Boyhood

We are so insanely lucky to have Richard Linklater. He is such an amazing filmmaker and really gets at the heart of what it is to be alive, what it is to be human. There is no other director right now that even comes close. Some of Woody Allen's older films definitely got it, definitely got close to the matter of what it is to be alive. Some of Eric Rohmer movies also hit the mark.

But these days, there are no other films coming out that leave me floating after I see them, so aware of what a precious thing this is, this time here on Earth.

I am still processing Boyhood, still under its spell from this past weekend. I want to go see it again as soon as possible. I want to again experience that joy in cinema that I had in the theater watching the film, that joy that I had in encountering a work of art that was really asking the big questions, asking what it all means, asking what it means to have these crazy ups and crazy downs and to be here for the shortest amount of time, about what the point of it all is.

And the point, which he shows us through his humanist style of filmmaking (because it'd be so easy to pose these same questions and have bleak, flippant answers that didn't acknowledge the seriousness of the inquiry as some method of deflecting having to grapple with the answers to these difficult questions), the point he shows us in all of this is just that - it is to have these ups and these downs and this string of slightly miserable events that will be the memories of our life - that that is the purpose. It is to take these moments for what they are, to treasure this thing because of its briefness, because of its pointlessness, to love every single moment of it, to see the crazy beauty in it all.