A Transformative Journey and a Transcendent Film: Boyhood
Richard Linklater's Boyhood is one of the most ambitious projects ever attempted in film and it also happens to be one of my favorite movies. That's pretty much it. I'm going to talk about it a lot here. I hope you've seen it! It's available to rent or buy on major streaming services and if you have a subscription to IFC through Prime Video, it's included. If you haven't seen it, spoilers ahead.
Boyhood is just a treasure of a movie. When it first came out in 2014, I was looking for something new. I had recently graduated from college and, taking a year off before law school, was feeling pretty creatively stagnated. I watched it in preparation for the 2015 Academy Awards, which was the first time I watched all the Best Picture nominees (I haven't missed one since), and man, it just blew me away.
For those of you who don't know the story behind the movie, here's a summary. Boyhood was written and directed by Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Bernie, School of Rock) over a twelve-year period. It took twelve years to make this movie! Linklater's idea was to follow a boy's growth from first grade through twelfth and create a coming-of-age narrative based on that boy's life through adolescence. He cast a six-year-old Ellar Coltrane as Mason Evans Jr., the protagonist. He brought on Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, two incredible talents, as Mason's divorced parents, and he cast his own daughter Lorelei as Samantha, Mason's older sister.
Hawke, having worked with Linklater in a variety of movies even prior to 2002, was involved in the creation of the concept. He told The Daily Beast: "The first couple of times he batted the idea out it had more dramatic turns, but then he thought, 'What if I just got rid of all the plot? What if it's just growing up?' And I fell in love with the idea." Getting Arquette involved was simple. She said that when Linklater called to offer her a part in the movie, he dryly asked her what she was "going to be doing for the next 12 years." Once he explained the concept, she was instantly on board. Obviously, Linklater had no issue convincing his daughter to star in the film.
For the role of Mason Jr., after a casting call, Coltrane was chosen over hundreds of other kids. Interestingly enough, they became a collaborator of sort on set. In a 2014 interview, Linklater explained that he wasn't trying to make a biographical film about Coltrane, but instead wanted to focus on Coltrane's "spirit" and allow them some degree of freedom as to where the narrative would end up. Linklater would "check in with [Coltrane] throughout the year sometimes. And as we got closer to shooting, a couple months out, we'd sit down, talk about what was going on in [their] life, I'd give [them] assignments, like 'There's a big theme this year about GIFs. Write something, think about it.'"
Then, each year for the next twelve years, Linklater would round up the gang and shoot storylines for that year of Mason's life. Sandra Adair, the movie's editor, explained the process to IndieWire: "[Linklater] would shoot three or four days each year and then…I would cut each year's material…, and then he and I would sit and watch the current year attached to the previous years. And then it would start the conversation about where he might go with it the following year. And he would talk with his cast and it was just an evolving process that kept boiling along year after year." Over the course of 4,200 days in real time, Linklater said the crew filmed for only 39 days.
Linklater went through his process with NPR and honestly, I can't even fathom how he created this masterpiece. When asked about his planning process, Linklater said: "Even as I structured [the film] and knew the trajectories of the characters and all the physicality – they're moving here, there's a divorce, you get your degree, you move again – I kind of had that all worked out, but I was kind of looking forward to the new ideas that would emerge in the process." He added: "I had notes that I knew I wanted to hit later in the film that I knew I couldn't even articulate yet. I knew, 'Oh, that will be eight or nine years before I truly will know the right tone for that scene, but there it sits as a placeholder way into the future.'"
A couple of weeks ago, in a vastly different stage of my life, I re-watched Boyhood. Knowing what I know now about growing up, the process behind the film, and the film itself, it absolutely floored me again. Basically, to reiterate, all we do in this movie is watch Mason grow up. We see his relationships with each of his biological parents and his sister. We see how he gets along, or doesn't get along, with his various stepparents. We see how each of the other characters interacts and grows with one another. We just see them all…live. And it's, in the purest form of the word, awesome. Boyhood is all about the characters. If you're waiting for a dramatic twist, it doesn't come. In most cases, there isn't even an onscreen payoff or comeuppance for the "bad" characters. It's simply a series of snapshots into Mason's life as we watch him grow up.
Mason's story reaches through the screen on a small scale and a large scale. Does every child deal with an abusive alcoholic stepdad that was a college professor? No. Does every child want to be a photographer? Of course not. Does every kid refuse to go to school after they're forced to get a haircut? I don't know. I sure didn't. But the strength of this movie is the way in which Linklater takes Mason's life and frames it in a series of vignettes that emphasize 1) how the past affects and informs the future, and 2) how the aging process and its attendant insecurities are common to us all.
When Mason goes off to college, it's sad to see him go not only because the viewer has seen him literally grow and age before their very eyes, but because we've seen his family do the same. We've grown with Olivia, Mason's mom, as she juggled raising two children with getting a college degree, braved and ultimately left an abusive husband for the well-being of her family, and balanced the lives of her children with the paternal rights of her often absent ex-husband, Mason Sr.
While we never truly get to see the extent of Olivia's grief and the pressure she endures throughout Mason's childhood and adolescence, it hangs like a cloud over the entire film. Many of us never realize the sacrifices our parents make for us, especially in the moment as we're growing up and don't have the benefit of hindsight. In this case, Mason packs for college and is taken aback as Olivia, her older daughter off in college and having gone through various failed relationships, allows her middle-aged frustration to seep out of her. "I knew this day was coming," Olivia says. "I just didn't realize you'd be so fucking happy to be leaving. I just thought there would be more."
On the other hand, we've also sat in Mason Sr.'s 1968 Pontiac GTO with Mason Jr. and Samantha as the former awkwardly and futilely attempts to forge a bond with his children over the Houston Astros. While the day goes reasonably well and Mason Sr. eventually brings the kids home to Olivia's house, we learn that he didn't even take the time to feed the kids. He had no idea how to be a father. He pops in and out of their lives and tries to be the "fun dad" as he reaps the rewards of Olivia's hard work raising the children. He takes them to baseball games and bowling and asks them questions about their lives, but as Mason Jr. and Samantha let him know, a relationship is a two-way street and requires effort on both sides. Relatively early in the movie, when Mason Sr. asks about their week, the children bristle and Mason Jr. asks "Dad, I mean, why is it all on us though? You know? How was your week, who do you hang out with? Do you have a girlfriend? What have you been up to?" Mason Sr. eventually grows, year by year, scene by scene, into a proud, doting father at Mason's high school graduation party, leaving his bachelor pad behind for a healthy marriage.
It's actually for this reason that Olivia is the most compelling character in the movie and why Patricia Arquette fully deserved her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards in 2015. For all of her scratching and clawing to build her children the best life they could possibly have, Mason Sr. was able to walk in and out of their lives as almost a real life "guest actor" and he ends up earning their love in the end. While Mason Jr. and Samantha certainly love their mother, since the movie is from the perspective of an adolescent boy, we never truly see a scene in which Mason expresses his gratitude for everything Olivia has done for him. Reasonably, he never truly understands or wraps his mind around what it's like to be a parent.
When Olivia snaps at him for feeling happy to go off to college, she doesn't really mean it. She's reflecting on her own perceived failures and finally allowing her vulnerability and frustration to seep through the surface. Still, Mason doesn't quite understand why she would feel that way. From the audience's perspective, we've seen Olivia raise two seemingly mature and overall good kids in the face of unimaginable adversity. We know that she's a brilliant and hardworking woman who becomes a college professor. We know that despite some poor relationship choices, she has a caring and affectionate heart. Despite all of these amazing qualities, from Olivia's perspective neither Mason nor Samantha gives her the "more" she craves. What is that "more"? We don't really know. I don't think Olivia really knows. But that's the complexity and the unfairness of motherhood and middle age in general. Often, especially at Mason's age, a mother's sacrifice goes unappreciated. Arquette's performance (and Coltrane's, as her contrast) is a complete tour de force. She balances a wide range of complicated emotions over dozens of filming sessions over the course of more than a decade and perfectly encapsulates the heartache and complexity that come along with a mother's often unrequited love for her children.
When Boyhood ends, we've not only watched Mason grow from six years old to eighteen years old and undergo the most rapid developmental growth in the human life cycle, we've also watched an immature man-child grow into a loving father and a woman put everything on the line for her children. I am so thankful for Linklater having embarked on the twelve-year journey it took to make this movie. It provided me with a whole new vision as to what writing is and how to create a connection between characters and the audience. Not only that, but it helped me understand parts of the intricacies and complexities that come with parenthood and among family members in general. The plot of Boyhood isn't irrelevant to the experience by any means, but it takes a background to the empathy and the care with which Linklater treats his characters and, apparently, his actors.
This is a movie that everyone should see if you're interested in a coming of age story, parenthood, or film in general. The title of the movie somewhat understates the massive scope that this movie takes on. Boyhood isn't just about boyhood. It's about growing up and trying to become a better person no matter what age you are. It's about how everyone's lives evolve minute by minute, day by day, year by year. Boyhood truly is a masterpiece and is one of the most extraordinary movies I've ever seen.