That Richard Linklater could successfully
assemble a cast—including a seven-year-old boy (played by Ellar Coltrane) and
keep them all coming back each year for more filming, is a testament not only to
his talent as a director but also to his vision for a film that presumably
morphed a lot during its 12-year-long process. The film traces the life of Mason
Evans, Jr. and his family throughout the course of Mason’s childhood and
adolescence, culminating in his departure for college. The parents, Mason, Sr.
and Olivia (played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette) and the older sister,
Samantha (played by Lorelei Linklater, daughter of the director) are at times
much more interesting than Mason, who sometimes embodies too perfectly a 21st
century entitled American teenager. (He grows his hair long and starts taking
pictures; he’s full of questions; it’s sometimes disgustingly like looking into
a mirror, and then realizing life would sometimes be better if you just stopped
blathering so much.) At times, he grated on my nerves with his mumbly, grouchy
self-centeredness. And the only people who criticized this were his mom’s
succession of alcoholic husbands, with whom I don’t relish sharing any common
ground.
But Boyhood
is good enough that it survives the sometimes irritating attitude of its main
character, particularly because it takes such a vital, honest look at normal
people. By no means do the film’s four central characters represent all of America
in the early 2000s. But they do represent four
Americans in the early 2000s, and as such they may one day become historical
artifacts. The movie won’t teach future generations important history lessons
(which would be so very dull), but it
may remind future generations that we are all very much alike, no matter how
much time separates us.
I always love learning about the Victorians
and how crazy—and similar to people living now—they were. Their technology was
less advanced in a lot of ways, but they were truly a lot like us and their
values still shape the world of Western culture and thought and politics. The
things that scared them, scare us. They were obsessed with purity but secretly
naughty, they were simultaneously reaching back toward a more religious
tradition and reaching forward toward rationality rooted in scientific
research. (Some of their science was, of course, pretty amazingly bad, such as
their fascination with phrenology, or the study of the shapes of people’s
skulls as an indicator of their morality and intelligence and ultimate worth as
human beings.) But my point is, realizing the common humanity shared with
people from generations before is strangely freeing. It connects us to the past
and the future, and that is the value that I believe Boyhood will have in the years to come.
What keeps Boyhood from being a dull, self-important movie experiment is the
fact that Richard Linklater isn’t obsessively drunk on his own idea. He made
other movies between then and now, so he wasn’t completely focused on this one
project. Moreover, Linklater allowed the actors to draw from their own personal
lives and pour that experience into their characters, letting them evolve with
each successive year. As a result, these characters emerge richer than they
would have been if every scene had been worked out at the film’s inception.
The saddest part of the film comes at the
end, when Patricia Arquette, as the single mom who struggled to put herself
through college so she could build a better life for her two young children,
cries out to her son: “I thought there would be more.” It’s heartbreaking, and
one of the most honest things that’s been said in a movie this year. Boyhood doesn’t undermine the importance
of having a family; it’s not cynical about normal life, just truthful. People
work hard and then their lives pass them by and they look back and think, “Was
it all worth it?” Kids grow up and seem eager to fly out of the nest, and in
some deep part of a parent, it must be intensely painful. It’s like something
Alec Baldwin’s character said in an episode of 30 Rock: “Being a parent is like wearing your heart outside of your
body.”
Do I wish for a Girlhood? Absolutely. Boyhood
does have strong female characters, and in many ways, it’s not ultimately about
Mason Evans or even boyhood in general. It’s about the ordinariness of life.
How Richard Linklater managed to make that subject as fascinating and fresh as
he did is a wonder.
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