Piyush Roy
Every once in a while comes a film that has a great message, a radical new idea, an uncommon experimentation with form, inspiring thoughts and dialogues, a flawless screenplay or stand out performances. Most films with most of these attributes become a classic, but that rare film that happens to have each of the above becomes a cinematic triumph of a generation, a lifetime or even a century, as both fans and critics have unanimously celebrated Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. That it will sweep all the movie awards next year, including the Oscars, is a foregone conclusion.
Undoubtedly, it is the film of the year, not only in Hollywood, but also in any ranking of the best cinemas of 2014, national or international. And I am happy, that Richard Linklater, one of the most underrated auteur directors in American cinema today, is the man behind its making. For any fan of Before Sunrise (1995), his is a name and a talent to swear by. Just a night’s account of a film featuring two young strangers, an American man, Jesse (Ethen Hawke) and a French woman, Celine (Julie Delpy), chatting with each other, on and about life in Vienna, becomes a cult romance for anybody who was young or fell in love in the 1990s. So compelling became the audience need for the story of the film’s separated protagonists to culminate that Linklater brought back his lead pair of Hawke and Delpy nine years later to meet Before Sunset (2004) in Paris. Nine years later, Hawke and Delpy, again as Jesse and Celine, introduced audiences to their ‘not so rosy’ life after marriage in Before Midnight (2013). By a design born out of a default, through three editions, spread over three decades, Linklater captured a first on cinema, a fairly real time journey of two adults in love shot in real time gap, no greying of hair or make-up, just aging naturally!
In Boyhood he achieves another first, documenting a boy’s coming of age, from childhood to adolescence, in ‘real time’ as Texas boy Ellar Coltarne playing the film’s protagonist, Mason Evans Jr., grows with the character in real time from the age of seven to 18. The film was shot from May 2002 to August 2013, as an annual event for each of its cast and crew for 12 years, when they would ritually assemble at Linklater’s hometown (Houston) for a few weeks of filming every year. The film’s shooting began without a completed script, something uncommon in Hollywood and Linklater had even prepared his favourite actor Ethan Hawke (who plays Mason’s father) to complete the film in case of any extreme eventuality, like his death. Each character’s basic plot points, the ending (including the final shot) was all that Linklater started the film with, improvising and re-writing the script every subsequent year based on the footage of the year gone by, updating incorporations in sync with the physical changes that each actor was undergoing in between. Incidentally, all the film’s major actors, as in the case of the ‘Before’ series participated in the film’s writing process, contributing their life experiences to make a narrative with universal echo.
Such a unique first experiment of mammoth gamble in casting, mapping real time in the history of the cinema alone would have been enough reason to celebrate Boyhood as a special achievement. But what makes the film a cinematic landmark of our century is the way Linklater seamlessly connects its many individual journeys to make a compelling docudrama out of pure fiction that observes as much as it comments, and let’s go as much as it tries to get a hold of. Those signature auteur attributes – casual but meaningful conversations, adequately justified song moments, and restrained emoting shot to admirable dramatic impact – get further honed to paint a poignant ode to the foils of modern American society, explored through the foibles of its latest inheritors seeking meaning in a supposedly mayhem like scenario, where ‘everyone is always out to seize the moment’. But as the film’s last line sums: ‘It’s actually the other way round, the moment seizes us…’
One may ask, what’s the big deal about waiting patiently through 12 years to just tell another ‘growing-up’ story? Can anyone repeat a greater feat? And is that feat, worth repeating? Experimentation towards another feat was the theme of the most eagerly awaited movie of the year – Interstellar – as well. Boyhood came with no expectations, but has exited with tough to match yardsticks for many a filmmaker out there trying to dream differently.
It also, like a good piece of artistic cinema, has left many unforgettable scenes worth a revisit – be it that adorable moment of sprightly kids through a fake sibling fight, or a nervous dad trying to educate his equally uncomfortable teen daughter about protection before her first date; the sudden hitting of the dawning of the empty nest moment for a busy mom as her son readies for the college or the pleasures of a cheeky boy catching his dad in blush; in protagonist Ellar Coltarne’s every onscreen appearance as Mason Jr.; the volumes speaking silences of Mason at 6, the muted anger of Mason over a forced haircut at 10, the surprise calm before that jump into the churn of life of Mason at 18; Mason through his first acquiring of that rebellious teen attitude, first breaking of voice, first acne mark, first love, first break-up, first awakening, all recorded and replayed from the life of a character as real as reel could be!
At one point in the film, Mason Jr. asks his father, ‘So what’s the point of any of this… of everything?’ His father answers, ‘The point is about the ability to feel stuff as you are experiencing it, because as you get older you don’t feel as much.’ That’s the real charm of growing up, and of Boyhood, both on and off Richard Linklater’s triumphant masterpiece.