If you
know anything about this best picture nominee, you know its central
gimmick: it was short over the course of
12 years, with its leading boy/man growing up on camera. Thanks to the strength of young Ellar
Coltrane’s performance, the gimmick mostly feels earned, and although it’s way too
long, the film is pretty enjoyable.
I’ve
seen Boyhood described as a series of
12 short films about growing up, and that’s fairly accurate. There isn’t a real solid through-line, and so
we instead peer in on young Mason’s life at different stages. Some of the plot threads, like Mason’s
up-and-down relationship with his father or his mother’s tumultuous second
marriage, are more compelling than others, like Mason’s slightly aimless coming-of-age.
In
general, the film accomplishes a nice sense of universal specificity in the
early years – much feels familiar, but we also get a clear sense of who Mason
is and what his life is like. His squabbles
with his older sister are maddeningly genuine, and I like the thoughtful details
of his pastimes and childhood woes. With
contentiously divorced parents and a parade of “drunken asshole” stand-in
father figures, he has his share of major troubles, but the movie additionally
captures the way small battles loom large in young lives; an unflattering haircut
is a serious episode in Mason’s childhood, and even though we know it’s small
potatoes compared to his other problems, it really feels serious when we see Mason’s reaction to it. The first part of the film is also peppered
with amusing bits of nostalgia that would have been contemporary at the time of
shooting. Things like Gameboys and Harry Potter midnight (book!) premieres serve
as mini time capsules.
As
Mason reaches adolescence, the movie starts to feel more like a generic
coming-of-age story. It loses a lot of
its particularity – mild teen rebellion, tentative romance, and
end-of-high-school uncertainty are all well-polished old chestnuts – and, more
than that, it just isn’t as interesting.
I swear the second half of the film features no fewer than four “It’s
time to buckle down and think about your future” speeches from adult men in
Mason’s life. So, not just generic for
its type, but repetitive within itself, and, given that the movie exceeds
two-and-a-half hours, it gets to be a bit much.
Ellar
Coltrane as Mason is effectively engaging throughout, but even he starts to
feel kind of listless of the later segments of the movie. Still, he displays a nice, understated talent,
and even though it’s more apparent in the early sections, he remains the best
reason to soldier on in the second half.
Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette bring an earnest quality to the
somewhat archetypal roles of Mason’s parents and Lorelai Linklater
(writer/director Richard Linklater’s daughter) is pitch-perfect as Mason’s mouthy,
eternally-unimpressed sister.
Warnings
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