“Moments seize us.”
The H-Bomb: Something I’ve always admired about filmmaker Richard Linklater is his willingness to experiment. Be it with narrative (Slacker), style (A Scanner Darkly), or both (Waking Life), he has ceaselessly searched for new ways of telling a story on film. Of all his cinematic experiments, Boyhood is far and away his most ambitious to date. Shot over a period of twelve years, it tells the deceptively simple story of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), a young boy growing up in Texas with his mom (Patricia Arquette) and sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater).
We’re first introduced to Mason circa 2002, when the character is six-years-old. His mother is a struggling single parent, and his father (Ethan Hawke), is an affable deadbeat who pops into his kids’ lives every now and then to take them bowling or camping. Over the next twelve years, we follow Mason and his family as they live their lives. There are some highs, some lows, some moments poignant, others mundane.
There are no title cards or transitions to clue us in to the passage of time, just changes in hairstyles, technology, and news of events going on in the world around them (hearing the phrase “Anyone but Bush” for the first time in nearly ten years sure took me back). Through all of this, we gradually witness a young boy grow into a man. Essentially, this is Life the Movie.
Boyhood is a film that, over the past several weeks, has been praised almost unanimously, leaving the majority of my fellow critics utterly awestruck and likening it to a near religious experience. Sadly, I must confess that I was not as moved as they apparently were. Now, that is not to say that I was unmoved. Not at all. In fact, I fully realize that Boyhood is a damn fine film. I was with it for much of it’s nearly three hour running time, through I was feeling its length towards the end, and I certainly admire what Linklater has accomplished with this twelve year endeavor.
If Boyhood had been shot in a traditional manner, one actor would have played Mason as a small child, another would have played him as a young adolescent, and yet another would have played him as a late teen/young adult. Instead, we have Coltrane playing him at all those ages, so we are literally watching this young man, and his sister, grow up before our eyes. We see him ponder the existence of elves, cope with an unstable home life, turn into a rebellious adolescent, and start to take an interest in girls. The way he interacts with his parents changes drastically throughout the picture, and it all feels authentic. That we are actually seeing a life in progress gives the film an impact and resonance it might not otherwise have, I see that. I just don’t find it nearly as profound as others have made it out to be.
Ultimately, Boyhood feels a bit more like an experiment than a proper, full-fledged film, albeit a rather impressive one. Linklater has always had a fondness for banality, and here, I would say there’s an overabundance of it. Now, I understand that everyday life is often banal, or at least not particularly dramatic, and that’s the kind of reality Linklater is striving for here, without any bullshit Hollywood theatrics. Usually, I appreciate that sort of thing. For a film that’s almost three hours long; however, its tone and pacing are perhaps a bit too laid back.
The one overtly dramatic sequence occurs roughly halfway through, when one of Arquette’s husbands turns into an abusive drunk, and she realizes she has to get her kids away from him. That’s the only time we have any genuine, honest-to-God tension. The rest of the movie feels like it was made by a genuine slacker, one who allows things in the narrative to just kind of happen. Realistic? Sure. Compelling? Not always. Make no mistake, I am not at all saying it’s boring, as I was invested in the characters and the journey I was taking with them… for the most part.
A great deal of Boyhood’s success hinged on Linklater finding and casting the right child as Mason, a task far more difficult than it sounds. Just because someone can act as a small child, does not mean they will grow into a good adult actor. Case in point, look at the scores of child actors who tried and failed to crossover into adult roles. WIth Coltrane, Linklater didn’t have this problem, this kid’s performance is a revelation. When he’s small, he’s very much the cute kid, as he grows older, his performance becomes more nuanced and complex. He does more than simply age, he matures as an actor on camera.
The other revelatory performance comes from Linklater’s own daughter, Lorelei, as Samantha. Like Coltrane, we virtually watch her grow up on film, and this movie is almost as much her’s as it is his. She and Coltrane have terrific chemistry throughout, and they are utterly convincing as brother and sister. I read that at some point during the lengthy production she lost interest in the film, and asked her dad to kill her character off. Thankfully, she later changed her mind.
As the Mom and Dad, Arquette and Hawke bring gravitas to the proceedings, and both are exceptional. Like the kids, they had to commit to the project for years, and they too age and change as the story progresses. Hawke’s arc is particularly interesting, as he does just as much growing and maturing as Mason does, evolving from irresponsible, absentee non-parent to devoted family man. His trade up of vehicles at one point late in the film says it all.
Writer/director Linklater should absolutely be commended for what he has achieved with Boyhood. An intimate epic twelve years in the making, there has been, to my immediate knowledge, nothing quite like it before. The sheer ambition of the project, and the dedication on the part of so many, certainly earns my utmost respect, I only wish I were as crazy about the finished product as the rest of the world. Again, I did like it, I just wasn’t quite amazed. But who knows, maybe you will be. The only way to find out, dear readers, is to go see it, and that, I highly recommend.
