Hello Friends,
The reviews just keep on coming! Up next on our journey through the eight Best Picture nominated films of the 2015 Academy Awards is Boyhood, the chronicle of, you guessed it, the journey from boyhood to manhood. Or, at least, college-aged-hood. Boyhood is nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Ethan Hawke), and Best Supporting Actress (Patricia Arquette).
Filmed over a span of 12 years, Boyhood is a coming-of-age drama watching Mason Evans, Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) and his sister, Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) grow up in Texas, with their single mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette). The film began shooting in 2002, and wrapped in 2014. Throughout the film, we watch a family grow, literally, with all of the aches and pains that come with it.
The acting, in this film, is of excellent quality, to be sure. Patricia Arquette, who plays Olivia, and Ethan Hawke, who plays Olivia’s divorced husband and Mason’s father Mason Sr., are both nominated for Best Supporting, and they both earned their nominations. Arquette is wonderful- she is at once strident and cool, present and absent, with absolutely terrible taste in men. She is equally devoted to her studies as she is to finding the worst possible father for her children. She is at times cool and collected, then suddenly desperate…her transformation from a single mother barely making ends meet to a strong, confident college professor who is still somehow only making ends meet is striking. Most of all, she stays exactly as she is throughout the entirety of the film, as evidenced by the “parade of drunken assholes” who wander in and out of Mason’s childhood. Ethan Hawke was equally a terrible/wonderful father- neglectful, absent, yet loving. I’m not entirely sure that Coltrane is acting much, but that’s part of what you get with child actors. It could also be that he’s just that good, and I didn’t actually watch his adolescence on film. In fact, the only actor in the film who doesn’t get much attention is Lorelei Linklater, who plays Mason’s older sister Samantha. Again, as child actors go, it appears she’s just growing up on-screen, but she provides an excellent counterpart to Mason Jr.
The writing of this film is either really amazing, or really terrible. I’m going to assume it’s completely brilliant, because the film doesn’t feel like there’s any script to it. I feel like maybe the actors got to year five or six in filming and were just put on the set without any lines, and they just started rolling. It is clear that this team knows each other intimately, and they’re working together as a real family would. It feels like a reality show that happens to be slightly more stylized. (I realize that could be taken as an insult – go the other way with it.) In a world filled with “unscripted and uncut” action on TV every single day, kudos go out to a completely scripted piece of art that doesn’t feel scripted for even a second of the two hours the film runs.
What I find fascinating about this piece is that every family member has their own story arc, and Mason’s doesn’t seem to be the most interesting of them all. I, personally, was more curious about Olivia and her character arc. She starts out as a single mother, desperately trying to support her family. She then goes back to school, and fights and fights and fights to get enough degrees to teach psychology. Along the way, she never analyzes herself long enough to realize that she’s falling for the same bad guys over and over again. They’re all drunk, they’re all jerks, one of them knocks her around…for a psychologist, she seems to have very little insight into herself, and into the needs of her children. She, at times, doesn’t even seem particularly interested in her children and what they need to be successful. And where did the other half of their family go? When she took her children away from their drunk, abusive stepfather, I kept wondering…what about the step kids? Do they ever come back? What happens to them? And Hawke’s character was intriguing as well. From a useless, wandering father to a married man (as demarcated by the horrible 70’s stache he grows) starting over with a baby, he actually seems like the better parent of the two. He’s tapped into his children, he knows them, he listens, he relates…he even seems to make more of an effort to be around than Mom at times. So why is this film called Boyhood, and not Families? Aside from the camera following him around more, I didn’t quite see why Mason was the center of the plot.
As much as I wanted to love Boyhood, I couldn’t quite muster up the heartfelt emotion. The concept is incredible- filming the same individuals make the same movie for twelve years? It premiered at Sundance in 2014, and has been adored by critics and fans alike. It’s been declared a landmark film, and has taken home scads of awards. Based on the concept alone it deserves to win Best Picture, hands down, no questions asked. And yet…I have lingering doubts. Is the film well made? Absolutely. The documentary-esque feel makes it intimate, yet vast. You spend two hours and forty-five minutes of your life investing in this family! But something, for me, was missing. Perhaps it was some idea of what Mason was searching for? Maybe I yearned for him to grow up to become something other than what he became? The artist in me realizes this is exactly what Boyhood was made to do- bring up questions, rather than answers. Invoke an emotional response in the viewer. But the average, regular person in me wishes that I knew why I sat for such a long time watching these people. I can imagine that back when realism became “a thing” in the theatre, audiences said the same things. “Why, that’s exactly what we do at home! Why did I pay money to watch them do what I do at home?” To me, the most compelling part of the film was when Olivia remarries and her new husband becomes more of a drunken jerk every day. That, and wondering what hairstyle Mason is going to have every time we jump into a new year of his life. (That Beiber situation was unfortunate.)
All in all, Boyhood has a strong shot at taking home the Academy Award for Best Picture, if only because it’s something that’s never been done before. The acting is great, the writing is great, the filming is great, everything about it is great. The fact that it didn’t resonate very strongly with me means absolutely nothing. It’s well executed in all facets. Go, check it out, and find the themes that mean the most to you.
There’s truly something for everyone in this piece.
Live, Love, Learn,
Rebecca &