This is a review of Boyhood (2014)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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17 August
This is a review of Boyhood (2014)
One does not watch such a film for breathtaking cinematographic insights (though there are some nice outdoor locations, not least at the very end), but for character development, set somewhere recognizably real : in its own terms, exploring Mason Evans, Snr (Ethan Hawke), through the story of Mason Evans, Jnr (Ellar Coltrane), it does not disappoint at all, and there are three moments where one has a lump in one’s throat at how a character is being appreciated by another.
That amongst significant moments of behaviour where people have lost their way, and got into blaming or being jealous of each other, which is the contrast in life. At the heart of all this, though – for all that it is talked about – it is not the most remarkable thing about the film that it was shot, for three or four days per year, over the course of twelve years, although it does allow one to see both Lorelei Linklater (his daughter as Mason’s sister Sam(antha)) and Coltrane age, and their faces and features mature. No, it is principally that of the closeness between father and son, and how the former allows the latter to see things from an older perspective.
At one moment, towards the end, younger Mason asks what the point of it all is, and receives the totally honest answer that no one knows and everyone is pretending. For those who have seen Sam Rockwell in The Way Way Back (2013), he is the humorous and intelligent father / mentor that we all identify as being enriching, and, at the best of times, there is that quality in Hawke’s remarkably penetrating acting.
So much so that one almost feels that Linklater has to introduce a distance, by pausing when Hawke meets Charlie Sexton (credited as Jimmy ?*) and they have a child, otherwise Hawke will steal the film.
Other things, such as the invidious position of a stepchild, are probably better addressed by Steve Carell in The Way Way Back than here by Linklater, but the point of it all is the same : that of holding one’s children firm when they need it so that they can have the confidence and belief that they deserve. Patricia Arquette’s* courage in taking her family out of an unsuitable situation (and the strength that her friend gives her) remind of a little 30-minute gem from Cambridge Film Festival 2013 (#CamFF), Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything) (2013)…
Compared with the more fly-away Hawke’s, Arquette’s character roots herself in responsibility, and feels the challenges of life in providing for Sam and Mason. These words could almost have been written for one scene :
She'll take the painting in the hallway
The one she did in Jr. High
Words : Matthew Charles Rollings / Doug Crider
Suzy Bogguss seems to have made this meditative song, ‘Letting Go’, her own, and it has an obvious resonance with the unsettling feeling of impermanence and of relentless change, which sometimes feels too much for Arquette as a mother. Where we leave Mason, we feel that he will make mistakes, but that he has kept a regard for his parents and their nurture, and we are content for him to take the course and not to witness it further.
Linklater’s desire to make this film with an ageing cast is not, except as a feature film, a new departure, because the well-known Granada Television series Up (which has been broadcast on ITV and the BBC) has covered 49 years in following fourteen British children since the age of seven (in 1964), whereas Mason is six when we first see the shot of him that is used in the film’s promotion. (He may also already have known that he would make a follow-up to Before Sunrise with the older Julie Delpy and, again, Hawke.)
Just two minor, minor things that do not work : when Arquette is remarried, and we cut to a side-shot of her Compliance Officer husband, his face is making the wrong expression for the serious subject that he is addressing, and then we cut back. That and the father-and-son exchange about other Star Wars films, which felt very placed and stilted.
But with Hawke duetting with the harmonizing Sexton (on Hawke’s own songs), and the other ways that music is organic to the feel, one can keep all the tracks in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – this is the soundtrack to buy.
Click here for a PS to Mr Linklater - some of the things that made actual boyhood so difficult, but which you will find no mention of in this film
End-notes
* IMDb, as it sometimes can, lets down massively by not providing the names of the characters : it lists Arquette as ‘Mom’ !
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
