Sunday night wasn’t the happy ending a lot of people wanted for Boyhood.
Having gone full circle from art-house darling underdog to massive Oscar front-runner and back again, Richard Linklater’s 12-year cinematic experiment ultimately failed to take the Academy Awards’ top prize. The movie managed only one win, with Patricia Arquette snagging best supporting actress.
Instead it was Birdman who won most of the love. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s dark comedy about a washed-up superhero-movie actor tied with The Grand Budapest Hotel for most trophies, winning for cinematography, director, original screenplay and picture.
“It was such a weird Oscars,” says Devin Faraci, who runs BadassDigest.com. “They almost always get it wrong, and in a lot of ways, Birdman was wrong.”
Both Boyhood and Birdman were favorites going in, with awards from the Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild and Directors Guild — usually good predictors for what will win best picture — giving the edge to Birdman.
Boyhood was the sentimental choice, says Erik Davis, contributing editor for Fandango.com and Movies.com. “It’s just this incredibly immersive tone poem about growing up and moving on, and the moments that define us at all the stages of our lives.”
Yet Boyhood was always set up to be robbed, he says.
“It was a great movie, but it wasn’t a conventional one — it didn’t hit all the story beats you’d expect from a best-picture winner,” Davis says. “There wasn’t a big standout moment or a particular scene that had everyone buzzing, and when you’re trying to break through to 6,000 Oscar voters, sometimes the loudest film is the one that prevails. And Birdman is a loud film.”
Faraci acknowledges that it’s hard to get too upset at Boyhood being robbed. Even though he found Birdman pretentious and sophomoric (“It’s the movie equivalent of being trapped in a dorm room with a theater major on Adderall”), it’s pretty unique when it comes to Oscar movies.
“It isn’t a safe biopic, it isn’t vanilla,” Faraci says. “It may be obnoxious, but it’s rare that obnoxious movies with an overinflated sense of their own intelligence win the Oscar.”
Birdman wasn’t the better movie, Davis says, but may have been more deserving of the honor.
“Boyhood was about real life, whereas Birdman was about becoming something else and being someone else,” he says. “It was about escape, and at the end of the day, most people go to the movies to escape real life.”
Of the two films, Davis thinks Boyhood is the sort of classic that people will continue to talk about decades later. And Faraci agrees that it will live on.
“One of the worst things that can happen to a movie is winning the Oscar — all of a sudden, you’re getting a new level of examination, your film has to prove it deserves that award,” he says. “The films that lose, though, become almost mythical — the snubbed work of genius, the proof that the system is broken.
“Ten years from now, clickbait articles on the Web will include Boyhood in their listicles of ‘Movies you won’t believe didn’t win the Oscar.’ “
Having gone full circle from art-house darling underdog to massive Oscar front-runner and back again, Richard Linklater’s 12-year cinematic experiment ultimately failed to take the Academy Awards’ top prize. The movie managed only one win, with Patricia Arquette snagging best supporting actress.
Instead it was Birdman who won most of the love. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s dark comedy about a washed-up superhero-movie actor tied with The Grand Budapest Hotel for most trophies, winning for cinematography, director, original screenplay and picture.
“It was such a weird Oscars,” says Devin Faraci, who runs BadassDigest.com. “They almost always get it wrong, and in a lot of ways, Birdman was wrong.”
Both Boyhood and Birdman were favorites going in, with awards from the Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild and Directors Guild — usually good predictors for what will win best picture — giving the edge to Birdman.
Boyhood was the sentimental choice, says Erik Davis, contributing editor for Fandango.com and Movies.com. “It’s just this incredibly immersive tone poem about growing up and moving on, and the moments that define us at all the stages of our lives.”
“It was a great movie, but it wasn’t a conventional one — it didn’t hit all the story beats you’d expect from a best-picture winner,” Davis says. “There wasn’t a big standout moment or a particular scene that had everyone buzzing, and when you’re trying to break through to 6,000 Oscar voters, sometimes the loudest film is the one that prevails. And Birdman is a loud film.”
Faraci acknowledges that it’s hard to get too upset at Boyhood being robbed. Even though he found Birdman pretentious and sophomoric (“It’s the movie equivalent of being trapped in a dorm room with a theater major on Adderall”), it’s pretty unique when it comes to Oscar movies.
“It isn’t a safe biopic, it isn’t vanilla,” Faraci says. “It may be obnoxious, but it’s rare that obnoxious movies with an overinflated sense of their own intelligence win the Oscar.”
Birdman wasn’t the better movie, Davis says, but may have been more deserving of the honor.
“Boyhood was about real life, whereas Birdman was about becoming something else and being someone else,” he says. “It was about escape, and at the end of the day, most people go to the movies to escape real life.”
Of the two films, Davis thinks Boyhood is the sort of classic that people will continue to talk about decades later. And Faraci agrees that it will live on.
“One of the worst things that can happen to a movie is winning the Oscar — all of a sudden, you’re getting a new level of examination, your film has to prove it deserves that award,” he says. “The films that lose, though, become almost mythical — the snubbed work of genius, the proof that the system is broken.
“Ten years from now, clickbait articles on the Web will include Boyhood in their listicles of ‘Movies you won’t believe didn’t win the Oscar.’ “
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