IFC Films
When American independent filmmaker Richard Linklater and his crew set out to make Boyhood over a decade ago, they doubtlessly knew that the endeavor was a special one. The film tells the story of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), an ordinary kid living with his divorced mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter) in suburban Texas. The film is a coming-of-age tale in the purest sense, rendered with down-to-earth realism and winsome warmth that are uncommon even in Linklater’s more playful, small-bore works. What makes Boyhood particularly extraordinary, however, is the manner in which it was created. Rather than casting different actors to portray the characters at various points in the extended story, Linklater filmed Coltrane and the other performers in short intervals over the course of twelve years. The result is an utterly novel cinematic experience, in which the viewer watches a child grows from age five to seventeen over the course of 165 minutes.
Even if Boyhood achieved nothing else, the fact of its existence would be a filmmaking achievement, a testament to the ambition and dedication of Linklater and his performers. There have been comparable projects that rely upon the march of real-world time, such as Michael Apted’s groundbreaking (and still ongoing) Up documentary series, and Linklater’s own fictional Before trilogy. Still, there is something especially striking and poignant about seeing a dozen years pass by in the span of one feature-length film. The children grow up and mature, the adults accumulate lines and sags, and the Bush and Obama eras unfold.
This “one year equals one year” conceit could have been a mere gimmick, but Linklater utilizes it to weave a gently affecting story about the travails of a typical American family. While the white middle-class experience is hardly under-represented in indie cinema, what distinguishes Boyhood is its refusal to indulge in grotesque psychodrama. Mason and Samantha’s father, Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), is a bit of an overgrown adolescent. In a lesser film, the man’s irresponsible streak would result in some misfortune. Instead, Mason Sr. gradually mellows, eventually settling down and remarrying. Olivia, meanwhile goes back to school and remarries not once but twice. Unfortunately, on both occasions, the new husband turns out to be an abusive alcoholic. These relationships lead to periods of fear and misery for Mason, but Linklater successfully integrates them into the overall arc of the boy’s young life, such that they never shade into after school special histrionics.
Indeed, Linklater is so resolved to convey the sheer ordinariness of Mason’s experiences that one might ask why they warrant the viewer’s attention. Certainly, Mason is a thoroughly average kid, developing from a lively little boy into a sensitive yet disaffected college freshman. In the film’s final scene, it is Mason himself who points to the film’s thematic core: the challenge of living in the immediate moment, rather than dwelling on the past or hand-wringing about the future. By contrasting his young protagonist with the older characters, Linklater illustrates the way that youth’s receptiveness to the present is slowly replaced with the anxiety, regret, and self-pity of adulthood. It’s a notion that harmonizes with the film’s structure, which hopscotches through significant events in Mason’s youth in a manner that suggests an album of snapshots, each one memory of a meaningful event or a fleeting but savored moment. Boyhood thus serves as a realist complement to the jumbled childhood memories that flit through The Tree of Life, with the former film’s tangible domestic drama as moving as the latter’s impressionistic vision.
Boyhood opens at The Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar, 314-727-7271) and Plaza Frontenac Cinema (1701 S Lindbergh, 314-994-3733) on Friday, August 1.
