{"id":16349,"date":"2014-09-13T09:08:43","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T23:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=16349"},"modified":"2014-09-13T09:15:29","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T23:15:29","slug":"boyhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=16349","title":{"rendered":"Boyhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"boyhood-poster\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>Richard Linklater
\nWriter: \u00a0<\/strong>Richard Linklater
\nCast:\u00a0<\/strong> Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelai Linklater<\/p>\n

F<\/span>ilm making doesn’t get any more challenging or ambitious than Richard Linklater’s 12 year odyssey Boyhood<\/em>, a film that was shot from 2000 to 2012, that captures the trials and tribulations of Mason Evans, a young boy growing up in suburban Texas.\u00a0 We are introduced to him as a spritely and wide eyed six year old and then we watch him transform into a young adult by the film’s end.<\/p>\n

It’s an incredible project to conceive of and its even more impressive to watch it unfold before your very eyes.\u00a0 I learned from Mark Kermode’s review of the film that Lars Von Trier had tried a similar project and scrapped it when it became too difficult.\u00a0 It’s one thing to have the vision for making a film that documents twelve years of a family’s life.\u00a0 It’s another thing all together to have all the stars align with discovering talented young actors in Ellar Coltrane and Lorelai Linklater, writing a script that engages the audience’s interest beyond the novelty of the aging process and then executing it in a fashion that feels tonally consistent for the 4,000 days that would have passed since the first day of shooting.\u00a0 At the start of the film, I had a million thoughts in my head about the various challenges the film could have faced.\u00a0 What if one of the adult actors dropped out?\u00a0 What if it became apparent that one of the kids stunk as an actor?\u00a0 What if you got halfway through the filming and decided the story needed tweaking?\u00a0 All these ideas washed away pretty quickly thought because right from the outset, I was reminded of just what a talented and assured film maker Richard Linklater is.<\/p>\n

So what does the film actually have to say?\u00a0 What is it about?\u00a0 I found the title to be a curious misdirection because the film is just as much about Mason’s family as it is about Mason.\u00a0 At six, Mason and his sister Samantha live with their single mother Olivia, played by Patricia Arquette.\u00a0 Their absent father Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) is ‘away in Alaska’ and appears to have fallen out of contact with Olivia.\u00a0 We can infer from her situation that they had kids together at a young age and the responsibility appeared to overwhelm him.\u00a0 This leaves Olivia as a young mother who feels exhausted and robbed of opportunity in life.\u00a0 We are not long into the film when Olivia has an argument and subsequent break up with her boyfriend who is frustrated that Olivia is not able to keep a date.\u00a0 Exasperated, she cries out “I was someone’s daughter and then I was somebody’s fucking mother!”<\/p>\n

That breakup begins a long series of lousy relationships that Olivia throws herself into.\u00a0 There is an interesting dichotomy in the film where Olivia continues to work hard and educate herself professionally so that she can better support herself and her family but she continually finds herself hampered and let down by the men in her life – a seemingly unending procession of one insecure alcoholic after another.\u00a0 The irony is that she becomes an accredited college professor and avowed liberal feminist and yet her biggest undoing seems to be a series of boyfriends and husbands who impose themselves as breadwinners and rule-setters upon her and her children.<\/p>\n

As Mason Jr grows older, his father gradually becomes a figure of influence in his life.\u00a0 Mason Sr is carefree and compassionate towards his children and although he is well meaning, his stunted maturity clearly made him an unfit parent when they were younger.\u00a0 Fatherhood seems to grow on him in time however and eventually he earns the trust and respect of Mason Jr and Samantha by driving extraordinarily long distances to see them on weekends.\u00a0 A lot of the film’s humour comes from Mason Sr and his ham-fisted interactions with his kids.\u00a0 Sometimes he comes on too strong, demanding that they open up emotionally to him.\u00a0 Other times he offers some hilariously questionable or ill-suited advice.\u00a0 For me, one of the film’s funniest and most sincere scenes doesn’t directly involve Mason Jr.\u00a0 It’s when Mason Sr tries, and fails, to have a conversation with Samantha about the virtues of safe sex.<\/p>\n

As for Mason Jr and Sam, we see them grow up through little Slice of Life moments that Linklater has a real knack for writing.\u00a0 Bike riding in the neighbourhood, playing video games with your friends, surviving bullies and being the new kid in school.\u00a0 These are all snippets of Mason Jr’s life that we are witness to and Linklater makes the choice to be very specific with the details which age them to a very particular day and date.\u00a0 The film begins with the Coldplay song Yellow<\/em> which identifies the film as starting in the year 2000 and the culture touchstones go from there.\u00a0 Mason Sr rages about George Bush and rallies behind John Kerry.\u00a0 We see Mason Jr play Halo 2<\/em> on an Xbox with his friend, go to the book launch of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban<\/em>, play Wii Sports <\/em>and talk about The Dark Knight<\/em> and Pineapple Express<\/em>.\u00a0 These give the film an added air of authenticity and discreetly assist the audience in keeping track of the time.<\/p>\n

\"boyhood\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are lots of themes and ideas that are covered in Boyhood<\/em>.\u00a0 Some are fairly banal observations about modern family life.\u00a0 I felt as though Linklater definitely had something to say about the men of Generation X, who by and large in this film struggle to find their place in society.\u00a0 They struggle with how to relate to women, how they can offer advice to the younger generation and they seem to feel undervalued and ignored.\u00a0 Gender politics are also covered in pretty extensive detail in the film.\u00a0 I mentioned that Mason Jr’s mother is a feminist influence on him but he also faces a lifetime of temporary father figures telling him to cut his hair and ‘man up’, boys in the play ground bragging about sexual conquests and a college girl who he falls for only to be heartbroken when she cheats on him.<\/p>\n

Boyhood<\/em> is an apolitical film but it doesn’t shy away from politics and religion.\u00a0 When Mason Sr begins dating a woman with devout Christian parents, Mason Jr finds himself at a party celebrating his birthday where he is given a bible and a shotgun as gifts.\u00a0 If anything, I think Linklater seems to keep politics at arms reach and has a gentle chuckle at how silly the whole thing is.\u00a0 Watching Mason Sr get excited about John Kerry feels quaint and ridiculous and just as funny is seeing Mason Jr door knocking and offering Obama paraphernalia to a neighbour who hangs a confederate flag and has a handle bar moustache.<\/p>\n

Boyhood<\/em> is a film that explores many different facets of life through the lens of the Evans family.\u00a0 It condenses twelve years of filming into 165 minutes and explore childhood, adulthood, family, friends, loved ones, education, politics, drugs, alcohol, religion and more.\u00a0 It’s a remarkable film that is hugely entertaining to watch and will likely stay with you long after the credits roll, whether its thinking about the film itself or whether it gives you pause to think about your own life, your own dreams, fears and insecurities, what you’ve experienced and where you’re going to next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shot over 12 years, Boyhood documents the life of a family growing up in suburban Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":16351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2087,2086,2088,2085,1423],"class_list":["post-16349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-films","tag-ellar-coltrane","tag-ethan-hawke","tag-lorelai-linklater","tag-patricia-arquette","tag-richard-linklater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16349"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16426,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16349\/revisions\/16426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}