A cinematic achievement, Boyhood is a slice-of-life film from accomplished director Richard Linklater.
Boyhood (Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater) – The “must-see” independent movie of the summer, Boyhood is the ambitious film from writer/director Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, School of Rock, Dazed and Confused) about the 12-year journey of a Texas family through a typical life.
The “hook” of the film is not the story, the acting, or the slice-of-life plot although all are interesting enough. Instead, it is the filmmaking. Linklater, twice Oscar nominated for writing, invested a dozen years to the making of the film, choosing youngster Ellar Coltrane as a young child of about six to star. Linklater also used young Ellar in his film, Fast Food Nation, back in 2006. Over the years, Linklater filmed pieces of his self-penned film and managed to attract stars Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke to the project. The logistics of shooting a film over many years are daunting. Maintaining continuity on and off the screen and among the cast and crew is impossibly difficult. What an achievement!
Before our eyes, Coltrane’s character, Mason, matures. He experiences a “normal” boyhood where he must deal with his parents’ divorce, typical sibling ribbing, bullying, family obligations, first love, first hurt, social pressures, extra-curricular passions, and college choices. In short, we watch him deal with life as a kid from grade school through high school graduation.
Mom (Arquette) is a constant. At the start of the film, she is already divorced, just leaving her job to go finish her degree, and hoping to create a better life for her family. Dad (Ethan Hawke) was a free spirit who is just returning from Alaska to pursue his music career and to reconnect with his kids. Mason’s sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, daughter of the writer/director), is your typical first child – mature, sassy, excellent student, and brother tormentor. The story is not chock full of surprises, which is part of its charm. In fact, at places, it is actually mundane, even boring. But so is most of growing up. The events of Mason’s life are all of the rights of passage in school, with friends, with girls, with the dramas of the family. The story is about his first beer, his interaction with his teachers, and his experimentations with cigarettes, marijuana, and sex. His parents are caring and involved, even if their life’s choices are not always good. She chooses severely flawed men; he loses his free spirit and becomes the man his first wife always wished he would be.
Reviews of Boyhood have been universally wonderful. I liked it, too. But I wonder if I would have thought this wasn’t too long, too indulgent, and too much of a cliché if I didn’t know what it took to pull it off. On the first point, the film checks in at almost three hours. I suppose if I shot a ton of film over a dozen years I would want to use a lot of it. Objectively, this film needs a serious edit. Frankly, the maturation of Coltrane was amazing but don’t confuse that with meaning that he is a great actor. Heck, the kid is very well spoken and intelligent, but his performance is pretty droll. We like him but he’s no Leonardo DiCaprio, who we watched age through his on-screen performances.
Boyhood is a notable, successful achievement in movie making that intrigues its audience more than it entertains.