate. The music grows harsher and more grating. And then, just before the film’s emotional (and physical) climax, we wait in petrified silence—for five unsettling minutes, the film’s world is calm. You simply won’t find this sort of commanding, confident control in any modern detective series.
Meanwhile, Linklater’s Boyhood throws out the typical “coming of age” tale. Sure, we’re watching a boy become a man, but we miss all the familiar, dramatic moments. Where is the life-altering car crash? The first sexual encounter? Hell, I’d at least expect a rousing speech at high school graduation.
Boyhood has none of these things. Instead, we simply watch Mason’s life in all of its mundane, silly and organic moments. We don’t see Mason at his high school graduation, but we do watch as he drives home afterward, chatting casually with his high school buddy. We don’t watch Mason visiting classes at a potential college, but we laugh as he chats with his older sister later in a local bar. What’s more, Linklater sees fit to linger with his characters, longer than Hollywood would normally advise. Fincher might cut constantly, but Linklater stays put, letting Mason sit for ten, fifteen seconds longer, after the primary action of a scene has played out. These small moments say more about Mason’s life than a big party or funeral service ever could. For Linklater, it must have been a risky decision, but it says more about the human experience than even Fincher’s most dastardly edits. Boyhood tells the more human story.
Winner: Boyhood
Round #5: Cultural Resonance
You know a film is special when it begins to trickle into day-to-day conversations, to frame discussions for days or even weeks at a time. Gone Girl passes this test, thanks in part to a strong marketing campaign, but largely because of the film’s many sobering themes. Marriage is often nasty. Can we trust our intimate partners? Can we trust ourselves? It’s easy enough to make a movie that tries to ask these questions, but Gone Girl asks them in new, chilling ways, enough to make us wonder collectively, as a society.
Boyhood, however, taps into something even deeper...and more eternal. What is it like to grow up? Why does our memory work the way it does, with seemingly arbitrary moments dotting the landscape of our past? Do we want to be the hero, or do we just want to walk with everyone else? (Watch Boyhood’s trailer again, and listen to the lyrics—a perfect match.) Boyhood’s themes don’t pester us the same way that Gone Girl’s do. But boy do they stick. I imagine I’ll puzzle over Boyhood’s quiet questions for years to come. With Gone Girl? I had two or three lively debates about marriage and love, but beyond that, I’m just about ready to move on.
Winner: Boyhood
Boyhood, however, taps into something even deeper...and more eternal. What is it like to grow up? Why does our memory work the way it does, with seemingly arbitrary moments dotting the landscape of our past? Do we want to be the hero, or do we just want to walk with everyone else? (Watch Boyhood’s trailer again, and listen to the lyrics—a perfect match.) Boyhood’s themes don’t pester us the same way that Gone Girl’s do. But boy do they stick. I imagine I’ll puzzle over Boyhood’s quiet questions for years to come. With Gone Girl? I had two or three lively debates about marriage and love, but beyond that, I’m just about ready to move on.
Winner: Boyhood
Round #6: Oscar Potential
We may not want the Oscars to define a movie’s legacy, but unfortunately, that’s the reality. Oscar-nominated films tend to get history’s benefit of a doubt, while the snubbed movies tend to lose their luster much faster So which film has the better chance to earn Oscar’s approval?
Boyhood likely has the better outside shot of a Best Picture nomination, if only because the Academy loves a good off-camera story. If Matthew McCounaughy can win for losing a bunch of weight off-screen, Boyhood might be considered for its epic, 12-year-long production schedule. I also think Arquette is the one possibility for any of the acting awards, so throw another bullet in Boyhood’s column there too.
Meanwhile, Gone Girl is much more likely to receive a nomination for a technical category, like film editing or original score (in my mind, Gone Girl’s musicians--Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross—do cinematic music better than anyone in the business). If I were betting strictly on “which film is more likely to win at least something," I’d go with Gone Girl for this reason.
The tie-breaker, appropriately, is Best Director. Unfortunately, I see this as a toss-up. For now, I’ll just predict that only one of the two will be nominated, but whomever it is won’t win, and regardless of what happens, I’ll be upset. Whether this is an accurate assessment of the Academy Awards today or my own cynicism getting the best of me, I’m calling this a tie and leaving it at that.
Winner: Tie
Boyhood likely has the better outside shot of a Best Picture nomination, if only because the Academy loves a good off-camera story. If Matthew McCounaughy can win for losing a bunch of weight off-screen, Boyhood might be considered for its epic, 12-year-long production schedule. I also think Arquette is the one possibility for any of the acting awards, so throw another bullet in Boyhood’s column there too.
Meanwhile, Gone Girl is much more likely to receive a nomination for a technical category, like film editing or original score (in my mind, Gone Girl’s musicians--Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross—do cinematic music better than anyone in the business). If I were betting strictly on “which film is more likely to win at least something," I’d go with Gone Girl for this reason.
The tie-breaker, appropriately, is Best Director. Unfortunately, I see this as a toss-up. For now, I’ll just predict that only one of the two will be nominated, but whomever it is won’t win, and regardless of what happens, I’ll be upset. Whether this is an accurate assessment of the Academy Awards today or my own cynicism getting the best of me, I’m calling this a tie and leaving it at that.
Winner: Tie
Overall
So with six rounds in the books, Boyhood wins 3.5 to 2.5, earning TheCroakingFrog’s coveted title of “Best 2014 Film Before All the Real Contenders Arrive in November and December.” Congratulations to Linklater, Ellar Coltrane, and every boy in America ages six to eighteen. Now good luck to Boyhood staving off the winter onslaught. It’ll need it.
Overall Winner: Boyhood
Overall Winner: Boyhood