Linklater: Boyhood (2014)

It’s hard to say whether Boyhood is Richard Linklater’s latest film, since he’s been shooting it since 2002, meeting up with a small cast every year to film a vignette in the life of a young boy, played by Ellar Coltrane, as he gradually reaches adulthood – in its completed version, it shows his progression from 12^th grade to his first year at university. Part of what makes the film so powerful is that the transition from one vignette to another is not especially marked – although it abounds in period-specific references, it’s often quite difficult to tell where one year ends and another year begins. That produces something like a  textural or gestural history of the last decade, since the film tends to be most compelling when Linklater shies away from narrative, or when the recurring, rhythmic partings and departings extend beyond the narrative, to the point where it feels that every greeting and goodbye contains the peculiar pressures of an entire period in its gesture. Linklater has long been fascinated in the way that moments can balloon out into history, but never paired it with such a perfect object – whether because it’s so recent, or because it marks the end of a certain sense of history, the 00s abides for many people as a collection of moments that don’t quite add up to an epoch, a collection of period commodities that don’t quite constitute a period. There’s a kind of reflexive impotence, then, to Linkater’s hyperactive period references – they’re clearly speculative, but their speculation and curiosity often seems to be as directed at their own eventual impotence, or irrelevance, as much as anything else. Perhaps that’s what distinguishes it from the Before Sunset series, which it often recalls, especially given Ethan Hawke’s presence – whereas you sensed that Hawke and Delpy stood outside history, here there’s more of a sense that history has exceeded any of the characters, even or especially whenever they try to intervene in it in some way. And that means that it’s often most powerful in the earlier sections, when it’s clear that Linklater wasn’t sure where he was going, or if the film would ever come to fruition – at its most beautiful moments, his camera simply passes his characters by, like the scent of history, that strange perfume of the present that you detect, occasionally and achingly, in some of the quietest backroads and corners of your life.

Comments

[Murtaza Ali]

Loved your short and crisp analysis!

Prima facie, Linklater's movie is about America and, as expected, it does indeed offer sumptuous vignettes of Americana, but, at its core, it's a movie about the universality of the delicate relationship that exists between a parent and a child. Linklater proves that while ambition does come with a huge price tag, it can still be well rewarded as long as one has the patience and the perseverance to back it up.

Vintage Linklater, Boyhood's greatest accomplishment is that it presents life the way it is, neither exaggerating it nor trivializing it. Boyhood leaves us with that bittersweet feeling of nostalgia and love, which, while making us regret the mistakes that we ourselves made in our childhood, also inspires us to help contribute towards creating a better world for the posterity.

Please do take some time out to read my full review at:

http://www.apotpourriofvestiges.com/2014/09/boyhood-2014-richard-linklaters.html