Boyhood: Subtle, powerful meditation on life
FILM | Chuck Koplinski
On the surface, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood seems to be nothing more than a gimmick. Filmed for a week to 10 days over the course of 12 summers using the same cast, the movie serves not only as a time capsule of the last decade but is a powerful yet intimate odyssey of one boy’s journey to manhood capturing the mundane and the dramatic, all of which culminates in a moving portrait of the formative years of one human being, unique yet universal in its impact.
A traditional plot summary would be useless here. Nothing, yet everything happens to Mason (Ellar Coltrane), a young boy we meet when he’s 5 years old, lying on the ground, staring curiously at the sky. His mother (Patricia Arquette) is doing her best to keep her life together and care for him and his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), something that sometimes is too much for her to handle. Her husband (Ethan Hawke) has left her high and dry. In an effort to better herself, she moves the family to Houston, closer to her own mother, so that she can go back to school and be closer to her family. Mason and Samantha aren’t thrilled with the move. It is not the first they’ve had to endure, nor will it be the last.
As Mason matures we see him encounter and deal with many typical experiences. He and his friends ogle over the lingerie ads in the Sears catalogue; his feelings of invincibility cause him to engage in stunts that scare his mother to death; he thinks of the finality of death for the first time when he sees a dead bird; he develops an interest and proficiency in photography; he deals with two stepfathers who fail to live up to his mother’s expectations; he comes to the realization that elves and other mythical creatures don’t exist; he becomes politically active when Barak Obama runs for president; he goes off to college; he feels the first pangs of love; he becomes a smart, sensitive, inquisitive young man.
Linklater doesn’t resort to trite ways to signal the passage of time. He gives us hints as to where we are in the time stream of the last 12 years by having hit songs of the day play in the background and we can’t help but smile at the unexpected quaintness that emerges. We see Mason and his friends clamor over popular toys and gadgets such as Gameboys and iMac G3s that are now obsolete. In many ways, the film is a concise and surprising history of the last decade of American life, a period that has surprisingly slipped into our memories with unprecedented speed thanks to the manic pace of everyday life.
In seeing Coltrane and, to a lesser extent, Lorelei Linklater grow up before us, a sense of intimacy develops between them and the viewer. A unique emotional connection develops that’s rare in cinema. We wind up feeling more like a friend of the family than a passive observer who’s watched these young people develop. Coltrane is a natural on screen and while it would be easy to say that he isn’t acting, just playing himself, appearing at ease before the camera is far more difficult than it appears.
Boyhood is a film everyone can relate to. It captures the drama of everyday life, the surprisingly mundane moments, the unexpected roadblocks, the small triumphs and disappointments that shape us. Linklater’s approach isn’t pretentious; he doesn’t pretend to have any great revelations about the meaning or purpose of life. As a speaker at Mason’s high school graduation says, “What’s the point? No one knows.” No, it’s about the journey and what we do with our time here. By the end of the film, there’s no question Mason is as well-prepared to tackle it.
Contact Chuck Koplinski at [email protected].
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