Boyhood (2014)

Screenshot from trailer

Screenshot from trailer

Born in 1994, raised in the surrounding Houston area, watching this film for the first time in a theater with both of my parents and my younger brother, three years my junior, this film holds a special place in my heart. How could it not? I watched the older sister singing songs that gave me flashbacks to elementary school; the siblings look through a pair of binoculars that have an identical cousin somewhere in my parents' attic, or Goodwill, or somewhere; the big screen showed the outdoor theater my brother and I had seen a play at earlier in the summer, the homes, bars, places that are so Texas-- not the Texas that the world knows, filled with stereotypes and country drawls, but the Texas that I know.


Boyhood is very Linklater. Anyone who is familiar with Richard Linklater's other films will pick up on some of his not-so-subtle trends. An East Texas boy, the streets of Austin, the roots of Houston are a common backdrop for his films. His Austin isn't the overtly trendy, sleek Austin that has become a name in line with Seattle, Chicago, New York in recent years. His Austin is the dirtier, grittier, weirder version (side note: the whole Keep Austin weird thing is total bullshit by the way... it started off as a meaningful support of small businesses whose rug got pulled out from underneath it to become a moneymaking scheme), it is pre hardcore gentrification. His movies tend to place plot as a background for thought. They are films that like to ask (literally ask and beg to ask) the "big" questions--why are we on this earth? what does any of this matter? He often dives into unique storylines, story structure.

This movie has a lot of good. The idea of one movie that takes 12 years to film. The aging characters are actual people growing up instead of actors of various ages. Capturing what is intimately popular at the moment and editing that down to what has lasted as an anchoring memory to that time. I loved the way the film spanned many years and edited them together smoothly, how it became an illustration of a childhood, a place, feelings, pop culture and, so very Linklater of him, life.

But it is far from perfect. The acting is a little painful at times--especially some of Patricia Arquette's forced lines of motherliness and Lorelei Linklater's (yes, R's daughter) bored teenager comments. Ethan Hawke, a favorite of Linklater's films, was great. Ellar Coltrane was pretty believable and engaging as well, very "younger brother".

The whole thing got a little too Linklater towards the end for my taste, when Mason starts asking those big questions and infusing them into his relationships. I would have liked if he had been a little less of a fauxlosopher, while still showing his growing questions surrounding the world.

It is still crazy to me to have such an intimate attachment, such a see that there! I know that there! connection to the film and know that while I walked down a street in France a few years ago, a cinema had this movie poster exhibited on its walls. It is weird to think that the world will get this little peek at what is, in a way, my childhood. Not just because of my age, but because of my place.

Oh yeah, and how fun is it that that girl at the end  has the same name as his middle school note-passing crush? Coincidence? Lolz, Linklater don't do coincidence.




Watch the trailer here