'Boyhood' Review

Boyhood Review:

The Coming-of-Age Movie to Rule Them All

BY IAN TAN

Boyhood charts Mason Evan’s life and growth from his childhood years at 6 to his first day in university at 19. That’s pretty much it in terms of plot. In terms of story, there are loads to be found here. Boyhood deals with many things us humans go through as we grow older and mature. Fighting with siblings, the dread of changing schools and leaving your pals behind, divorced parents, drunk parents, non-biological parents, peer pressure, jobs, relationships - Boyhood covers it all, and doesn’t even begin to bore even at a runtime of nearly three hours.

This film in itself is a cinematic feat; 12 years in the making. And through those 12 years, we – the audience – have the pleasure of watching the film’s stars grow not only as their characters, but as actors as well. Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette especially deliver the best performances in the film. The child actors, namely Ellar Coltrane as Mason and Loreilei Linklater (director Richard Linklater’s daughter) were pretty good in their roles, even as child actors. However, I felt that both actors seemed to be less invested into their roles as the film progressed to their characters’ later years of teenage-hood. Their acting just felt a little more stiff and wooden after Mason turned 15. Emotions weren’t present much and they looked a lot less enthusiastic about things, but hey, we all kind of get less enthusiastic about a lot of things as we grow up, so maybe that’s what Richard Linklater wanted (?). Besides the main group of characters we follow, others show up in between (some returning several years later in the film) and everyone put on splendid performances, portraying raw, realistic and ultimately very human performances, showing how some people are broken and flawed, but that behind those broken souls and flaws lay really smart, caring and kind people.

Younger days

The fact that the film did not have a solid full script, having to adjust scenarios and events to suit the year in which they filmed and for it to remain relevant to today, is quite the achievement, given how natural the dialogue between characters feel and the journey they each go through. These developments in the script were probably why this film doesn’t really have a defined narrative structure, which isn’t a bad thing at all; it’s what really made this movie work for me. It was briskly paced and never felt like it was overstaying its welcome, yet I didn’t want it to end, pretty much like life itself. There was even a Star Wars 7 reference during one of the scenes that took place in 2008! And here we are at 2015, waiting for The Force Awakens to come out. Way to go, Ethan Hawke and Ellar Coltrane for not jinxing that ;D

Transformation

I have but one extremely minor nitpick about it, and that’s the fact that some scenes just didn’t seem as if they were shot properly. There were a couple of times where the camera looked out of focus for an entire shot. An example is a scene where Ethan Hawke’s character speaks to his kids in the car. The car window behind him was more in focus than Hawke was in the shot. I just found that distracting and I wonder what was going on during the shoot that no one noticed the misplaced focus, but that’s a minute technical complaint in what is otherwise a great, great movie.

In essence, this film is about, well, life, and it’s a great one at that. I have always admired coming-of-age films as I find them the most relatable to life and to me as a growing teenager.  The fact that Boyhood ends on Mason’s first day in university at the age of 19, the same position I will be in in a few months, made me look back at my life and think “Wow, look at how far I’ve come. Look at how…old I am now. I can’t believe this Mason character’s my age. Just 2 hours ago he was six.”

University

Final Verdict

Boyhood gets 9.5 out of 10 stars – An experience of a movie that’s packed with everything I’ve ever wanted to see in a coming-of-age film, and more.