Directed by Richard Linklater
starring Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater
I know the Oscars were months ago. Boyhood is old news. But I wanted to document it here because it is indeed one of those hallmarks of maverick American filmmaking that will be referred to over and over again. If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry – your failure to pay full price at the box office didn’t prevent it from getting its kudos and making its mark. Actress Patricia Arquette was rightfully lauded, earning an Oscar (and calling down wrath for the way she called for women's rights) as well as an Independent Spirit award for her performance, though Linklater and frequent collaborator Hawke did not received as many honors.
By now you have to know the film’s gimmick, that the actors assembled for a short period annually for twelve years to shoot the film. This lengthy process gives viewers the rare ability to see the story of a boy and his family grow, evolve, and change for better or worse as the years pass. Many times the scenes were improvised without a finished script. The result is a beautiful film that captures the small moments of which real life is made: The silliness, inventiveness, resilience and cruelty of children; the struggle of average adults to make career, education, parenting, and romantic choices that don’t always pan out; the tiniest moments of childhood revelation, disillusion, and hard truth over many years that shed the layers of innocence and reveal the budding adult underneath. It’s a brilliant idea to use the same actors year after year, giving the film the weight of a documentary and allowing the characters' individual journeys to unfurl without the usual filmmaking cosmetic and casting gimmicks.
BUT ... if you are the type of movie goer that insists on a coherent, linear story line with a big payoff, Boyhood is not for you. I’ve seen some comments where viewers feel that they lost valuable hours of their own lives to this film.
*** SPOILERS ***
As Boyhood begins, parents Olivia and Mason Sr. have already parted ways, but Mason Sr. returns after a long work bid out of town, trying to resume relations with his family. Olivia is having none of it. She’s planning to go to college to improve the family situation and needs to move them to Texas, promising their two children, precocious Samantha and dreamy Mason Jr., that they will still get to see their Dad.
Ethan Hawke plays Mason Sr. as a guy who means no harm, but whose aimless lifestyle is at odds with his ex-wife’s ambitions. He's an overgrown teenager, full of dreams and ethics that no longer serve Olivia’s needs. Despite this, he grows into a loving and caring Dad who insists upon developing a real and intimate relationship with his kids. In a scene where he picks them up in his cool convertible muscle car and endures half-hearted, monosyllabic answers to questions about the tweens’ young lives, he pulls the car to the curb and draws a line in the sand. “I’m not going to be that Dad that drives you places and buys you shit,” he declares. It’s a priceless moment where he demands both respect and engagement from his children, and from us as viewers as well. Mason Sr. starts the film as a scattered fuckup, but his devotion and his frankness with them has a profound impact on keeping both kids grounded and clear that they are loved.
Patricia Arquette gives an incredible performance, notable for its simple lack of showiness. She has never been a “mannered” performer, and here she gives us a peek at a woman who is smarter than her circumstances but often finds herself having to choose the best out of a pool of poor options when it comes to love. After breaking up with Mason, she gets involved with one of her professors, a single father who seems stable, with a career, a home, and two children of his own. For a while the blended family presents a classic picture of American domesticity. But he soon succumbs to alcoholism and abuse. Olivia rightfully runs, uprooting her children’s lives in the process. A few years later she has begun teaching at the university and falls into a relationship with a student, a haunted Iraq War veteran who ultimately clashes with the laconic teenaged Mason and also spirals into alcoholism and abuse.
Boyhood is about everything and nothing, the camera walking alongside to document an average boy reaching average benchmarks (smoking, drinking, having sex, learning his strengths and weaknesses) and evolving into an average young adult. He struggles in school, is bullied by classmates, has teenage crushes, plays video games, squabbles endlessly with his smart-aleck big sister, develops an interest in photography, clashes with his stepfathers, experiments with alcohol and pot, gets his heart broken, and is coached in sports and life through by his Dad. He gets a summer job, learns to drive, applies to college. And so it goes. In his averageness is the sum total of all human stories, of a million as-yet-undistinguished American boys of all backgrounds with that most precious and easily squandered of qualities: potential.
In this thoughtful portrayal of an unremarkable life are sparks of revelation about the universality of experience. When Mason Jr. graduates from high school, the family throws him a party; Olivia then helps him pack for college and informs him that she is giving up her house for a smaller residence now that her kids will have to now live on their own. Arquette shines in the moment that Olivia has a brief breakdown. “I thought there would be more,” she says simply. “The only thing left is death.”
There are no stunts, no car crashes, no extreme acts of daring or heroism in Boyhood. No one dies a painful death. The sacrifices are small. But that is the quiet brilliance of this film, which reminds us to savor the everyday and value the time we have with those we love.
