Life passes by as a collection of moments.
You are born. You learn to walk and then talk.
School, love, drugs, parents’ divorce, you graduate high school, move to L.A., meet your wife, play, have kids, start a career and then you’re forty.
It can be all too fleeting as time flashes by between moments that stick. I left Boyhood wondering if I have enough moments. I left Boyhood deciding that I need to start making my own.
Boyhood embodies the passage of time by presenting a collection of moments that span 12 years.
Literally spanning 12 years. Writer/Director Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise Trilogy, School of Rock, Dazed and Confused) filmed the movie with the same cast from 2002 to 2013 and the results are stunning and utterly original. Epic in scope but intimate in scale.
The story focuses on young Mason (Ellar Coltrane) as he grows up navigating life from age 5 to 18. The moments comprise of a Weekend Warrior dad (Ethan Hawke) who makes a cameo here and there through the formative years but stabilizes to become more of father figure later in life. Mason’s mother (Patricia Arquette) has a terrible taste in men as she parades a small group of abusive alcoholics through the story. Linklater’s own daughter plays Mason’s sister and what a cool home movie that documents your own kid grow up from a Britney Spears singing little girl to a young woman rolling her eyes at the all those around her.
The resulting film is quite and subtle. When the movie leaps forward in time sometimes the only way to tell is by Mason’s hair. The passage time is never used for spectacle. The plot is slight and much of the time is spent of the “little moments”: playing video games, giggle at a catalog filled with pictures of pretty ladies clad in their underwear, kissing girls in the backseat of a car.
Boyhood is a living time capsule. What Linklater does with the opportunity is document time by stating political issues and showing technology that was relevant at the time of filming. We go from cordless to cell phones, videogames play a more and more important part in Mason’s life and the general way we talk to each other is shown transforming as it has been a paradigm shift of a decade regarding communication. Linklater captures the world pre- and post-Facebook.
There are also prophetic statements as Hawke rants about the validity of the Iraqi War which mirrors many sentiments felt today but was captured back in 2002. There’s also a funny scene where Hawke and Coltrane talk about the need for any more Star Wars movies. Without irony they debate why they can’t make one that takes place after Return of the Jedi. “What is going to happen? Is Han Solo going to be a Sith Lord?”
As the movie progresses and gets Mason into his teen years the dialogue becomes more and more philosophical, akin to Linklater’s work on The Before Sunrise Trilogy and Waking Life. It’s the kind of introspective babble talk that you’d expect from a kid trying to figure it out but it is the only time that the movie loses some cohesiveness. Other than that the 12 years of work comes together as a singular film. An almost miraculous feat.
I had a strong emotional reaction to Boyhood on two separate fronts. In one respect the film made me realize that I, myself, was only 18 a couple weeks ago (or so it seems) and yet I’m pushing 40 with 80 waiting right behind it. It also made me think of my own children: my daughter who is already almost 3 even though we took home from the hospital a screaming newborn only days ago and my five month old son will be asking to borrow the car sometime late next week.
The day after the screening I woke up with my little son staring at me, silent and peaceful. The sun was showing through the slates of the blinds, casting narrow shadows across his face. We sat in silence for I don’t know how long, just looking at each other. My boy then simply smiled and my heart ached a little with love. I then got out of bed to begin the grind but felt a perfect sort of joy knowing I started the day with a Moment.