30 for 30 — 2014: "Boyhood"
"Everything? What's the point? I mean, I sure as shit don't know. Neither does anybody else, okay? We're all just winging it, you know?"
What’s this all about? I turned 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m watching one movie a day for 30 days and spending 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2014. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
Time, like money, is a made-up concept, only holding as much value as we say it does. We assign value to a minute, an hour, a dime, a dollar, but those measurements are simply our attempts to make sense of things that can change worth depending on the circumstances. When you’re a kid, 12 years seems like an eternity and $100 seems like a bounty of riches; when you’re an adult, 12 years go by in a blip and $100 is a drop in the bucket, depending on what you use that money for. And time is constantly in flux; this sentence is in my present, but that first sentence is already in my past. Time marches on, and it’s always right now.
“Boyhood” made headlines upon its release not for its story, but for the way that it was shot. Director Richard Linklater shot the loosely-scripted film a few days a year for 12 years, starting in May 2002 and ending in August 2013. This is the first time a fictional film was shot this way; the only other point of reference is Michael Apted’s “Seven Up” documentary series, which has chronicled the lives of a group of 7-year-old British children for every seven years until 2019.
The film tells the story of Mason (Ellar Coltrane), who is 6 when we meet him. We watch him, and, by extent, Coltrane, grow up before our eyes before the end of the film. We also watch his sister Samantha (Lorelai Linklater), mom Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and Dad (Ethan Hawke) grow up too, as Linklater uses the passage of time itself as an editing technique to show how much these people have grown. It’s like watching the most stylized home video ever.
There really isn’t a plot in the traditional sense; I guess if you wanted to find one in hindsight you could, just like how we all make sense of the events in our lives by using linear narratives when in reality our lives unfold in anything but a straight line.
There are multiple movies unfolding here just under the surface. There’s Mason’s outlook on his life with his single mom and his sister; there’s his mom’s path to self-actualization and independence and his dad’s growth into maturity and his sister’s coming-of-age. But this is Mason’s story, and so all of those plots kind of fall off into the periphery, much in the same way we all make ourselves the hero of our own story.
This is a movie that makes you sit and stay wholly in the moment. It teaches you how to watch it as you watch it. A first watch feels long (the movie is almost 3 hours) because you keep waiting for some big Inciting Event or Thematic Moment to happen to really get the story going. But the story is about celebrating everyday life as it happens in all its ups, downs, struggles and idiosyncrasies — marriage, divorce, first love, an Astros game, bowling without the bumpers, college, bugs in the grass, reading bedtime stories to your kids, going to concerts, watching your kids grow up, moving cities. A second watch is much more rewarding because you can fully be present with the film and appreciate it as a formal exercise as much as a rumination on time and staying in the moment. “The moment is always right now,” Mason says as the film ends. It’s a part of a conversation that is played so perfectly in the movie as something that seems like something a college guy would say to sound deep to impress a girl (which is definitely what Mason’s doing), but actually makes more sense the more you think about it. Linklater’s greatest talent is how he can infuse normal, everyday moments with wonder.
Linklater’s filmography is full of works that play with the passage of time, from “Slacker” to his “Before” trilogy to “Dazed and Confused” and “Everybody Wants Some!!.” But this is the only one that the viewer can get a glimpse into how it was made as you’re watching it. We watch the actors grow into their roles and get more comfortable with them as the years go along.
We also see Linklater grow more into his style as a director — it never fails to amaze me that he was filming this movie on the sly while also making “School of Rock,” “Before Sunset,” an unaired HBO pilot, the “Bad News Bears” remake, “Fast Food Nation,” “A Scanner Darkly,” a documentary about former University of Texas baseball coach Augie Garrido, “Me and Orson Welles,” Matthew McConaughey/Jack Black vehicle “Bernie,” six episodes of a Hulu show and “Before Midnight.” It’s fun to see the moments in “Boyhood” line up with his other projects at the time. He’s looking to one-up himself with the upcoming adaptation of “Merrily We Roll Along,” which he just started work on and will be shot over the course of 20 years, aiming for a 2040 release date. If it’s released on time, I will be 49; Linklater will be 80.
My own life is vastly different from Mason’s, but I felt like I connected with him, either through the cultural touchstones Linklater notes in the film (I’m only three years older than Coltrane and four years older than Mason) or just through certain milestones as a teen.
The magic of this movie is in how it makes us stay present while thinking about our own pasts and our own lives — not in an overtly nostalgic way, but in an appreciative way. I can pick out moments in my own life that weren’t milestones per se but still impacted me and molded me into who I am today, making a linear narrative out of fragmented memories, much like how films are shot and edited out of fragments to make something cohesive. This is truly something special.
Moments are all we have. Stitch them together and you’ve got a life.
Up next: We’re getting emotional with 2015’s “Inside Out.”
Letter of Recommendation
Linklater’s preoccupation with time is apparent even in his very first film, “It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books,” which is available to stream in its entirety on YouTube.
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