‘Boyhood’ is one-of-a-kind time capsule

By Jason Fraley

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Beatles Epiphany

Richard Linklater realizes his Beatles ode mirrors his own script.

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WASHINGTON — The phrase “one of a kind” gets thrown around a lot, but Richard
Linklater’s long-term experiment “Boyhood” is more deserving of the title than any
movie in recent memory.

Thanks to its grand vision and careful execution 12 years in the making, it
instantly joins the list of movies that will be talked about for decades to come.

In 2002, Linklater cast then 6-year-old Ellar Coltrane as Mason; his own daughter,
Lorelei, as Mason’s sister Samantha; and consistent collaborators Patricia
Arquette (“Fast Food Nation”) and Ethan Hawke (“Before Sunrise”) as their divorced
parents.

The group shot several scenes in 2002 and then waited a year. They shot several
more scenes in 2003 and then waited another year. In 2004, they reunited once
again to shoot more, and so on until Mason turned 18 and left for college.

The result is a deeply authentic, infinitely relatable coming-of-age story wrapped
inside a fascinating time capsule.

Of course, “Boyhood” isn’t the first to attempt this “longitudinal study.”

Linklater’s own trilogy — “Before Sunrise” (1995), “Before Sunset” (2004) and
“Before Midnight” (2013) — follows a similar method of checking in on the same
characters in nine-year increments. But unlike “Boyhood,” that was done in three
separate movies.

Michael Apted’s “Up” documentary series revisits the same group of
British-born adults every seven years, starting with “Seven Up!” (1964) and most
recently with “56 Up” (2012). Its
middle chapter “28 Up” (1984) made the late Roger Ebert’s “Top 10 Favorite
Movies.” But unlike
“Boyhood,” these were documentaries of real lives.

To my knowledge, “Boyhood” is the first to try this experiment within the
fictional structure of a single movie. The amount of discipline and long-term
vision necessary to achieve this is really quite incredible, and so Ebert’s
description of the “Up” series now applies to Linklater’s fictional work: “This
ongoing film is an experiment unlike anything else in film history. … I defy
anyone to watch without fascination.”

“I had this idea to film a little bit of it every year,” Linklater tells WTOP.

“I thought that it would be a powerful document of the kids growing up, the
parents aging … and it would have this cumulative effect, that these rather
intimate moments, over time, would mean something.”

Linklater explained the genesis of the idea in a one-on-one interview with WTOP,
snippets of which can be heard to the right. The full interview is below:

The 12-year experiment provides a profound time capsule on a number of levels:

1. History Politics

While TV’s “Mad Men” masterfully comments on history by recreating a specific era,
“Boyhood” chronicles current history year-to-year. The film opens in 2002, just
after Sept. 11 and just before the invasion of Iraq.

When TV news footage shows the violence in Fallujah, audiences have the
realization that this movie was shot 12 years ago, but here we are today,
still involved in Iraq.

“The beautiful thing is that we’re doing a period piece in real-time, so we don’t
know the future,” Linklater says.

“By the end of this movie, he could have been waiting on his draft number if the
country went a different way. You don’t know.”

Thus, “Boyhood” is a tragic reminder that history, indeed, repeats itself.

“I grew up in the Vietnam era, so when I was that age, it was like the war was
just on TV,” Linklater says. “It meant nothing to me. It was just the backdrop.”

Decades later, “here we are again,” Linklater says.

There is another “war that goes on forever, but … from the kid’s point of view.
He doesn’t really have the politics of it, he doesn’t really understand it, but
it’s there.”

The film also shows how kids pick up on their parents’ politics.

There’s a debate over the 2004 election between presidential contenders George W.
Bush and John Kerry. Later, there’s a “get out the vote” push during the 2008
election between Barack Obama and John McCain.

While Linklater clearly leans to the left, he grew up with a dad who voted
for President Jimmy Carter and a step-dad who voted for President Richard Nixon.
Linklater goes out of his way to criticize extremes on both sides, showing a
stars-and-bars redneck with bubbling racism, followed by an airhead voter blinded
by “hope and change” excitement.

2. Technology

Even more amusing is the film’s journey through various technological advances.
Rather than going back and planting technological devices as props, the film uses
current devices in real time.

“Boyhood” journeys from Apple computers to iPods, from iPhones to Skype, and
culminates with a Facebook debate where Mason says mankind has willingly turned
itself into social robots.

In the realm of video games, Mason moves from playing a portable Gameboy Advance
to the X-Box first-person shooter game “Halo” and then to throwing physical
punches on the cordless Nintendo Wii.

At one point, his stepfather complains about “computer games at the table,” as
Mason’s stepbrother plays a “20 Questions” game on a handheld device instead of
interacting with the family.

What perceptive foreshadowing of the “distracted” smartphone era, before it even
took off!

3. Pop Culture

Also, the film charts various trends and fads in pop culture.

As a young kid, Mason watches “Dragonball Z.”

At a slightly older age, he and his friends dress in their best Hogwarts attire to
stand in line for the latest Harry Potter book.

In their tween years, Mason’s friend says she doesn’t get the appeal of the
“Twilight” book series.

And as a teenager, he complains that his girlfriend doesn’t like his three
favorite movies that summer: “The Dark Knight,” “Tropic Thunder” and “Pineapple
Express.”

4. Music

An even more subtle pop culture commentary comes on the soundtrack.

We open with Coldplay’s “Yellow,” as Mason’s sister sings Britney Spears and their
mother listens to Sheryl Crowe.

We then progress through an array of 21st century tunes, all the way to Daft Punk
and Arcade Fire.

It all culminates with “Hero” by Family of the Year, a band name that
meta-references the annual check-ins with this single family.

Linklater is no stranger to music, launching Matthew McConaughey to a killer
classic rock soundtrack in “Dazed and Confused” (1993) and giving Jack Black
a glorious “face-melting” stage in “School of Rock” (2003).

There’s even a serendipitous moment when the music actually blends with the
narrative in a self-reflexive way. As we enter the last third of the film, Mason’s
father gives him a custom-made CD that he calls the “Black Album,” reuniting The
Beatles with carefully arranged songs from the solo careers of Paul McCartney,
George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr.

As Hawke explains, “The first four tracks, you get ‘Band on the Run,’ into ‘My
Sweet Lord,’ into ‘Jealous Guy’ into ‘Photography.’ Paul takes you to the party,
George talks about God, John says, ‘Nah, it’s all about love and pain,’ and Ringo
says, ‘Hey can’t we just enjoy what we have while we have it?’”

The movie then proceeds in an identical order, first with a birthday party, then a
church sermon, then the love and pain of a romance and breakup and finally a “live
and let live” nature trip with college buddies.

When asked if this was intentional, Linklater laughed and says, “Not really, [but]
that’s beautiful!”

Even he doesn’t know his subconscious brilliance.

5. Physical Transformation

Still, beyond all the historical and cultural musings, the biggest treat of the
time capsule is watching the actors literally grow up before our very eyes.

Haircuts change, bodies change and voices change. We even see the acting skills
develop, turning the film’s only flaw into its biggest strength as Coltrane
goes from an over-acting rookie to a naturalistic performer.

In the case of Lorelei Linklater, the film serves as almost a giant home movie
documenting the director’s real-life daughter.

“Some kids go with their dad to Six Flags, we made a movie a few days a year,”
Linklater says.

“There was a little moment somewhere along the way where she asked if her
character could die, but I was like, ‘No, that’s a little dramatic for what we’re
trying to do here.’”

Linklater’s resistance to this request is more than just a funny father-daughter
moment. It’s the key to the film’s success. Throughout the movie, Linklater
resists the urge to make arbitrary “things happen.”

The best example of this comes as Mason hangs out with his high school buddies,
drinking beers in the basement and throwing a saw blade into a piece of plywood.
As the boys rough house in front of the plywood, we gasp in fear that one might
fly back dangerously into the blade. It never happens.

“That’s a good example of how conditioned audiences are because it never crossed
my mind shooting that. I didn’t even notice the blade was behind his head the way
audiences do,” Linklater says.

“I was at that camp out [as a kid]. We threw blades and no one lost a little
finger, or no one caught one in the jugular. You get through childhood. Most of
the bad [stuff] doesn’t happen.”

In this way, Linklater avoids forced plot points in favor of intimate life moments
that seem mundane from scene-to-scene, but which add up to an epic tapestry on the
human condition. This is what makes the film so much more than its time capsule
gimmick, transfixing viewers for nearly three hours.

“We go to movies to see the extraordinary, the things we don’t see in our regular
lives, [but 'Boyhood'] was this collection of little intimate moments,” Linklater
says.

“It’s not that they’re not dramatic, because once you’re in the kid’s point of
view it is dramatic.”

While radio and TV host Art Linkletter famously interviewed children for “Kids Say
the Darndest Things,” Linklater is just as perceptive in capturing those
little pieces of childhood.

Mason learns about sex by finding a lingerie magazine in the street. He learns
about death by staring at a dead bird and burying it next to his house. And he
learns about art by taking photographs of a high school football game.

“Boyhood” is the closest thing to the footsteps and firecrackers of Terrence
Malick’s “Tree of Life” (2011), only with a more linear narrative structure.

While the coming-of-age story is the meat of the script, some of the film’s
biggest life lessons come from the adult characters. Arquette goes through various
stages of motherhood, divorce and remarriage. She moves on from past mistakes with
the motto “don’t look back,” living in the present to make ends meet with a
checkbook at the dinner table and tragically looking at the future with a
teary-eyed question: “Is this all there is?”

Most compelling is Hawke’s out-of-home father, who teaches Mason life lessons
every other weekend when he has custody of the kids, similar to Furious Styles in
“Boyz n the Hood” (1991). During a trip to the bowling alley, Mason keeps rolling
gutter balls and laments the lack of bumpers. His father says, “You don’t want the
bumpers. Life doesn’t give you bumpers.”

It may be Hawke’s most honest performance to date.

“I think he’s just a really substantial artist. He always has been,” Linklater
says.

“I met him when he was 23. He had written a book, he had directed a short movie,
he had a hit music video, he was one of the top actors in Hollywood, he had his
own theater company, all that at 23.”

The working relationship is a collaboration in every sense of the word, with Hawke
routinely calling Linklater at 2 a.m. with ideas for how to approach a scene, the
director says.

“That’s what a collaborator is. You push each other, and you get to a place that
neither of you could have got to alone. Ethan and I have always had that
relationship,” Linklater says.

“Twenty years ago we were working together for the first time in Vienna on ‘Before
Sunrise’ and at the end people asked, ‘Are you guys ever going to work together
again?’ And we look at each other and said, ‘I hope so.’”

With “Boyhood,” the planets have most definitely aligned. It is Linklater’s
apotheosis, cementing himself among the most important filmmakers of the last 25
years. He has proven he can expand or condense time at will, unfolding a story
that takes place in a single day like “Slacker” (1991) and “Dazed and Confused
(1993), or following characters during a long period of time like the “Before
Sunrise” trilogy and now “Boyhood.”

As a mentor tells Mason in the darkroom of his high school photography class, “Any
dipsh*t can take pictures… But art, that’s special.”

For Linklater, it’s the realization that we humans are nothing more than a
collection of our memories, and great artists should tap into their own personal
experiences to unlock life’s most basic truths.

“The depth of your perception of your own experience is all you really have, but
if you don’t value your own experience and your own perceptions, then you kind of
have nothing,” Linklater says.

★ ★ ★ ★

The above rating is based on a 4-star scale. See where this film ranks in
the Fraley Film Guide. Follow WTOP Film Critic Jason Fraley on Twitter @JFrayWTOP, read his blog The Film Spectrum, listen Friday
mornings on 103.5 FM and see a full list of his stories on our “Fraley on Film” page.

Follow @WTOP and WTOP Entertainment on Twitter and WTOP on Facebook.

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