The process behind the creation of “Boyhood,” the remarkable new
film from director Richard Linklater, is nearly as
extraordinary as the film itself. Assembling his cast for a few days at a time,
the film’s shoot lasted for a total of 45 days, but those days were spread out
over the course of 12 years — from 2002 through 2013. Linklater’s
method lends authenticity to his sprawling coming-of-age tale, allowing the
actors to age in real time as the story progresses.
The film chronicles the childhood and adolescence of Mason
Jr. (Ellar Coltrane). A child of divorce, Mason lives
with his mother, Olivia (a fantastic Patricia Arquette),
and older sister, Samantha (played by the director’s own daughter, Lorelei Linklater, in a scene-stealing performance). Though the
children live with their mother, they split their time with visits from their
free-spirited, ne’er-do-well father, Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke). We follow Mason
from the age of 6 to 18, ending as the boy — by then a young man — heads off to
college.
Similarly ambitious filmmaking experiments have been
attempted before; Michael Apted’s “Up” series of
documentaries has followed the same group of British school children since they
were 7 years old, the Harry Potter films allowed audiences to see its
characters grow from school children into adulthood, and long-running
television shows allow us to grow with the characters we tune in to see each
week. Linklater himself has documented the course of
one romantic relationship by revisiting the couple every 9 years, in his
wonderful “Before” trilogy. In one charming moment, the director even seems to
reference those films, as an 8th grade Mason spends a scene walking and talking
alongside a particularly opinionated female classmate on a bike. But what
differentiates “Boyhood” from those other endeavors is the way it condenses an
entire childhood into a single narrative, to profoundly moving effect.
Linkler uses jump cuts to propel us
forward, a year at a time. The method is simultaneously jarring and seamless;
it’s not until a few moments into a new scene that we notice the actors are now
slightly older. By progressing this way, the director manages to duplicate the
inexorable forward march of time and the way we tend not to notice until
suddenly we do. At times we’re left to fill in the gaps; occasionally
characters have disappeared, or the family is now living in a different house.
People float in and out of the character’s lives — sometimes with much
heartache and sometimes with a sad indifference. Along the way, we’re allowed
to track the progress of time through changing technology, pop culture, and the
music that makes up the soundtrack to Mason’s life.
Working with two cinematographers,
Lee Daniel and Shane F. Kelly, along with editor Sandra Adair, Linklater assembles the mundane, unremarkable moments that
add up to the entire breadth of a childhood. Linklater
isn’t interested in the “big” moments; after all, life is really made up of the
things that happen in between. It’s telling that when Olivia breaks down just
prior to Mason leaving home toward the film’s end, she rattles off a series of
milestones from Mason’s life, all of which occurred off-screen. Even this life
that appears to have been so thoroughly documented refuses to be contained
within the confines of the film.
Only once does “Boyhood” veer toward melodrama, when Olivia
remarries and her new husband gradually reveals himself to be an abusive
alcoholic. This section is so packed with incident that it seems incongruous
from everything else that comes before or after, though I suppose that’s also
the pattern life works in. Still, in a movie filled with complicated
characters, the stepfather’s one-note nature seems lazy. He’s only one of a
string of father figures (or, as Mason later describes them, an “endless parade
of drunken assholes”) that parade through Mason’s life. Through them, the film
seems to offer a critique on the very idea of manhood and masculinity.
It was a huge gamble to craft a film (especially one as
ambitious as this) around a 6-year-old actor. Linklater
had no idea what kind of person the boy would turn out to be, or if the kid
would even want to continue with the project over the course of 12 years. The
director seems to have lucked out with Coltrane. The actor is effective in the
role, often quite good, but it’s difficult to gauge how much of Mason Jr. is
him and how much is performance. Even more incredible is how much Coltrane comes
to resemble Ethan Hawke as he grows older.
There’s a cumulative power to the film; by the time Mason is
driving off toward college and adulthood, I felt a wave of emotion wash over
me. Over the course of the film’s just under three-hour
run time, we become invested in what happens to these characters. We’ve watched
Mason — and his entire family, really — grow up. By the time the credits roll
they don’t feel like characters, but real people we’ve come to know. With
“Boyhood,” Richard Linklater attempts to capture the
meaning of it all. He’s crafted a warm, deeply humane film that’s both as
intimate and monumental as life itself.
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2014.
