Boyhood

Boyhood

Boyhood posterWhen does fiction end and reality begin in Boyhood? Or are we the fictional ones instead? In this daunting film, auteur Richard Linklater documents a story close to our hearts, and close to our time. Much of the merit this feature has reaped is in its effort to capture its actors on tape annually for 12 years. Beyond it, the natural tone this work evokes tells what interviews and Wikipedia pages have said. Even without the fanfare, it stands on its own and inspires intimate questions from the viewer who, in one way or another, would relate to the timeless theme of coming-of-age.

Casually filling in popular cultural elements of music, games, books, and movies, Boyhood features snapshots of a few days in the youth of Mason Evans, Jr., played by Ellar Coltrane for all those years, since 2002. Throughout the next years of his life to his emergence as an adult, we see a natural progression of the family dynamic and the protagonist’s characterization. Even through all the physical changes of the actors, setting and atmosphere, the style does not falter. From simple camerawork, utilizing few angles and keeping the frame stable most of the time; to use of popular time-bound songs, as less as a score, and more of how people use them in real life; the dialogue is kept unenhanced by these cinematic layers, seamlessly drawing any viewer who grew up from a Western-influenced society, in and out of a fictional scenario from their own world. With this down-to-earth take, one would expect the run-of-the-mill chores and daily preparatory rituals, but the director spared us of them to focus on the sequences that would either drive the story forward or present the current state in life, all under the arc of growth from passiveness. Throughout the 165-minute journey, one would half-expect these instances to come through and break the mold and breathe in different air, but its distillation is adequately explained in the end, offering a premise that is generic but a tale that is universal. Staying true to life, there are characters who come and go, keeping their fate unexplored while some seemingly unnecessary individuals get a promotion in their life status thanks to simple deeds. A possible thesis on societal machinations and humans as masters of their life, perhaps?

Banking on this delicate realism, without any use of any convenient plot device, what makes Boyhood even more compelling is its simple laying of ageless questions of self-worth and purpose without answering them definitively, inspiring engagement and discourse from the viewer. To answer these human inquiries, the film offers different avenues of influence through its supporting characters, the family, particularly, Mason’s parents, played by the reliable Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke. As Mason grows up, these two grow as well, tackling their own sets of issues in different life stages. Though their stories are always shown through the boy’s still-maturing lenses, these offer a peek and a much-needed perspective to mold one’s own individuality at a rate faster than their own personal stagnation, and the slow brew of societal transformation. This film is not just a piece of entertainment. It is the realization of a human to its being.
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ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ (The unexamined life is not worth living.) – Socrates

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys-mbHXyWX4?controls=0&showinfo=0]

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