Boyhood

"Boyhood film". Image via Wikipedia.

Richard Linklater's film Boyhood has made the media rounds quite impressively in the last weeks. The film finally caught my attention in mid-July. When I discovered it captures an actual boyhood, I knew I needed to see this film.

Here in Heilbronn, we can't pop into town for an English-language screening.* To find Boyhood, in English on a movie screen, Markus, Miriam, and I traveled about an hour to Heidelberg. Another benefit: Indian curry before the movie and gelato afterward on Heidelberg's busy Hauptstraße.

The nearly three-hour film came into being over twelve years. In 2002, Linklater picked a six-year-old actor named Ellar Coltrane to be the boy, Mason. Over the next twelve years, he molded a family story around Mason and his sister Samantha (played by Linklater's daugher Lorelei), and their divorced parents, played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette. Just the project of shooting new footage every year for twelve years while keeping a story going is astonishing. But the observation of the children as they grow is the breathtaking part. The story is as old as, "My, you've grown!" every time you see a child after a long break. We all fall for it. We are always amazed. In the film, brief scenes and longer scenes are put together, always chronologically. There are gaps in time. Mason rides off on his bicycle, six-year-old sized. Next, he's looking at the ground and all you see is brown hair. When he glances up, you see his face has changed. He's seven now, or eight. Perhaps you gasp. Again and again, through the everyday and occasionally dramatic moments, you see the characters age until Mason is off to college.

My attraction to the film before seeing it was intensely personal. The time period (2002-2013) of the filming nearly matches the time that's passed since my son died (2004). The actor playing Mason grew from the age of seven to nineteen while filming. Simon was seven when he died. He would be seventeen today. This film documents nearly the same time span, from the same age, as all the years we're missing in Simon's life. Would Boyhood be a gift? Could it give me something of Simon? Would it be a way to see him grow up after all?

I took my needy purpose with me to the film. How could I not? In the first scenes, especially with Mason on his bike, I had a pang: Yes, that's what Simon looked like on a bike! And maybe one or two jumps to an older child gave me a moment's wistfulness. But soon I was inside the lives of these characters, all the intricacy and triviality and motion or motionlessness. Soon I'd stopped wondering about Simon. This movie is about the coming of age of Mason and of Ellar Coltrane. Yes, it is universal. But it's not about me and my family. It didn't do the "job"--whatever that was--I'd hoped it would do. And that didn't matter. Like so many others, I am utterly won by this film.

Perhaps if I watched it many times, that Simon effect I was hoping for will reveal itself. Perhaps.

I can recommend some media about the film. Two I'd recommend waiting to hear until after you've seen the film.

The New Yorker Review by Anthony Lane
Balancing Acts

Fresh Air interview of Richard Linklater with Terry Gross
Filmed Over 12 Years, 'Boyhood' Follows A Kid's Coming Of Age

Movie Date podcast (The Takeaway)
"Life Itself," "Boyhood," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes"

Save for after you've seen the film:

KQED radio interview with Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater Elevates the Ordinary in "Boyhood" 

Slate Spoiler Special "Boyhood"

*Unless we're very lucky on Monday evenings and the local cinema is playing a film we want to see--and we were lucky last Monday, to catch The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (although not in the intended 3D) because the film is intriguing and has a sturdy subplot of child loss and I found Helena Bonham Carter's portrayal of the mother comforting).