Review: Boyhood

Directed by Richard Linklater
Written by Richard Linklater
Starring Ellar Coltrane (Mason), Patricia Arquette (Olivia), Ethan Hawke (Mason Sr.), and Lorelei Linklater (Samantha)
Cinematography by Lee Daniel and Shane F. Kelly
Edited by Sandra Adair
Released in 2014

Knowing that Boyhood would end with Mason starting college, I expected to be hugely moved by the latter portions of the film as making that same transition was an emotionally fraught time for me. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the sections probing Mason's childhood the most. Dozens of kids films are released every year, but very few recreate the actual experience of being a child (the only one I can name off the top of my head is My Neighbor Totoro). The greatest achievement of Boyhood is that it offers a rare chance to see through fresh eyes. Moments like Mason quizzically processing a dead bird he's uncovered or erasing his past by painting over a height chart most clearly evoke the film's obsession with the passage of time. Similarly, through careful framing, Linklater does an excellent job of pricking Mason's innocent view of the world. He confusedly watches his mother and father argue through a window, only half-hearing them. Later, an everyday walk home suddenly becomes dark when Mason stumbles upon a fight between his mother and step-father. At these points, Linklater effectively uses the langue of cinema to put the viewer in the mind of young boy.

It's unfortunate that Boyhood gets less and less interesting as it goes along. Part of this is unavoidable. In it's later half it becomes a coming-of-age tale which have been beyond numerous throughout film history. The familiarity problem could be avoided, but Boyhood isn't a particularly unique, specific, or revelatory version of this type of story. Basically everyone has put forward Boyhood's shooting schedule as an argument against that previous assertion. While I think Linklater should be given all the credit in the world for creating a functional movie out of such an abnormal situation, I don't find that part of the film makes up for its flaws. Many critics have mentioned Truffaut's Antione Doinel films, the 7-Up series, the Harry Potter movies, and various television shows as antecedents for Linklater's vision.

The main reason I don't find Boyhood's central conceit memorable is that Linklater himself has already created a similar event in the three Before films. Watching Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight all at once is an amazing experience. You can see two people mature eighteen years and go through the major stages of life in the span of five hours. The fact that I did such a marathon shortly before watching Boyhood is one reason I'm not as high on the film as everyone else. Comparing the two also elucidates Boyhood's flaws. The Before films are laser-focused on investigating very specific characters and honestly exploring a romantic relationship. Jesse and Celine are Jesse and Celine, there's no one else quite like them. In addition, the "one day or less" limitation helps immensely in providing immediacy, conflict, and tension (if you asked me what my favorite thriller is, I'd answer Before Sunset only half-jokingly). Furthermore, that restriction turns intellectual ideas like the fleeting nature of time and the problems and pleasures that come with age into emotional gut-punches.

In contrast, the second half of Boyhood is a vague drift through random parts of a poorly-defined person's life. Mason goes through important events, relationships, and hobbies to no impact, because no one thing is given enough time to develop. He's into graphiti, then photography, now he has girlfriend, now he doesn't, now he's over her, now he's alone at college, and then immediately has friends. The movie fails at showing why Mason is attracted to such pursuits, how those interests developed  over his life, and why his teenage relationships turned out the way they did. I know the counter to my argument is "That's the point, it's just like real life." Fair enough I suppose, but it's not dramatically satisfying in any way.

Finally, I'll bring in another comparison. Surprisingly, I have yet to see a review of Boyhood that mentions Jane Campion's 1990 film, An Angel at My Table. Angel concerns New Zealand author Janet Frame, and, like Boyhood, it covers a huge swath of her life. The film is broken up into three parts, roughly corresponding to Frame's childhood, her development as a teacher and misdiagnosis as schizophrenic (which leads to horrific shock therapy), and her travels around Europe and later development as an author. Campion carefully seeds why Frame is drawn to literature early on. A remarkable continuity is kept between the three actors who play Frame, showing that you don't have to follow the same kid for twelve years for the same effect if you have an eye for casting. It helps immensely that Frame's life is packed with far more incidence than Mason's and that her New Zealand homeland allows for some truly gorgeous cinematography (another area I found Boyhood lacking).

As the details surrounding Boyhood came to light over the past year, it sounded like a one-of-the-kind cinematic event. However, after my first viewing, I couldn't help but feel Boyhood was an okay copy of ideas and techniques I had seen before.