Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Boyhood (2014, R)


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

Lots of swearing, smoking/drinking/drug use, and a little sexual content.

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