Boyhood (3/5 Stars)

Another curiousity from Richard Linklater

The story within the movie ‘Boyhood’ is inextricably linked to the story of its making. The project was started in 2002 when director Richard Linklater cast the six-year-old Ellar Coltrane. He shot a few scenes of him opposite a fictional movie family: sister Lorelei Linklater (Richard’s daughter) and divocrced parents Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke. And then Richard waited two years old til Ellar was eight and he shot a few more scenes. He came back two years later and did it again. The movie was finally finished last year when Ellar turned eighteen.

So this movie is a curiosity that comes appropriately from Richard Linklater, Cinematic Laureate of Austin, Texas, and auteur of such quirky movies such as Slacker, Before Sunrise, Waking Life, and A Scanner Darkly. Boyhood takes it's rightful place besides though films. It is intensely interested in the people, the places they inhabit, and the ideas that they share. The most interesting thing about 'Boyood' is that it does not merely reflect the journey of Ellar Coltrane. Sure we see him literally grow before our eyes from a shy introspective boy to a curious almost philosophical teenager, but we also see the journey of his sister who grows up right alongside of him. And we see the journey of his mother who goes through several marriages, gets her master’s degree, gains at least thirty pounds and becomes less or more comfortable with how things have turned out. Perhaps most strikingly is the journey of the father, played by Ethan Hawke, who starts off as a friendly but impossibly irresponsible, chain-smoking, and fast-car-driving presence in Ellar's life. By the time the twelve years pass, however, he has a new wife and kid who make him go to church and drive a mini-van. The irony does not escape him and he treats the changes with good humor. He did not see them coming and neither did we but these things happen.

This movie is hailed as completely unique but that is not entirely the case. Something that closely resembles this type of story has already been done and is actually still happening. That would be the 7up Series of documentaries that started in 1964 when a BBC TV crew interviewed several seven-year-old kids and then came back every seven years since to reinterview them. The last one came out last year. It was titled 56 up. So far all the kids are still live. The documentary series is extraordinary in that it captures the march of time in a way transient movies can't quite capture no how much makeup they apply. More than any other movie or documentary I have ever watched, I became invested in the characters in the 7up series. In fact, at some point I no longer cared whether any of the new installments had any conflict or dramatic events in them. I sort of just wanted everyone to live carefree unstressful lives for as long a time as possible. 

This kind of feeling is almost captured in ‘Boyhood.’ The main difference is the fact that ‘Boyhood’ is a fictional conglomeration of what a normal childhood might be. The one thing the 7up Series routinely ignored and for good reasons is the complete absence of cultural/time related references. The interviewers asked the subjects about their lives. They didn’t ask them about what new music they were listening to or what they felt about the Prime Minister or the war the world was currently engaged in. In contrast, ‘Boyhood’ sometimes feels like an early version of a soon to be coming out VH1 TV Show called “I love the 2000s.” It starts off with Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ a big hit in 2002 and every couple of scenes you have some other song from the recent past like Lady Gaga or Gotye. Ethan Hawke is into the politics and talks in various scenes about Bush v. Kerry and Obama v. McCain. This is not all that interesting stuff and at some points ‘Boyhood’ feels less like a story about a person and more of a nostalgia tour of the last decade. Not all the time though. There is an especially good scene where Ethan Hawke brings up Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old pregnant daughter, Bristol. He does this to segway into a talk about sex and contraception with his kids. That happens to be a far more interesting topic for him to explore than what he thinks of the Republican Party.

This is the odd movie, which is not so great because the movie is too brief. It is an epic story within the confines of a feature length film. Weirdly, the story may be hurt because it wasn’t exactly planned before they started shooting any of it. It is epic in scope but limited in reach and tone. The boy only has a few scenes at each age. Sometimes drama happens but the character does not make any dramatic choices about them. I remember being weird, angry, and utterly bored at times as a kid. Ellar Coltrane does not have these qualities. He comes off as almost ridiculously mature, chill, and cool for his age, especially given the series of alcoholic step-fathers he experiences. I don’t know, maybe that actually was the experience of most people and I’m the outlier. It would not surprise me. ‘Boyhood’ ends on a very slacker and chill Linklater note. The 18 year old talks about the oddness of the saying ‘Carpe Diem’ which is ‘Seize the Moment’ loosely translated. He reflects on it and muses that it seems that life is more like the opposite way around. That the Moment more often than not Seizes You because aren’t we always in the Moment? I mean think about it man. I think that may be true for this kid and perhaps for most people but I don't know, I couldn’t relate.