“Boyhood” Written and Directed by Richard Linklater

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Director:

Richard Linklater (“Dazed and Confused”, “Tape”, “School of Rock”)

Main Cast:

Ellar Coltrane (“Fast Food Nation”)

Patricia Arquette (“True Romance”, “Ed Wood”, “Lost Highway”)

Lorelei Linklater (“Waking Life”)

Ethan Hawke (“Dead Poets Society”, “Training Day”, “Hamlet”)

Running Time:  165 Minutes

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When “Boyhood” released last summer, I thought the fact it was shot over eleven years was noteworthy but not enough to draw me to see it.  I liked the three movies I list under Richard Linklater’s credits but, again, not enough for me to search out his other movies or see “Boyhood” in the theatre.  2001’s animated “Waking Life” was well-received and I tried watching it repeatedly but, being a bit of an animation buff, I found it hard to watch because I dislike rotoscoping, which is basically shooting live-action scenes then tracing over them.  Two popular examples of rotoscoped characters are Disney’s Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.  My reaction to “Waking Life” is a limitation on me as a moviegoer and not Linklater as a director.

For authenticity, which is something all film makers strive for, you can’t beat having the actors age with their characters.  The story itself offers nothing extraordinary and is basically like watching the personal lives of a regular family.  “Boyhood” is a case where the way the movie is made is more significant than the story itself, like Alksandr Sokurov’s 2002 “Russian Ark”, a lavish 99-minute film which can best be summarized by its tagline:

2000 Actors. 300 years of Russian History. 33 Rooms at the Hermitage Museum. 3 Live Orchestras. 1 Single Continuous Shot.

While it has all those things and is technically impressive, the one thing it is not is engaging and after about 15 minutes, when the novelty faded and tedium set in, I stopped watching it.

In terms of following characters over a long period, “Boyhood”, being fiction, is unlike Michael Apted’s acclaimed documentary “7 Up” film series, where each film revisits the same subjects every seven years.

“Boyhood” follows the lives of young divorced couple Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) and their two children, Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane, right) and Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter).  The characters go through the same experiences you, family members, co-workers, or neighbors would go through:  the awkwardness of growing up, multiple marriages, alcoholic and abusive husbands/step-fathers, a father who comes in and out of the children’s lives.  The film’s authenticity is not limited to the device I mentioned but also in the situations, dialogue, and acting.  There are a lot of good, thoughtful moments.  Early in the film, Olivia has to back out of a date because her babysitter cancelled.  In explaining her situation and the frustration she has with the responsibility of being a young single mother, she exclaims, “I was somebody’s daughter, then I was somebody’s f’ing mother!”  When Mason Jr. heads to college, Olivia is hit by the realization that life is a “series of milestones” and says things like, “You spend the first half of your life acquiring things and the last half getting rid of them.”  During a family dinner, a drunk step-dad says, “You don’t like me much, do you Mason?  That’s OK, I don’t like me much, either.”  Insightful on the part of both the writing and the characters.

Unlike “Russian Ark”, “Boyhood” is engaging enough to sustain the viewer for its full 165-minutes.  I found all the acting to be good to varying degrees, especially the two kids, Arquette, and Marco Perella (left, in one of his character’s lighter moments), who plays the first step-father.  He’s entirely believable as Olivia’s college professor, then when he woos Olivia and her kids, and especially as the abusive and volatile husband and step-father.  Once he sheds his sheep’s clothing (with the help of marriage, time, and alcohol), his screen moments are almost as stress-inducing as Joe Pesci’s Oscar-winning portrayal of Tommy DeVito in Scorsese’s 1990 “Goodfellas.”  When Olivia leaves him, we miss Perella as a screen presence but we’re relieved his character is out of the family’s lives.  The performance I found the least impressive was that of Linklater staple Hawke, who seems like he was dropped into scenes to over-deliver his lines before going off to do whatever he does off-screen.

The subtle cleverness of both the writing and the way the film is shot are exemplified when Mason Sr. drives his kids around stumping for Obama in 2008.  They get threatened by a guy who clearly is not an Obama supporter and meet an “Obama mama” who is so excited about the candidate she “wants to just kiss him”.  It makes you laugh at (or in the case of some of us, resent) the pied piper trance Obama had on his supporters at the time.  During the same drive, dad takes a shot at Sarah Palin by using her 17 year-old pregnant daughter as an example of what his daughter should NOT be.  Linklater’s political slant aside, the movie is full of great subtle and not-so-subtle very real moments.

I watched the movie twice because I wanted to focus on how everyone, including supporting characters (many of whom come across as non-pros, which contributes to their authenticity), aged throughout the film.  It was in that second viewing that the film became more impressive.  In terms of watching the actors/characters age, it’s to be expected the kids change dramatically as the film goes on.  Arquette’s (above, with Coltrane and Linklater, and below) maturation during the course of the movie really gives her character’s evolution an authenticity makeup could never touch and it adds tremendously to her performance.  Also, it was in the subsequent viewing that the quality of the writing really became apparent.  The first time, it was not obvious because there are no blow-you-out-of-your-seat scenes.  It’s a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

You really have to hand it to Linklater for coming up with the idea of filming over so many years and pulling it off as well as he does.  He had to have kept his fingers crossed all the main actors were around for the entire time.  I read on imdb that Lorelei got the role because she pestered her dad but, as the years went on, got tired of doing it and asked her dad to kill her character off.  (Spoiler alert:  He didn’t.)

Listening to someone else explain the film’s storyline and the way the movie was made isn’t enough to fully understand how good the movie is.  Even with all its awards attention, I didn’t expect to enjoy “Boyhood” as much as I did and initially watched it begrudgingly.  At first I thought the regular-people premise worked against making it a watchable movie but it’s quite the opposite.  “Boyhood” doesn’t rely on special effects, unique or historically or culturally significant characters, tricky camera work, writing that pounds its points into your head, or mind-bending concepts.  Nor does it have the melodrama of movies about families like Robert Redford’s 1980 “Ordinary People” or Mike Rydell’s 1981 “On Golden Pond.”

With its ordinary storyline and lack of a-list actors, “Boyhood” shouldn’t add up, but it does and does it well enough to make me want to go back and look at Linklater’s other movies.

DPW

January 13, 2015

If I’m not past the statute of limitations, Happy New Year!

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