Maudie

The great Sally Hawkins gives such a full-bodied, theatrical performance in Maud, the 2016 drama directed by Aisling Walsh, that one anticipates she will abruptly shout "Acting!" the way John Lovitz used to on Saturday Night Live. Hawkins is the title character, Maud Lewis, the Canadian folk artist whose famous work mostly included outdoor scenes and some of which was purchased by Richard Nixon. As Maud, she is not ignorant of how her rheumatoid arthritis makes her sort of peculiar in the eyes of others. "Some people don't like it if you're different," she says at one point. From the very first moments we see her, she is required to express a variety of emotions within a matter of minutes: hope, anger, disappointment, desperation. And yet, it's not a particularly impressive performance in a fairly bad, overrated film.

Maud lives alone with her aunt (her parents have passed away and her brother essentially has abandoned her), and the two don't appear to get along too much, to the point where she does not to try it out on her own. There she meets Everett a rather shy, impulsive, fisherman prone to angry outbursts with little provocation. He also works at an orphanage, a place in which a man of such temper probably shouldn't work. Everett is played by Ethan Hawke, who channels his inner modern-day Harrison Ford disgruntlement and whose acting choices in the film more or less mirror those of Hawkins. His entrance serves as a rather creepy set up for a sort-of romantic pairing. Everett needs a housekeeper and Maud needs a home, so they agree to have her be hired. The following abusive dynamic between them is not dissimilar to what was depicted in last year's Phantom Thread. Everett insists that they share a bread to prove she's not a princess and barks at her when the floor is not perfectly cleaned. Maud laughs off rumors that she's his romantic partner or sex slave, while Everett slaps her if she tells a stranger the home is comfy. He is more concerned that she talks when he believes she's not supposed to over the fact that she has begun painting all over the walls of the house. He is abusive, to say the least, in so many ways. But he gets his redemption, so if the redemption arc in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri infuriated you, avoid Maudie.

Everett and Maud do decide to get married, and her aunt believes that Maud is the only one in their family who ended up happy. This might partly due to Maud's success as a painter. Maud Lewis was a real-life figure, and one in which the audience is to inherently root for. Maud's painting continues to become an important part of her identity, and she and Everett begin to sell them, though she doesn't make much for them. Everett's attitude remains that he is the one doing all the work, and he is never really admiring of her work. All of these segments are portrayed sort of as playful banter, which adds to the discomfort, in my opinion. There are no small performances in this movie, but no good ones, either. Even if there were, it wouldn't help, as the second half is unbelievably boring.

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Boyhood

The joys of a young child can be ruined by the yelling of adults. This is how "Boyhood" starts. There's a young child (Ellar Coltrane) lying in the grass, unobtrusively staring at the sky. His mother (Patricia Arquette) picks him up and asks him how his day was, gently prodding him about negative progress reports she's receiving from his teacher. His mother mentions that the teacher claims Mason, the young boy, deliberately inserted rocks into the classroom's pencil sharpener. She keeps asking why he would do such a thing. His eventual response is he assumed that because the machines make pencils sharp, it would do the same of rocks. He is quite the curious young boy, as most children often are.

"Boyhood" is an epic story. A film like this--one that takes place over twelve years--would typically feature a young actor as Mason at age six, then another one in his early teen years, then perhaps a twenty-something actor as a college-bound young man. His parents would be played by Arquette and Ethan Hawke, but they would have makeup applied to them throughout the filming to at times make them look younger and other times to make them look older. Not so with "Boyhood."

"Boyhood," directed by Richard Linklater (who, with "Dazed and Confused," "Waking Life," "School of Rock" and the "Before" trilogy, has show that he is one of America's most versatile directors) is a most unusual movie-making experiment, one unlike just about any other American film before it. Unlike the traditional approach, it has literally been filmed over twelve years. Starting in 2002, Mason grows up before our eyes. "It's time for you to grow up!" could be the mantra of his story. His inquisitiveness shifts to cynicism but ultimately bends towards optimism. He's a "yeah, I guess" kind of kid who doesn't appear to excel as much as his sister (Lorelei Linklater); his eyebrows seem permanently arched, particularly in his preteen years. By the time he's an adult, he looks a bit like Peter Dinklage. But in every one of these twelve years, it seems to be that he is the brunt of every sort of lecture. Have you ever seen a more relaxed youth on the screen? I can't recall any scenes of tantrums or even fighting back. The film (and trailer) make excellent use of an exceptional song called "Hero" by Family of the Year. The lyrics "let me go; I don't want to be your hero" seem to exemplify Mason's persona.  

But ultimately, this movie is good, but not great. Hawke (Linklater's collaborator on the "Before" trilogy) overdoes it in a scene or two. The film goes on for about 40 minutes too long, and Linklater's dialogue is painful at many times in the film--virtually every line from a young person sounds incredibly artificial.

But what I do like most about "Boyhood" is the complexities, because such is life. You can find such complexities in the role of Mason's parents. Sarah Boxer in the Atlantic recently asked why all the mothers in Disney films die, arguing that the beneficiary of a dead mother in children's films is a good father. In "Boyhood," it's not so simple. Early on, the father certainly does, in the eyes of the two children, come across as "the nice one," giving away gifts liberally and taking his children out for bowling and French fries while their mother scolds them for not doing their homework. Hawke's character, we are told, has just returned from Alaska, where he worked. At various times in the story, he is unemployed. The mother, on the other hand, moves the kids around for better economic opportunities. Mason and his sister get to see their dad on the weekends, but their father is replaced by one alcoholic after the other. One of them is possibly suffering through post-traumatic stress disorder and the other has a frightening malicious disposition in his eyes. The latter is played by Marco Perella, and he's absolutely terrifying, even in his "normal" scenes. There haven't been scenes of childhood abuse this disturbing since "This Boy's Life" more than twenty years ago. Fortunately, Mason still has his two loving parents. This ultimately might be a story not necessarily of a young boy but of his relationship to his two loving parents; the parents might not love each other anymore, but they certainly love their children.

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