A story, at its core, is simply a document of change. It is simply a means of conveying through some sort of language what differs from moment to moment. Much of the talk surrounding Boyhood has focused on its unique means of production: the twelve years of intermittent filming, allowing the cast to grow older, and the times to change around them. But not enough credit is given to how the method allows the film to distill story to its purest form. Boyhood eschews traditional narrative, but ends up telling a truly compelling story anyway.
The movie follows Mason Jr. (Ellar Contrane), who at the start of the movie is a six year-old living in Texas with his single mom Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater). It is 2002, and Olivia has just decided to move the kids away from their father, Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), so that she can complete her degree at the University of Houston. The film then runs through the next twelve years, checking in on Mason Jr. and his family as they face the challenges that time inevitably brings.
The movie resists shaping the events of these twelve years into something that might resemble a traditional three-act narrative. Instead, it assembles these little slices of life, lingering on the details of the world surrounding Mason. This film is really about growth and change, and it smartly uses these indicators of a world in flux. It barrels through twelve years of recent history, using politics, music, and technology as visual signs of the times, anchoring the characters and their struggles in the reality of passing time. This isn’t just the story of a specific boy and his family. The film spirals out to tell the story of the modern American family. Though not every boy resembles Mason Jr., and not every family encounters these specific problems, the movie achieves a marked universality by simply placing these characters within a familiar temporal context.
Whatever specific details this story may offer are almost incidental. The film is much more interested in the general experience of childhood. Its tension is drawn not from any specific drama, but from the shared experience of helplessness that every child feels when confronted with the struggles of adulthood. The big conflicts in this film, for the most part, are experienced secondhand. The film really goes out of its way to capture the feeling of being powerless as a child, watching as adults fight and struggle and go through things that one isn’t equipped to process just yet.
And through this, the film delivers its story. It traces the arc of a boy slowly gaining the power to make his own choices, to have conflicts separate from his family. The film allows us to witness the gradual but inevitable drifting apart of parent and child, the quiet, necessary tragedy inherent to any family. It is profound and mind-bogglingly audacious, and it takes a director of Linklater’s caliber to deliver something so grand. The naturalistic performances from the cast further reinforce this vision. It isn’t a very showy movie for the actors, but even then, Patricia Arquette turns in some of her most affecting work.
Boyhood is brilliant, pure and simple. It defies expectations. There are all sorts of maxims about what movies ought to be, about what kind of stories are supposed to be told through this medium. Boyhood throws that all away, and turns twelve years of a fairly normal life into nearly three hours of truly compelling cinema. It is an astounding achievement, a feat of directorial vision that outclasses even the most audacious and expensive of blockbusters. Don’t miss this.
My Rating:
