Last night was the 72nd annual Golden Globes awards ceremony; if you’re like me and are still trying to find time to watch all the masterpieces from 2014 I would recommend starting at the top of their list. Richard Linklater brought home Golden Globe awards for best director and best film (drama) for his film “Boyhood,” a story told over 12 years in an cinematic journey unlike any I have experienced before. In fact, I have to admit that I didn’t watch the Golden Globes, I was too enthralled watching “Boyhood” to pause. There is so much that I could say about this film and so much that the critics have already said but when I watched the film I knew almost nothing about it, which really affected the way I watched it so I don’t want to spoil the same effect for you. I’m going to talk about why I liked the film and I hope by the end you all want to see it as badly as I want you to.
The film began production and has its opening scene in the year 2002. “Boyhood” has been a life-long project for its star, Ellar Coltrane, who plays Mason, a younger brother to one older sister with a single mother to raise them. Mason is six years old when the film begins, three years younger than I was in 2002 and the same age as my own younger brother. If you were also a lower-middle class 90’s baby then you’ll find this film hauntingly congruent with your own childhood. In the dialogue, the sets, the costumes, down to everyday details like the yellow toy binoculars we used to have at my house, I was instantly pulled back to elementary school and what it was like growing up in a post-9/11 world. I felt like every scene in the film was straight out of my life or a friend of mines; neighbors across the street, cousins, acquaintances, enemies, they were all going through what Mason and Samantha go through in this film. As Mason Sr. says during the film, “its all the same, but different.”
To see a story told in increments over 12 years is a breathtaking experience. Mason grows before your eyes along with every single other character, not only to the extent that these actors can portray growth and change but to physical changes as they actually grow older and more mature in their own ways as filming went on. On top of that, it doesn’t feel like a gimmick or a waste of time, it is a well-rounded and well-thought-out film that plays upon the subtle intricacies of the human experience.
In a beautiful moment near the end of the film, as Mason leaves for college, his mother breaks into tears. Her youngest child leaving her to an empty house and the feeling she expresses is that she doesn’t know what she is doing with her life, that it all had moved so fast. Again, another chapter taken from my own life and from many of your own I’m sure. What made this scene stunning to me was how well it paralleled the angst and confusion that Mason felt as a teenager. The film creates these cycles throughout, showing the audience how similar the children are to the adults and yet how differently they treat and regard each other. Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette perform brilliantly as perfectly flawed parents and human beings, offering amazing support to the young stars that really made this film into what it is.
Director Richard Linklater has commented saying he didn’t have a detailed plan for filming over 12 years and he let the film develop as he and the actors developed. For not outlining how all the pieces would fit together, he has done a brilliant job putting together not only a look at 12 years of a boy’s life but also a story with scope and focus that keeps you hooked for all of almost three hours of film. Although many characters are introduced throughout the story, they all play a key role in each of the family members’ lives, never feeling like filler roles or creating unnecessary dialogue. What must have been so difficult is capturing what is necessary and what isn’t. Life doesn’t come with an editor to pick out 12 moments to sum it all up and is so much more than those moments could ever show. And yet, Linklater writes the right moments and keeps a perfect balance between what is drastically important and what is subtle but equally necessary.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a home in which my parents loved each other and loved my brother and I deeply and yet even we faced many of the trials that faced Mason’s family in “Boyhood.” Although it won best drama this year, nothing about what happens in the film seems over-dramatized, it feels like what happens to all of us. If it wasn’t me or my brother I was picturing in Mason’s place, it was our best friends down the street or a classmate, living lives of divorced parents, remarried parents and new step-siblings, middle school bullies, high school break-ups. Although Mason’s story wasn’t real, it was real to me.
There isn’t enough praise in the world to bestow upon Linklater and the whole production cast and crew for maintaining such quality work over the past 12 years and having the patience for creating something so long in the making for us all to enjoy. The plot of “Boyhood” on the most basic level will draw you in and keep you enthralled, wondering what will happen to Mason next, or really any of the family members. The deeper plot that connects the film to all of us, to life itself, will bring you to tears, pull at that pit in your stomach, and bring up memories long forgotten. Boyhood, childhood, it goes so quickly and is only just a small fraction of our lives that we forget so much that was important to us or that mattered when we were young and then we go through those same trials and missteps again and again as life goes on, learning and growing but still a part of what really is “the same, but different” for all of us. I am not only pleased that Linklater took on such an impressive project, but grateful that he did, for all that the film offered as a mirror to my own life and to all of human life.
To find out more about the film you can visit the official website, IMBD, and Wikipedia.
Next week I’ll be watching another Oscar best picture contender. Indiewire is pointing me towards “Birdman” and “The Intimidation Game.” Let me know if there’s another potential nominee that you’d like me to review in the comments!
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