A family portrait at Mason's high school graduation in Boyhood
Photo Credit: Mongrel Media
Boyhood
A+
A review by Frederick Cholowski
I’m 13 years old,
trying to figure out exactly how my feelings work and what they mean. At the
time I had constructed a crush for a friend when asked about during a strange sleepover
session (one of many that would come up in our strange lives over the high
school years); as what seems to be the case with many of my mental constructions
I started to really get into and believe in the idea. Of course, given my
awkwardness at the time, I allowed the crush to boil and the friendship with
this person began to become increasingly awkward until it boiled over on of all
things atop a Ferris wheel ride that we were on with another friend; easy to
say it was an awkward ride on the way down. Years later this story is laughed
about amongst the two of us (and at this point almost everyone I know to an
extent) but at the time it was utterly horrifying.
Or cut to a year
later, 14 years of age, an angsty mess of a stereotypical teenage boy. I wander
the halls of my life, angry at the world for numerous reasons; everything from
a messed up school schedule to two of my best friends, in my mind, ignoring my
very presence during a short dating stint. I must have been a pain to everyone
around me, including myself. I would spend years later rehabbing relationships
that should have never been tainted by myself in the first place.
These memories and their
feelings that amongst others seem menial now, like awkward games of truth and dare in a pool during
elementary school, to moving to high school frightened and excited with a new
slate; but they are things that whether I like it or not will live in hazy
detail in my brain for much of the remainder of my life. No matter how insignificant
they seem now they were important at the time and have shaped who I am as a
person who is sitting here and typing this today.
Boyhood, the latest
masterpiece from Richard Linklater, is the first film I have ever seen that
captures the emotions of these kind of moments and their significance relative
to the time they occurred. There are hundreds of American coming of age stories
many of which capture something beautiful and complex about the character’s
physical and emotional journeys, but nothing that captures as many of the near
universal feelings of being a male growing up (or really of a family growing up
together) quite like Boyhood. It’s a once and a lifetime film, a time capsule
of what it is to grow up in North America in the early 2000’s and a capturing
of the joys and pains of growing up in general.
It can be easy to
say much of the love for the film is centered solely around its unique
filmmaking story. The film is a near three hour conglomeration of the same
actors filmed over the course of twelve years, something that has never been
done before in a single narrative film. That critique might look good at first
given this being the buzz around the film often pointing out that fact, but
look any deeper into the film and it becomes a fallacy. Boyhood is not a simple
chronicle of the life of the lead character Mason (Ellar Coltrane), but instead
seems like a unique collection of memories, in a way like how I remember all of
my childhood. It flows linearly from one time point to another, accentuating
certain points and skipping over others just as people do with their own
memories. For example we get a ton of the second husband (Marco Perella) of
Mason’s mother (Patricia Arquette) but very little of the third husband (Brad
Hawkins), lots of school in the early parts of childhood but little as we get
closer to high school graduation. Sure part of this is that we are seeing these
same actors across the various time frames, but the feelings presented are
those of a great and understanding script and a simple almost a memory like clam
and simplistic style of filmmaking. Following people for 12 years with a bad structure
and little emotion is still a bad film; it takes a level of talent and true
understanding to really get this right.
Richard Linklater
also employs many beautiful and unique pieces of writing and filmmaking to keep
the film flowing in such a beautiful and realistic way. The film never uses
time cards to show what year we are in but instead finds little pieces of
culture from each year to kind of set us in place (or you could always look at
the haircuts and tell). Songs, movie references, sports, and politics all
ground us in each particular era and really gives the since of what people were
doing and feeling around North America during that time period. The device
never feels forced or clunky instead adds a kind of since of specific time,
place, and feeling to the film. There were many moments throughout the film
where I went, “oh yeah my friends and/or I were into that at the time” (the
best of these was when Mason mentions his three favorite films of 2008 so far
being The Dark Knight, Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder and I completely
imagined myself standing in and saying that dialogue at the time) and for me it
gave a certain realism to the flow of the film (as in that’s how I kind of
remember my growing up period to a certain extent).
Another great
flourish is that Linklater really takes the time to develop the characters
around Mason and give them twelve year arcs as well. The best of these goes to
Mason’s long divorced biological father Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawk the man who doesn’t
seem to age one bit over the course of this film) who goes from being a man
stuck in childish ways to perhaps the most grown up person in the film,
becoming a bad influence to a good influence for Mason over the course of the
film. We also get to see Mason’s older sister (Lorelei Linklater, Richard
Linklater’s daughter) Samantha grow up around us as well, giving us a little
bit of a different perspective on Mason’s childhood as well as childhood in
general (one of the films funniest and more heartfelt conversation involves
Mason Sr. talking about sex when he hears of her first boyfriend). Mason’s
mother is also a key component, a hard working lady who gets the perfect job
but never the perfect husband or family bond, she gives a clear picture of what
single parent family life is like, how hard it is, and how it shapes Mason and
his sister.
The performances in
the film are also stunning. This is Ellar Coltrane’s first acting performance and
every bit of it is utterly stunning. Him growing up along with the film really
makes every portion of the film seem real, from his great naturalistic acting
as a kid to the incredible awkwardness of his teenage years where it feels like
he really doesn’t want to be there, it all adds something unique and special to
the film. Lorelei Linklater is just as fantastic as Samantha, really giving a
great since of both the sibling bond between the two and the different stages of
her growth as a human being. Patricia Arquette is also fantastic as we move
through the challenges of motherhood and no one ever gets the most out of Ethan
Hawke other than Richard Linklater. The biggest compliment I can give all the
actors in the film is that each of their characters felt like real human beings
and not onscreen constructions; that is a true filmmaking achievement.
I sit here now, 19
years old, typing this review, wondering where my path in life will take me
while reflecting on the moments on the past that have defined that path so far.
I sit here thinking of the joy and pain I’ve caused and what it ultimately will
amount to in the end, if any of this will matter later on. I am a different
person from Boyhood’s main character, I’ve had completely different life
experiences in a different country; yet after the completion of Boyhood I sat
reflecting on my own life experiences and how many of those feelings related to
those presented in the film. It felt as if for nearly three hours I was
watching a boy that I could have known, one who shared many of the general
feelings of growing up that I did. No other film I’ve ever seen has captured
this feeling, nor the since of realism or understanding of a generation quite
like Boyhood. This is an achievement in filmmaking, and the best film I will
see in 2014.
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