I confess, I was not terribly excited about this movie. All I heard about it was "12 years in the making", "a lifetime effort", blah blah. It sounded like just another all-concept-no-content desperate grab for awards. Add a cast that's relatively unknown and a running time of almost three hours, and this promised to be a daunting prospect, even with the solid direction of Richard Linklater (of Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight fame). But I was hearing enough good things that I felt I would be remiss to ignore it. And I was right.
The concept is, of course, genius. Following a young man's (Ellar Coltrane) life from age 5 to 18, the film shows us the many sides of life as the boy literally grows before our eyes. In an odd, meta fashion, the film is wildly personal and nostalgic because of the many pop culture references since the millennium. We see the kids reading Harry Potter, getting cell phones and laptops, watching Lady Gaga's music videos, and putting up Obama/Biden campaign signs. I smiled, laughed, and shed not a few tears as I saw my own childhood pass before my eyes. As a dear friend of mine said, this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime movie. It is also one that breaks a lot of ground; hopefully that ground will not be mined too much in the future, because the concept is also once-in-a-lifetime. Anything filmed like this in the future will feel too contrived or too desperate. But as it is, this film is fresh, relaxed, haunting, and beautiful.
Coltrane proves himself to be a young superstar, carrying the massive weight of the film on his young shoulders. Patricia Arquette, unfortunately not nearly as known as she should be, similarly masters what I expect to be a Big Break performance; her powerhouse emotional presence in the film is breathtaking. And Ethan Hawke (of whom I have never been a big fan) plays the father with such raw affection and uncharacteristic subtlety that I forgot it was him after a while. This triumvirate of connected, generous, and inspired actors blows me away: how they managed to maintain their obvious comfort and affection for each other and create honest, consistent fictional characters over twelve years, while working on countless other projects, amazes me to no end.
But beyond the concept -- and execution thereof, including pop references for temporal orientation and brilliant characterizations -- the film is profoundly eternal. In what we might call a dysfunctional family, we find shockingly honest emotions and relationships. With a title of Boyhood, I expected rather a lot, and this film delivered. But it carefully and skillfully avoids making any Big Statements about masculinity or manhood or anything like that; while we could certainly interpret a lot of those "lessons" from the picture, the film only really attempts to present an accurate and nonjudgmental snapshot of reality in a specific spectrum of life. Its portrayals are almost immaculately balanced and sensitive; we have both women and men who are, in turns, sympathetic or not, successful or not, loving or not, and everything in-between. Though the titular focus is on a white, middle-class, heteronormative, young man who fits a lot of the stereotypes associated with all those labels, his characterization plays with every expectation of those traits. He plays video games, fights his mother, wants to know his father better, and embodies his privilege in almost every scene; he is also an artist, an independent thinker, a caring and attentive boy who wants to be true to himself and avoid dangerous conformity.
This movie is not a sitcom, and it avoids any type of soap. Linklater (also the writer) instead finds Truth and bravely depicts the proceedings with compassion and understanding, without stooping for sentimentality. The film is both transcendent and real, in all its finely-tuned detail. Boyhood truly changed my life, and that is not a phrase I toss around casually (I think the last experience I had like it was seeing The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway). The ending beautifully wraps up the film in a pseudo-moral moment about how complicated and wonderful life is, in all of the moments that seize us. I couldn't handle it, I was sobbing. Just watch it. Do yourself a handful of favors and go watch it. With a handful of tissues.
IMDb: Boyhood
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