ASK MICK LASALLE
Dear Mick: Every year there are comedies that are great at doing what a comedy is supposed to do: make us laugh. But these movies are virtually never nominated for any award. Do you think the Oscars should have a best comedy category? And what about a best child actor category instead of lumping them in with adults?
Craig Riesterer, Oakland
Dear Craig: When you laugh at a joke, you are reacting, on reflex, to hearing the truth expressed in an unexpected way. Sometimes it’s a truth you’ve never thought of. In being forced to laugh, you are admitting, whether you like it or not, that, at least for this one instant and in this one respect, you are in the presence of someone who is smarter than you are. Now because a lot of people — about 40 to 50 percent of the public, I’d guess, including lots of very smart people — are intellectually insecure, they resent this. And in their resentment, they will walk out of a movie they spent two hours laughing at and decide it was “stupid” or “silly.” In this way, they get to rekindle the fantasy of their own superiority. The point is, this is a bigger problem than the Oscars. This is a human nature problem, so having a best comedy category wouldn’t solve anything. They’d just nominate all the comedies that weren’t funny. As for child performances, I doubt there has ever been a single year with enough good ones to fill a whole category.
Dear Mick LaSalle: We saw Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” last weekend and think that this, in combination with his other excellent films, shows him to be one of the finest directors of our time. What do you think?
Ted J. Rucker, Castro Valley
Dear Ted J. Rucker: I agree, and I’ve thought so for a long time, though this point of view has only recently become widespread. The thing is, not all classics, or classic filmmakers, are immediately recognized. Maybe half are. If a movie is on a grand scale and deals with something important — if it’s “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Schindler’s List” — people know what they’re seeing right away. But if a movie is small scale and perfectly encapsulates its moment in social history, it will take time for people to grasp its greatness, even if they love it. It’s like the difference between James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” In 1925, maybe 10 people in the entire country knew “Gatsby” was a masterpiece, and I have a sad feeling Fitzgerald wasn’t one of them. I’d like to think I might have known it, just as I knew Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” (1995) was one for the ages on the day it came out — and said so. I also put it at the top of my year’s 10-best list, when most critics (possibly all) were ignoring it. I was able to see it as a classic, simply because I understood that absolutely nothing essential in it would date, that the emotions would be just as recognizable in 100 years; and at the same time, I knew that anything in it that would date — the trappings around them, the cars, the phones, the clothes, etc. — would only make the movie more poignant in years to come. Also, I was blown away by it. That told me something, too.
Anyway, director Peter Weir once said that a director is officially great if he makes three movies that are so amazing that you feel transformed afterward. Linklater made his first with “Before Sunrise.” He made his second with “Before Sunset.” He came close with “Me and Orson Welles,” “Bernie” and “Before Midnight,” and now has his third masterpiece with “Boyhood.” The beauty of “Boyhood” is that, though it’s very much in Linklater’s familiar vein, it’s long enough and groundbreaking enough in method — and therefore flashy enough — to get immediate respect.