Boyhood

We begin with a young boy, Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane), staring at the clouds – what is this life all about? He seems to wonder. We finish with him, 13 years later, grown into a young man, just moved into his college dorm and immediately eschewing the conventional orientation for a walk in nature with his clearly liberated roommate and a few young coeds. The film ends with Mason Jr. looking out at nature from above with a beautiful girl by his side. He’s happy. He’s high. He’s allowing the moment to seize him rather than the other way around – if that sounds confusing, you’ll have to see the film.

Boyhood is a bold film that audiences should probably have a bit of preparation for before they go in. Then again, even as I write that I think, no, they should know nothing. The duality exists in my fear that people won’t appreciate this beautiful film for what it is: an experience. It is devoid of the usual plot points and structure. It’s just life. It happens right in front of your eyes. There are absolutely no cinematic tricks. This is bare-knuckle, bordering on documentary-style verite’.

Back to my first argument: it’s good to know a bit about the Director’s (Richard Linklater’s) premise, because it sets you up for the journey. In this case – Linklater shot this film over the course of 12 years. To watch these actors (including Linklater’s daughter, who plays the older sister in the four-person broken family the film centers on) age in real time and jump through life’s challenges in stages is reminiscent of Michael Apted’s 7up, but with much shorter gaps and no commentary. It just happens.

It made me excited at times, fearful at others and thoughtful throughout. There are some great laughs, particularly for me in the opening frames when mom (Patricia Arquette) is dealing with a pair of rambunctious kids just a few years older than my own. I recognized much of her pain and laughed at it from a distance. It’s not cruel, it’s reality, a coping mechanism and the stuff that makes parents cries always gets better at some point – not to say it won’t make us cry again just as quickly. Throughout Boyhood, this is life, without any of the preaching, moral values or platitudes. It just happens.

One of the few takeaways in terms of narrative came in Mom and Dad’s (Ethan Hawke’s) final, separate and very different goodbyes to Mason Jr.. Dad had clearly come full circle and was in a good season of his life. He and Mason Jr. have a mature relationship, his old roommate is a pro musician (something Mason Sr. always wanted) and he has a stable marriage in which he gets to roll the dice on being a dad one more time – this time fully present. Mom, who raised Mason Jr. on a full-time basis is crushed. Though she seems to have well-earned professional stability, she also has severe empty nest syndrome and a sterile new apartment in which she will roost, with, by at least her thought at the moment Mason Jr. is leaving, nothing to look forward to outside of her own death. That is tragedy at the deepest level: regret to the degree that one has wasted her entire life.

Time is the central theme in the film, beyond Mason’s idea of what to do with said time. It means different things to different characters at different moments. Mom seems to be constantly pushing against it. The next thing, person or day will be better. Dad seems fairly immersed in time, embracing it for what he has, such as the limited weekend visits with his kids. There are many visual moments on screen, too, where time is tugged, like when Mason Jr. paints over the height chart on the door frame where he and his sister have grown up. My heart was screaming as I watched this: “take a picture! Make sure you have a record of this for the next place so you can keep it going.” That’s me as a father looking at and thinking about my own children and how they’re growing up. His best friend from the neighborhood barely gets to wave goodbye to him through the tall grass as he rides away with his family. Life is on the move and the speed is picking up.

All around them, via politics, technology and pop culture, time is passing. Mason Jr. picks it up and puts it down, just as we all do. He is marked by some of it, made a mark by it in other parts. Things happen – but none are forced, never is there a single moment where you go “Ah ha! That’s what this whole thing is about!” Because life really isn’t like that. Lightbulbs may flash, but more often than not they simply illuminate the next path and we march on. So it goes, neither bad nor good. And with less attachment, maybe, just maybe we, too, like Mason Jr. in the final frame, can let the moments seize us rather than fleetingly trying to seize them.     

Resonance Rating: 5 out of 5