Most often when you hear a movie took twelve years to make it’s because a director couldn’t find financing or some other industry-related issue(s) caused a delay in production, not because that’s how long it has taken to film all the necessary footage. When it comes to Richard Linklater‘s Boyhood, its twelve-year production timeline is exactly as it was intended and I think we’ll be hard-pressed to see a better film this year.
Beginning in 2002, Linklater came up with the idea to capture individual moments in the life of Mason, a young boy played here by Ellar Coltrane from the time he was only eight years old. From fighting with his sister (Linklater’s own daughter Lorelei Linklater), looking at his first adult magazine, an unwanted haircut, first girlfriend, first beer and dealing with the separation of his parents (Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke), the film bounces in and out of Mason’s life from his days in grade school to his first day at college.
Like Linklater’s Before trilogy of films, the trick here is to make it look effortless, unscripted and, at worst, improvised on set as if we are truly looking in on a brief moment in these character’s lives and the camera just happens to be there. It works, and it works in ways almost impossible to put into words. When I say this is a film that will be difficult to surpass over the course of the rest of this year, it’s because it feels like something completely alien to most filmmaking… It feels honest.
Boyhood isn’t about “major” moments and milestones. Sure, those come about, but they aren’t always what we remember about our youth and in a lot of ways this feels like a memory film. You don’t always remember that big thing that happened in your life, the big argument you had with an ex-girlfriend or that moment you decided what college you wanted to go to, but you do remember the consequences of those moments and decisions. You remember the brief aftermath, the conversation you had with that girl when you didn’t quite want to let go, but it just wasn’t going to work, or the conversations with your parents following their separation, but not that specific moment where you learned about it.
Movies attempt to dramatize the big moments and forget about how we feel afterward and it often leaves an emotional void. The thing is, most of us can connect with several of these major moments in life, we’ve gone through them, but it’s in how we deal with them and walk away from them that make us who we are, characters in movies are no different.
From midnight releases of the new “Harry Potter” book, music and a perfectly-timed conversation about whether or not there will ever be another Star Wars movie serve as pop culture markers just as much as the personal milestones we all endure, but Linklater isn’t dedicated wholly to Mason, giving the rest of the family more than its fair share of time on screen.
I think it’s safe to say Arquette gets nearly as much screen time as Coltrane, playing Mason’s mother Olivia, and she has a lot of heavy lifting to do. Her character has what are probably the two “biggest” scenes in the entire film and she’ll blow you away with both. One particular scene late in the film stuck with me more than any other, because as much as I can relate to Mason and his growing up as a young boy, this one moment between Olivia and Mason seemed the closest to my life and my relationship with my mother. Even though we’d never had the same conversation it’s a scene that touched upon what it means to be family and how hard it must be as a parent.
As children we grow up unsure of the world around us, but as we grow older we get this sense of self, almost thinking the world revolves around us. Then, when we’re confronted with the idea of how our actions affect those we love, we start to see the bigger picture.
Out of all the notes I took while watching Boyhood the one that sticks out the most was when I wrote, “Life is hard enough.” This is in relation to storytelling in general and a motto I like to imagine Linklater had running through his head in some way while making this film. You could add to that the idea “life is interesting, dramatic, emotional and fullfilling enough” to the point you don’t need to over-dramatize everything. It doesn’t always have to be about the “big” moments, the big moments definitely shape us, but it’s the quiet, unassuming moments where we truly find ourselves and Boyhood gets that.
To know Linklater had the end of this film and the “grid”, as he likes to call it, plotted before he began shooting is mind blowing and then to consider the wholly reliable cast he surrounded himself with seems a sheer stroke of luck. However, to look at his oeuvre is to realize it’s more than just luck.
Boyhood holds a spiritual kinship with several of Linklater’s films from Dazed and Confused to all three Before films. It puts you in the mindset of its characters and it does so in such a way that you suddenly find yourself absorbed in their lives, curious as to what’s around the next corner and more than willing to return for another go ’round. There’s something so pure, natural and all-encompassing about Boyhood that it almost doesn’t even feel like the right title. It’s not so much “about” one singular boy as much as it’s about us all, to the point I think everyone will find a little piece of themselves in this movie and that’s the piece you’ll hold most dear.
