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Written by Pete Timmermann Thursday, 31 July 2014 22:41

This is one film that needs to feel dated as a means to feeling timeless, and it succeeds.

 

 

Usually my favorite movies—be it of the year my life, or otherwise— are movies I didn’t entirely know what to make of right after I saw them. They’re the type that, upon initial viewing, you know that you liked, but you just aren’t sure how much you liked them, as they don’t fit neatly into any of your brain’s preconceived categories. I first saw the already blisteringly acclaimed new Richard Linklater film Boyhood five months ago, and that’s how it was: I liked it, but I wasn’t sure just how much. Thankfully, in the interim, I’ve been able to decide: I like it a whole lot.

You’ve surely heard about this film by now, even if the title is plain and it’s being released by a small-ish distributor (IFC, who back in 2002 proved they can handle hot properties if the opportunity strikes, when they turned My Big Fat Greek Wedding into the highest-grossing independent picture ever): It’s the one where one boy—and, indeed, one whole cast—returned to film a couple of scenes a year annually for 12 years, so that we can trace the growth and maturation of our lead, Mason (Ellar Coltrane), in something of an unusual variety of time-lapse photography. It’s akin to Michael Apted’s series of Up documentaries and Linklater’s own Before trilogy, except that all of the aging happens inside of the one fiction feature film.

Boyhood is easily, hugely accessible, but it never insults the audience’s intelligence; there are no superimpositions to tell you that time has passed, nor generally noticeable editing transitions, etc. Instead, if you aren’t clued in by the changes in appearance of our characters, you’ll have a good idea of when you are based on cultural references seamlessly integrated into the film: the release of the book Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince, presidential elections, people playing the Wii. Indeed, the film’s datedness is presumably intentional and entirely to its credit; this is one film that needs to feel dated as a means to feeling timeless. It succeeds.

While Boyhood handles major themes and dramatic events, it never really does so in a way that you’d expect. For example, when the film begins, Mason’s mom (Patricia Arquette) and dad (Ethan Hawke) are already separated. A lesser filmmaker would have made high drama of their divorce, but Linklater is smarter than that. There are a lot of directorial choices like this in the film: It’s about a slow accumulation of attitudes and experiences, and less about the big, life-altering events that we sometimes experience.

There’s already much (deserved) talk about Boyhood’s likeliness to be nominated for and hopefully win a bunch of Oscars. It’s been a long time coming for Linklater, who has done some incredible work in his career, but who has so far never been appropriately showered with awards. The real miracle of this film that I’m most rooting for, though, is Coltrane, who is perfect, smart, and likable in a way that the filmmakers never really could have planned: Think of how good Kiernan Shipka is as Sally Draper in Mad Men’s seven seasons, expand that over 12 years, shrink the total running time to a little under three hours, and that’s close to what Coltrane achieves here. Conversely, Arquette is the film’s weak link, which is odd, given that at this point she seems to be receiving the most awards buzz for the movie, and she’s one of only two recognizable people in the film. Most of the shakiness in her acting comes toward the beginning of the film, though, and she’s settled in and just fine by the end.

The bottom line is that Boyhood is an excellent film, one of those where watching it for the first time feels like a mere formality: You know you’re going to return to it again and again, liking it more each time that you see it. | Pete Timmermann