Film Review: Boyhood ****

I share so little in common with Mason, the subject of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. We both are boys. We both like art: He likes to take pictures and I like to write, but after that many of our similarities end. He grew up in a fractured home, rarely seeing his biological father. My parents just celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary. Mason constantly moved and in an incredibly moving and hysterical sequence his sister says goodbye to their first home warning their mother that she will never forget this betrayal. Little does she know it is the first of many moves in their life. Mason, although silent, is just as emotional as his sister. As they drive off, he sees his friend riding his bike to try and catch them in time to say good-bye. His friend while still on his bike waves and Mason cannot bring himself to wave back. Better to forget the past. This is how Mason continues forward in life. Too often there is too much going on and all he can do is merely observe rather than participate. It shows such growth when he stands up to his mother’s third husband and tells him to back off. I grew up in one house where my parents still live. Mason has a sister whose relationship can be summed up in her amazing advice to him upon his graduation from high school: “Good luck”. I grew up as an only child. Mason grew up as a child of the new millennium and I grew up as a child of the 90s. And yet despite all of these differences, Richard Linklater magically captures what it is like for all young boys to grow up. Despite the differences, the universal truth and experience of growing from a boy into an adult is captured in this incredible film.

Linklater is not the first filmmaker to attempt such a grand goal as trying to reproduce life itself. Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel collection contains five films each starring the actor Jean-Pierre Leaud who literally grew up in the films covering his life from the time he was twelve into his thirties. The series started with the legendary The 400 Blows but my favorite is the underrated Bed and Board where Antoine deals with an obsession for a young Japanese woman during his marriage. The documentary collection The Up Series began with seven seven-year-old children in Britain and has returned to reconnect with them every seven years of their life. 56 Up was released in 2012. For those who didn’t grow up with the subjects of the film and revisit them every seven years, watching all the films in a row provides an incredible insight into the process of aging. Also films like Thirteen attempt to create a similar experience by exploring in depth a microcosm of growing up (choosing one year in a life and following it in great detail) rather than the macrocosm approach of Boyhood which makes Linklater’s film unique.

The first shot of Boyhood begins with a young boy staring up at the sky while titles that look like a child drew them stretch across the clouds. We do not know what Mason is thinking, but we know he is dreaming. Then, we see for the first time the face of Ellar Coltrane, Mason Jr., the young star of the film. Laying on the ground, staring up at the clouds, your imagination playing out against the sky to try and reduce your boredom... an experience we’ve all had. I wonder if that moment will be lost on generations that have i-phones to play games on rather than resort to their imagination to relieve boredom. That thread of thought comes in briefly towards the end of the film as technology begins to change Mason’s life, but is a minor observation in a much larger film. Richard Linklater really lucks out with Ellar Coltrane as his main character. He couldn’t have known that this young man would grow into quite the actor as he aged and when Linklater needs to stop observing and take control of the film, Ellar succeeds beginning with the incredible conversation he has with Sheena (more on that later).

For most of Mason’s life, we see Mason reacting to the things around him. Rather than speaking, his sister (played by Linklater’s own daughter) speaking enough for both of them, Mason bundles up his emotions and doesn’t express them. At one point he is so angry over a haircut that he doesn’t want to go to school and it takes an entire car ride for his mother to figure out why Mason is so mad. It is not a surprise that Mason picks photography as his way to express himself, even saying at one point that words are useless. The subtext of that of course are that pictures can express yourself far more than words, which is why Linklater’s film works so wonderfully. It captures the images of growth… a young man coming home after drinking. Flirting with an older woman in his room. A song sung by the whole family. It is in these images that we see Mason growing.

Eventually, Mason does begin to blossom in the previously mentioned conversation with Sheena (Zoe Graham), his soulmate at the time, about how much he hates normality and wants to be himself. It is in this cliché moment of dialogue that Ellar reveals just how good an actor he is, taking a moment that would belong in a much lesser film and elevating it to a true revelation. It is the dialogue between Sheena and him that feels the most relaxed and their night together in Austin one of the great moments of the film, eating queso at 3 AM and waiting for the sun to rise. It is these universal moments that mean so much. Haven’t we all had that night… waiting for the sun to rise with someone special?

Ellar and Richard rightfully deserve all of the praise they are getting, but the hidden gem in the film is the mother who goes with Mason along the journey. Patricia Arquette in a career best performance grows with her role as the years pass. Just as the character she plays comes to learn more about herself as her life goes on (she chooses to major in psychology almost to try and understand her own decisions in life), Patricia learns the small details that make this character into a real mother. In a sequence towards the end of the film that almost steers into fantasy, a stranger at a restaurant appears to tell her children that they need to listen to her mother just at the right moment. It is a dream that I was told by my mother that she has all the time.

Ultimately, Linklater’s film feels like life itself. A bit formless and sprawling, at times slow and boring, at others fast and interesting. He frames the film through the perspective of Mason, we learn nothing that he doesn’t know, and we learn who he is from his understanding of the world. He captures what it is like to grow up. The confusion, coming into who you are. Could he have sat down and shaped the movie more? Absolutely. Could he have made a better film with better actors at times? Absolutely. But a conventional structure would ruin the point of this film just as it would ruin Bergman’s masterpiece Scenes from a Marriage. Linklater’s film realizes that life is about moments and a scene towards the end that I thought superfluous at first spells this out. It is not about us seizing moments, but about those moments that seize us and make us who we are. Our lives are not made up of Hollywood clichés like confronting death or having a life changing experience to symbolize the movement to adulthood. They are the everyday friendships we make. They are conversations had while walking to your mother’s work with a young girl on a bicycle following you. They are those nights where you hang out with your friends chatting or with your family when you have nowhere else to go. They are those moments lying on the grass and looking at the sky and dreaming.