Written and Directed by Richard Linklater
**** (four stars)
I sincerely hope that I am fully able to convey to you just how beautiful of a film this is.
Writer/Director Richard Linklater's "Boyhood," now famously known for being the movie that he has spent filming intermittently over the last twelve years, is the finest motion picture that he has made over his illustrious and deeply idiosyncratic 23 year career as a filmmaker. Not only that, it is the finest film that I have seen in 2014 (so far). And even further than that, when I begin to compile a listing of the best films from the decade of 2010-2019 years from now, Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" will rank very highly on that list.
Dear readers, you may feel free to add my name to the choir of critics and movie goers who have already experienced this complete work of art when I say that it is undoubtedly Linklater's masterpiece, and the shining jewel in a career that has already produced the likes of "Dazed And Confused" (1993), "Waking Life" (2001), "School Of Rock" (2003), "Bernie" (2011) and of course, the brilliant triumvirate of "Before Sunrise" (1995), "Before Sunset" (2004), and "Before Midnight" (2013).
Beyond even the scope of his own work, "Boyhood" is a film that conceptually reaches as far as something like Director Terrence Malick's "Tree Of Life" (2011) but it is not a film that is so arcane that it will lose or confound you. It is enormously accessible and identifiable and I believe it will make a seismic impression upon you as it is a film that tells the story of a life while we simultaneously ruminate over our own lives. In all of the films that I have been so fortunate to see, experience and feel over the course of my life, there have been very few that seem to almost magically capture what it means to be alive. Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" is precisely one of those films.
"Boyhood" is a film that exists without a plot, just as our own lives exist without a pre-determined storyline. What we are given is the life and times of Mason (exquisitely played by Ellar Coltrane), whom we meet at the age of six as he lives with his endlessly sarcastic and overly dramatic sister Samantha (Lorelei Linktaer, the filmmaker's daughter) and his Mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) in small town Texas, while he also begins to forge a relationship with his Father Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), long estranged from the family.
Over the course of the film's nearly three hours, which are mesmerizing, we watch the introspective Mason from early childhood all the way to his beginnings as a college Freshman as he finds his way with his family, his friends, his loves, his experimentations, his future and how he begins to interact with and view the world in which he co-exists.
"Boyhood" is the definition, or even more correctly, the re-invention of a film that depicts a slice of life.Truth be told, the concept of seeing a person or collective of individuals age over time and in front of our eyes is actually more familiar that we may think. Just ponder any beloved television series, especially one that features child actors, that endures over a lengthy stretch of time. Or how about the "Harry Potter" film series, where over the course of eight films, we saw all of the child actors grow from wide eyed pups into compelling, highly talented young adults. Even Linklater himself has played with this very concept with his trio of "Before..." movies but what he has achieved with "Boyhood" is something altogether different and something that is actually downright cosmic.
Richard Linklater's films, from the very beginning with his debut feature "Slacker" (1991), have always played with conventions of time, reality and all of the singular moments that go into creating and building our perceptions of what time and reality actually mean to his characters as well as to all of us in the audience. With "Boyhood," I do not think he has ever achieved this feat so explicitly and as blissfully ever before this time. It feels as if all of his previous films provided the foundation for this film, and since he had been filming "Boyhood" over the last twelve years and has released eight other films in the interim, perhaps the process of "Boyhood" informed those works in turn. This specific and downright philosophical give and take is certainly what gives "Boyhood" its profound weight even as the film floats along its way without any stretches of hyperbole and is as languid as a Summer's breeze.
Linklater has given us a film that provides essentially no overt clues as to what year it happens to be. Aside from his music choices as well as the politics and technological advances depicted, "Boyhood" is a film that could almost exist in any time, therefore making a work that is elegantly timeless. With regards to the characters, and even though we are centered around young Mason, this film could have easily been entitled "Girlhood," "Childhood," "Adulthood, "Manhood," "Womanhood," "Motherhood" and/or "Fatherhood" as we are viewing the evolution of all of the significant fixtures of Mason's life just as explicitly. Some sequences are fully presented from Mason's perspective and others are not. But they all influence each other to provide a sprawling canvas that provocatively illustrates every character's qualities and interpersonal connections that all work together into creating the people they will all grow into being.
Richard Linklater has made an experience that asks of us to really think about how we become who we become. Are we fully formed from the start and we emerge into these beings or are we just finding our way during our entire life cycle? Are we doomed to possibly make the same mistake even as we are attempting to better ourselves? With regards to Mason, I found it so fascinating that this boy, who is so quiet, insular, laconic and one of few words becomes a figure who is quite loquacious and expressive by the film's conclusion. It is as if Mason has had all of these concepts locked inside of him at age six but through the process of learning, growing and aging and building a greater sense of language and overall cognitive ability, he is now able to fully articulate what had possibly been swirling in his brain and spirit all of this time.
"Boyhood" is a film that I think even transcends age in regards to how I believe any viewer can watch and experience the film. This is not a film that is designed to be viewed passively. This is a film that wishes to have a dialogue with us as we also have a dialogue with ourselves in our present and of course, our pasts. For viewers who may be of Mason's generation, the pop cultural touchstones in particular may enable those audience members to place themselves immediately at that same time while seeing Mason fully as a contemporary. For those of us who are older, I believe that this film will instantly transport ourselves to each specific time in our own formative years on such an emotional level that the film becomes undeniably primal.
As Mason explores beginning sexuality through regarding the half clothed women in a fashion catalog, or attends a midnight release party for the latest Harry Potter book, receives his first significant heartbreak, discovers a calling for photography, or just spends time in a bowling alley with Mason Sr. and Samantha or hearing over and again from all of the significant adults in his life about how he has to become more focused, I found myself returning to singular moments in my own life. I returned to those stages when I was exploring writing and film but not really understanding that exploring writing and film was indeed what I was doing. I also returned to very similar periods during high school when my own parents were relentlessly riding me about becoming more focused and attentive about the future that was rapidly approaching. I thought of my own periods riding my bike aimlessly around and around my neighborhood. The days I spent dreaming away on my basement couch listening to Beatles' albums. And that sensational feeling of arrival when I first arrived in Madison for college, finally feeling as if I could have a sense of discovery on my own terms. I thought of the slowness of time when I was younger and the sheer velocity of its passage as I have grown older, a sensation that lies at the heart of "Boyhood" as we view all of these characters growing up in a flash.
On a pure filmmaking and storytelling level, I was amazed with how Richard Linklater crafted an astoundingly seamless and consistent piece of art, made all the more remarkable due to the nature of this film's production. While actors like Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette are seasoned performers with the ability to return to the emotional states and motivations of characters year after year, the performance of Ellar Coltrane as Mason is just that much more of a marvel. Linklater is a filmmaker who prides himself upon his actual writing and has consistently bristled with the thoughts that his films are largely improvised due to how naturalistic his films unfold and how his characters speak to each other. Knowing that, I just do not know how Coltrane was able to create this character so completely, where we do feel as if we have fully captured on film a child's evolution into a young man, with all of the nooks and crannies intact. His is a presence that is quietly powerful and riveting as Ellar Coltrane gives "Boyhood" its proudly beating heart and depth of soul.
Dear readers, I vehemently wish for you to know and understand that "Boyhood" is not an esoteric, impenetrable experience that will keep you at arms length. It is a film of tremendous heart and humor, pathos and poignancy, truth, pain, and love that speaks directly to the spirit as it is a film of moments. Moments that seize us as each one is a vignette unto itself, growing into an interconnected narrative that will only conclude once our life span reaches its end. Mason's story is our story and "Boyhood" is a film that wishes to sweep us up in its grand embrace.
Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" is a film that superbly made my heart lift and I sincerely hope that you will all take the chance and experience a cinematic journey that is unquestionably unlike anything else that you are able to see right now.
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