#839: LINKLATER, Richard: Boyhood (2014)

LINKLATER, Richard (United States)
Boyhood [2014]
Spine #839
Blu-ray

There has never been another movie like Boyhood, from director Richard Linklater. An event film of the utmost modesty, it was shot over the course of twelve years in the director's native Texas and charts the physical and emotional changes experienced by a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette, who won an Oscar for her performance, and Ethan Hawke), and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater). Alighting not on milestones but on the small, in-between moments that make up lives, Linklater fashions a flawlessly acted, often funny portrait that flows effortlessly from one year to the next. Allowing us to watch people age on film with documentary realism while gripping us in a fictional narrative of exquisite everydayness, Boyhood has a power that only the art of cinema could harness.

165 minutes

Color
5.1 Surround
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2016

Director/Writer

Richard Linklater was 54 when he wrote and directed Boyhood.

Other Linklater films in the Collection:

#247: Slacker (1991)
#336: Dazed And Confused (1993)
#857: Before Sunrise (1995)
#858: Before Sunset (2004)
#859: Before Midnight (2013)

The Film

There is the Up film series — but Boyhood truly resists comparison to any other cinematic feature. It is quite simply a stupendous masterpiece, made over a 12-year period (2002-2013) as we observe Mom (Patricia Arquette) and Dad (Ethan Hawke) and their two children, Mason (Ellar Coltrane) and Samantha (Lorelei Linklater [the director’s daughter]), live and grow — along with assorted ex-husbands, new wives, babies, bosses, and even shotgun-toting, bible-thumping grandparents …

A typical glorious moment might be best exemplified by a scene when Mom has to deal with replacing broken sewer pipes. She has to communicate with a Mexican worker who barely speaks English — Enrique (Roland Ruiz) — and senses something good and intelligent in the man, and encourages him to go to night school …

Hours later, we find him handing out menus to Mom and the kids; he now speaks perfect English and is the manager of the restaurant. The meal is on him. So rich.

Moments like this permeate the film, which concludes on such a sweet note — Ellar has just met Nicole (Jessi Mechler) and they are tripping out in Big Bend State Park. (Big Bend National Park had been closed by the Feds!)

NICOLE

“You know how everyone’s always saying ‘Seize the moment’? I don’t know … I’m kinda thinking it’s the other way around. You know, like, the moment seizes us …

MASON

Yeah. Yeah, I know, it’s … it’s constant … the moment, it’s just … it’s like it’s always right now, you know?

NICOLE

Yeah.”

Look carefully. Coltrane’s eyes break the fourth wall for just an instant before the FTB!

Oh yeah … the soundtrack is legendary.

Film Rating (0-60): 

58

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-four page booklet featuring an essay by novelist Jonathan Lethem.

Such a clever film certainly deserves such a clever essay. Lethem punctuates his musings with footnotes which I put in brackets here:

“A viewer’s questions about the unique nature of the film accelerate and deepen in its last scenes. (You could probably talk forever about the closing minute of Boyhood. Or at least it contains nearly every ingredient you’d need to talk forever . . .) [You’ll have noticed by now that I’ve jumped from talking about the beginning to talking about the end without talking about the middle. But that’s perfectly okay, because the only thing I have to say about the middle of the film is that the film is all middle. That’s the point of Boyhood, or one of them.] This is, to some extent, prompted by our grasp — as sudden as Olivia’s revelation, and as heartbreaking — that Mason/Ellar is autonomous now, nobody’s emblem of anything, and on the brink, as the twelve-year project releases him to a potentially anonymous ‘life,’ of being out from our caring concern, free to self-invent without our collaboration. To what extent did Linklater’s revisions adapt and adopt elements of his child performer’s own passages and transformations? Did Mason Junior get into photography because of Ellar, or did the reverse occur? Did any of the teenagers fall in love with one another? Are we seeing anyone’s first kiss? [I don’t actually want a Brady Bunch-style memoir from the set of Boyhood. Sorry I brought it up.]”

Commentary

Featuring Linklater and nine members of the film’s cast and crew.

Documentary

Chronicling the film’s production, featuring footage shot over the court of its twelve years.

Great extra — Rick wears a Zappa-tista t-shirt and this great Criterion shirt:

“At some point, you’re no longer growing up — you’re aging, but no one can pinpoint that moment exactly. I think you just know it once you get there …”

Discussion

Featuring Linklater and actors Arquette and Coltrane, moderated by producer John Pierson.

What a long strange trip it’s been! The trio have a lively conversation about the making of the film, and particularly the post-film awards nonsense that followed …

Conversation

Between Coltrane and actor Hawke.

Precious stuff.

Video essay

By critic Michael Koresky about time in Linklater’s films, narrated by Coltrane.

“Richard Linklater doesn’t just tell stories; he wants us to feel time. His films demonstrate that the cinematic image is not a photographic record of a moment in place, but the passage of a very particular pathway of time and place, never to be recaptured.”

Collection

Of portraits of the cast and crew by photographer Matt Lankes, narrated with personal thoughts from Linklater, Arquette, Hawkes, Coltrane, and producer Cathleen Sutherland.

Another very special, beautiful extra!

Get the book here.

Extras Rating (0-40):

38

58 + 38 =

96

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