Movie Review: Boyhood

Boyhood (2014)

Four and half Stars out of Five

R (for teenage drug and alcohol use)

Mom (Olivia Evans): Patricia Arquette

Dad (Mason Sr.): Ethan Hawke

Mason: Ellar Coltrane

Samantha: Lorelei Linklater

Writer/Director: Richard Linklater

Like the issue regarding the meaning of life, time is one of those eternal questions that Man has puzzled over for a long time. Einstein showed in his treatise on Special Relativity that time was valid regardless of whether one thought of it as going forward into the future or back into the past. A consequence of these calculations is that time might actually be thought of as a sequence of discrete events rather than a continuous series. In other words, the old analogy of time as a river could still be valid, perhaps more so than one might have previously thought. But in an expansion of the metaphor, it is now necessary to think of the molecules of water within that river as the discrete slices of time.

Writer/director Richard Linklater released in 2014, Boyhood, an ambitious twelve year movie project to follow a six year old boy and his family through their particular rivers and slices of time as he grows to adulthood. The story begins by introducing the viewer to Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his older sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater; director Linklater’s own daughter) and his mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette) as they pick up their lives in Texas. The movie’s tone is light and the story line inconsequential in the beginning as we watch young Mason and his family move through suburban life. The story moves slowly forward in time as it carefully defines the recently divorced characters of Olivia and Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke), and as it shows the forces and events shaping Mason.

As a newly single mom, Olivia must make a decision on how she will live her life following her divorce. She decides to return to school which requires a move to Houston. Once there she embarks on a reasonably successful professional pathway but continues to make poor choices in terms of her husbands. For her children she takes on the role of the parent that defines the limits in their lives, while (once he returns to their lives) Mason Sr. takes on a much more laissez faire approach. The dichotomy in their approaches to life displayed by the parents plays well into the movie's theme. That is, how does one view and live one’s life: Olivia displays a devotion to the rules and structures of modern living; one needs to pay the bills and put a roof over one’s head to get through life versus Mason Sr.’s approach that emphasizes the joy of life without giving too much thought to bills and such.

Arquette is getting much of the critical praise for her performance in the press, but my opinion is that Hawke’s performance was the more nuanced and his character the more useful in propelling the story along. Mason Sr. has multiple discussions with his growing son and provides both verbal guidance and examples from his own life (good and bad) to help guide Mason into adulthood. Hawke’s character even provides  a mixed message in terms of whether he himself finally “grows” into adulthood as he leaves behind his youthful dreams of musicianship for that of accountant; or even more cliché-like, as he sells his Pontiac GTO for a mini-van.

The plot has several key scenes that help to fully explain Linklater’s vision for this movie: there is the scene by Arquette as she cries her anguish over a fit of “is that all there is”, to Hawke’s defense of selling (out) his GTO or to the final scene’s depiction of Mason and some new friends on a camping trip. This final scene is a good one but also symptomatic of my only real complaint about the movie – it tends to be pretty explicit at times about its message. In the final scene, Mason sits alongside a river with a young woman as they discuss life. They discuss in a sense the discreteness of time and wonder how one should grasp and live these moments, or rather should one merely let life grasp them; that is, just jump in that metaphorical river of time and events and float along; don’t worry about your destination, just enjoy the trip.

This is a beautifully made and inspired movie. Everyone should see it and most will likely enjoy it. I am astonished at Linklater’s vision and ability to carry out such a long-term project. His eye for the details of life is amazing, while the editing that went into the movie is so smooth it was often hard to tell when one year let up, and the next began. The movie is not a sad or overly intellectualized vision of life, but is instead a very sweet and satisfying image about how a view of time can help one gain somewhat an understanding about the meaning of life.