BoyhoodGrowing up is an adventure, with each year charting unfamiliar territory. Boyhood is a drama about the adolescence of Mason Evans, Jr. (Ellar Coltrane)--from ages six to eighteen--filmed over a period of twelve years. Written and directed by Richard Linklater, Boyhood is experimental in its approach in depicting this transformative span of time by using the same actors, actually growing older. Watching Mason grow up and become an adult before the audience's very eyes--with all of the joys and sorrows that come with it--is one of the rare moments of movie magic that cannot be simulated.
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For those familiar with Linklater's other movies--ranging from Dazed and Confused to A Scanner Darkly--it should come as no surprise that he is one of the most daring and audacious filmmakers working today. The concept of Boyhood--that is, telling a story spanning many years--is similar to his delightful Before trilogy of films; while that series was created as three independent films that just happened to feature the same actors as the same characters, Boyhood makes an almost implausible committment by shooting literally over twelve years, and not having a finished film until its completion. Mason's journey through his early years shares thematic elements with the "Antoine Doinel" series of films by François Truffaut, chronicling the evolution of a boy becoming a man, using the same actor as the same character. But at the end of the day--or the decade, as the case may be--this is just the window dressing for a convincing and authentic portrait of a child of divorce growing up in Texas. Boyhood is also a love letter to Linklater's home state of Texas, portraying "The Lone Star State" in all of its myriad forms and, through Mason's travels, its cities and peoples, and with consistent themes from his previous works. Mason is something of an outsider from the start--somewhat quiet, contemplative, and introspective. He is a deep thinker; when hanging out with friends is usually the "quiet one", recalling Wiley Wiggins from Dazed and Confused and Waking Life. Mason's quest to discover himself is removed from arbitrary morality or convenient scenes that foreshadow some future event, but is filled with authentic moments, the memories and recollections of a man looking back on growing up. Mason goes out to parties and drinks in his teens, but Boyhood reserves judgment; there is never a concessionary scene that shows him making some poor life decision afterwards, solely to uphold some rule to which all children must adhere. There is a scene where Mason is bullied in the boy's room at high school, but the bullies never show up again; they are merely mile markers on his road trip through life. Linklater affords the audience a "God's eye" view of Mason's life, but one that isn't captive to arbitrary rules or restrictions--just life in its most genuine moments.
Mason struggles to find his calling early on, partly by observing how others around him pursue happiness, and usually suffer for poor choices by degrees. His mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette)--or "Liv" to her ex-husband and Mason's father, Mason, Sr. (Ethan Hawke)--searches for love and security, and gets mixed up with guys who seem like Prince Charming, but later reveal themselves to be controlling drunks. These episodes have a lasting impact on Mason, who concludes that it is better to avoid chasing something too hard than risk becoming a victim to a bully. As much as Boyhood is about Mason, it is also about the rest of the Evans family, including his sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater). Olivia and Mason's father divorced when he was a child, leaving her to take car of two children by herself while Mason's dad gallivants across Alaska. Olivia can no longer afford their house by herself, so she makes the unpopular decision to move the family to Houston to be closer to her mother, Catherine (Libby Villari), where she can pursue her master's degree in psychology and become a teacher. (The move is also implied to be her reaction to a messy break with an emotionally abusive lover.) When Mason, Sr. returns to Texas, he shows up in his vintage muscle car and gives his kids presents, playing at being the "cool" parent. Mason, Sr. is a man-child who can't keep himself from swearing in front of his kids and spouting political rhetoric at them, revealing himself as an immature flake--no doubt the reason that Olivia and he split in the first place. Despite this, Mason, Sr. remains a constant fixture in Mason's life, even if they only get together every other weekend. As Mason grows up, so does his father, who becomes "respectable"; he remarries and has a child with his new wife, Annie (Jenni Tooley). Olivia marries her professor, Dr. Bill Welbrock (Marco Perella), who seems like an upstanding citizen and father figure, but descends into an escalating routine of alcoholism and abuse over a couple of years, forcing Olivia to rescue her children from his clutches in one of the most painful and tense scenes in Boyhood. Olivia later meets a handsome and superficially disciplined ex-Iraq War veteran named Jim (Brad Hawkins), who looks like he could become a more stable patriarch. But the weary Mason gives him a suspicious look while Jim chats up his mom on the porch at a party, and a close-up of Jim cracking open a can of beer before criticizing Mason's appearance portends that Jim isn't that far removed from Bill; Jim "abuses" his authority as the "man of the house" to boss Mason around. Mason gets lectured a lot in Boyhood, representing his perception of authority figures. This further pushes him into being an outsider even more--wearing earrings and devoting his time in developing his artistic side. A crucial lesson he takes from his father is that regardless of what the world expects him to be, his life is his own and he only has to answer to himself.
Watching Boyhood is like watching a living scrapbook or a time capsule come to life. It is filled with period-specific moments and props that identify the passage of tiem, without any cumbersome or gaudy titles. When Mason is a six-year old boy, his mother reads a passage from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" to him and Samantha, and they chuckle about the haunting grounds of Myrtle Warren. In 2003, Mason is lounging on a chair while playing a Game Boy Advance SP, which just released that year. Even the music on the soundtrack is what would have been current for that year in any given scene, from The Hives to The Black Keys. The evolution of technology could not have been predicted at the beginning of production, and speaks to Linklater's versatility by incorporating it into his film, like when Mason has a video chat via Skype with his father. Harry Potter is important in Mason's upbringing, like when he attends a costumed midnight release for the next book in the series--a nod to the Harry Potter films that also use the same kind of "time lapse" filmmaking aesthetic that Boyhood does. There are ironic moments that emerge by chronicling events from one year to the next, like a conversation Mason has with his father while they are camping, debating if there will ever be another Star Wars movie and what it might be about. Boyhood commits to its naturalism, deliberately avoiding cliche beats that so many coming-of-age stories feel compelled to serve like stale leftovers. Instances where characters just talk with each other becomes the real action of the film--another leitmotif of Linklater. Consider when Mason goes to visit his sister in college along with his new girlfriend, Sheena (Zoe Graham). Mason and Sheena walk through Austin at night, seeing shows, playing pool, and watching the sun rise as they embrace--a self-referential nod to Linklater's romance, Before Sunrise, in which Ethan Hawke fills the role of his "son" in Boyhood. This speaks to another motif in Linklater's films--that time and life is cyclical. Mason's mother becomes a professor of psychology, and he shares his thoughts about sociological conditioning with Sheena when he comments about society's growing identity crisis with technology and Facebook; this mirrors elements from a lecture Bill gave about behaviorism years before. By the end of Boyhood, Mason has become a man who is more than a mere collection of moments stitched into a proverbial quilt by those who influenced his adolescence, but someone who has absorbed these events and becomes the person he wants to be on his own terms--the true definition of adulthood.
Recommended for: Fans of boldly experimental filmmaking that depicts that universal part of life that molds us into the adults we become. Boyhood may not depict the childhood that you or I experienced, but its realism and honesty makes it a compelling and convincing account of what it means to relive one's youth.
Mason struggles to find his calling early on, partly by observing how others around him pursue happiness, and usually suffer for poor choices by degrees. His mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette)--or "Liv" to her ex-husband and Mason's father, Mason, Sr. (Ethan Hawke)--searches for love and security, and gets mixed up with guys who seem like Prince Charming, but later reveal themselves to be controlling drunks. These episodes have a lasting impact on Mason, who concludes that it is better to avoid chasing something too hard than risk becoming a victim to a bully. As much as Boyhood is about Mason, it is also about the rest of the Evans family, including his sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater). Olivia and Mason's father divorced when he was a child, leaving her to take car of two children by herself while Mason's dad gallivants across Alaska. Olivia can no longer afford their house by herself, so she makes the unpopular decision to move the family to Houston to be closer to her mother, Catherine (Libby Villari), where she can pursue her master's degree in psychology and become a teacher. (The move is also implied to be her reaction to a messy break with an emotionally abusive lover.) When Mason, Sr. returns to Texas, he shows up in his vintage muscle car and gives his kids presents, playing at being the "cool" parent. Mason, Sr. is a man-child who can't keep himself from swearing in front of his kids and spouting political rhetoric at them, revealing himself as an immature flake--no doubt the reason that Olivia and he split in the first place. Despite this, Mason, Sr. remains a constant fixture in Mason's life, even if they only get together every other weekend. As Mason grows up, so does his father, who becomes "respectable"; he remarries and has a child with his new wife, Annie (Jenni Tooley). Olivia marries her professor, Dr. Bill Welbrock (Marco Perella), who seems like an upstanding citizen and father figure, but descends into an escalating routine of alcoholism and abuse over a couple of years, forcing Olivia to rescue her children from his clutches in one of the most painful and tense scenes in Boyhood. Olivia later meets a handsome and superficially disciplined ex-Iraq War veteran named Jim (Brad Hawkins), who looks like he could become a more stable patriarch. But the weary Mason gives him a suspicious look while Jim chats up his mom on the porch at a party, and a close-up of Jim cracking open a can of beer before criticizing Mason's appearance portends that Jim isn't that far removed from Bill; Jim "abuses" his authority as the "man of the house" to boss Mason around. Mason gets lectured a lot in Boyhood, representing his perception of authority figures. This further pushes him into being an outsider even more--wearing earrings and devoting his time in developing his artistic side. A crucial lesson he takes from his father is that regardless of what the world expects him to be, his life is his own and he only has to answer to himself.
Watching Boyhood is like watching a living scrapbook or a time capsule come to life. It is filled with period-specific moments and props that identify the passage of tiem, without any cumbersome or gaudy titles. When Mason is a six-year old boy, his mother reads a passage from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" to him and Samantha, and they chuckle about the haunting grounds of Myrtle Warren. In 2003, Mason is lounging on a chair while playing a Game Boy Advance SP, which just released that year. Even the music on the soundtrack is what would have been current for that year in any given scene, from The Hives to The Black Keys. The evolution of technology could not have been predicted at the beginning of production, and speaks to Linklater's versatility by incorporating it into his film, like when Mason has a video chat via Skype with his father. Harry Potter is important in Mason's upbringing, like when he attends a costumed midnight release for the next book in the series--a nod to the Harry Potter films that also use the same kind of "time lapse" filmmaking aesthetic that Boyhood does. There are ironic moments that emerge by chronicling events from one year to the next, like a conversation Mason has with his father while they are camping, debating if there will ever be another Star Wars movie and what it might be about. Boyhood commits to its naturalism, deliberately avoiding cliche beats that so many coming-of-age stories feel compelled to serve like stale leftovers. Instances where characters just talk with each other becomes the real action of the film--another leitmotif of Linklater. Consider when Mason goes to visit his sister in college along with his new girlfriend, Sheena (Zoe Graham). Mason and Sheena walk through Austin at night, seeing shows, playing pool, and watching the sun rise as they embrace--a self-referential nod to Linklater's romance, Before Sunrise, in which Ethan Hawke fills the role of his "son" in Boyhood. This speaks to another motif in Linklater's films--that time and life is cyclical. Mason's mother becomes a professor of psychology, and he shares his thoughts about sociological conditioning with Sheena when he comments about society's growing identity crisis with technology and Facebook; this mirrors elements from a lecture Bill gave about behaviorism years before. By the end of Boyhood, Mason has become a man who is more than a mere collection of moments stitched into a proverbial quilt by those who influenced his adolescence, but someone who has absorbed these events and becomes the person he wants to be on his own terms--the true definition of adulthood.
Recommended for: Fans of boldly experimental filmmaking that depicts that universal part of life that molds us into the adults we become. Boyhood may not depict the childhood that you or I experienced, but its realism and honesty makes it a compelling and convincing account of what it means to relive one's youth.