Boyhoood review

I DON'T WANNA BE A BIG MAN

Rating: 10 out of 10

Five seconds into Boyhood and I could tell this would be great film. One hour in, I knew I’m watching one of the greatest films ever made. Or at least one of the greatest film experiences of my life. I don’t like to throw this word around for every great film I see but I guess it’s time to write this one down. When the film ended, I was convinced that Boyhood is a flat-out masterpiece.

Here is a motion picture that comes close to feeling less like a film and more like life. I’m surprised how it doesn't boast about it. There are documentaries and there are dramas. The former is based on fact, the latter on fiction. Boyhood, for me, does not fall in both categories. It is neither cinema verité, nor is it a docudrama. There are many films that show you paint drying or present harsh truths graphically and call it reality. While human life, in reality, is a permutation and combination of memories. Boyhood plays like memories.

I haven’t even begun talking about the absolute genius feat of filmmaking that is Boyhood. Shot over 12 years. Richard Linklater would shoot scenes every year with the same bunch of actors. We see Ellar Coltrane, Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette grow up. No change of actors and us feeling we are abruptly watching a different film. No prosthetic make-up. Yes life. Yes cinema.

Satyajit Ray and François Truffaut have done something like this before. Although, Apu was not played by the same actor in the Apu trilogy and Jean-Pierre Léaud's Antoine Doinel got quite a few films, spread over many years. We've also seen the Harry Potter stars grow up over ten years but they had 8 films to flaunt it. Boyhood is all these films shot over many years but condensed into one epic film. Richard Linklater, the director of the ingenious Before Sunrise, Sunset and Midnight trilogy (1995-2014) was just setting us up for the big magic trick.

Linklater does not use time stamps to let us know what year it is. Visually, we see actors age naturally in its stead but that’s not enough, is it? Aurally, time is marked by music. For a person like me, who looks back at the years by the music I heard and the movies I saw to remember the dates, it couldn’t get better than this. There are Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Arcade Fire, Cat Power, Wilco, The Black Keys, The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend. Even Gotye and Gnarls Barkley show up to help your ears identify where we are. The song that stuck with me long after the film ended is Hero by Family of the Year.

Moreover, the film begins with Coldplay’s Yellow on a black screen. Coldplay marks the beginning of my love affair with music, when I fell in love with the music of a band, way back in the year 2000. I mentioned earlier I could tell a few seconds in that this would be a great film. Well, now you know why. But I thought it’s a great film not because a director used one of my favorite songs from my favorite band.

If music and filmmaking inventiveness were the only tricks in its bag, it would be a gimmick, not a film. Boyhood is a masterpiece because of its innate ability for sincere human connection.

Have you ever watched a movie and thought that’s you up there on the screen? Well, of course you can’t be exactly the same character on the screen but feeling like you are one of the characters there. Either because they do the same things you do or say the same things you say or like the same things you like. The music, the books, the films they talk about or the way they fight or react to a situation or even break up with a girlfriend. Being there when the Harry Potter books are launched, being a part of the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars phenomena. There are several instances where I have wondered if the Elves were real, or at least wanted them to be. Or the many conversations about our favorite Beatle.

I don’t want to tell you about the plot of the film because there probably isn’t one. Just like your and my life. This film can’t be reduced by singling out the story or the characters. There is no Hollywood structuring, or plot points calling attention to themselves or anything happening that couldn’t happen in our lives. Because it isn’t about a character’s story. It is about Mason’s life. His mother, his father, his sister, his hopes, his nightmares and dreams. At the center of the film lies the character of Mason’s mother. Just like at the center of our lives lies the presence of our mothers. If only we knew what they have gone through to make us what we are today.

Boyhood clocks in at 3 hours but doesn’t feel like it could do without a single minute. As far as the sub-genre of coming-of-age films is concerned, this is it. This is THE coming-of-age film. Every true work of art or a genius invention is first an experiment. Richard Linklater has been perfecting this experiment for 12 years and you can only marvel at the conclusion. There is only one word to describe it. Just one.

Masterpiece.