Boyhood (2014)

Newspaper articles have raved about the unusual long-term use of actors in Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Even though I can understand the originality of using the same actors for many years, I don't think this in itself makes a film brilliant. Boyhood turns out to be a rather captivating story about growing up as a kid in the USA. It also deals with parenting in a refreshing way. However, there is little that truly stands out in the film. Perhaps I was fooled by unanimously over-enthusiastic reviews, but I simply did not, for all its sympathetic perspective and sometimes moving moments, see the greatness of Boyhood. Yes, the film managed to hold my attention for over 3 hours. What bothered me was how lazy some of the film's choices seemed to me. There are the Moment of growing up, the Hardships of being a parent and the ill-advised relationships we end up in. What I mean is, that the film tries too hard capturing a specific stage in life in a specific typical moments. The protagonist, Mason, is seen in the typical situations growing up involve. The family moves. The mother is involved with an angry drunk. The father is a rather immature guy who still cares about relating to the kids. There's adolescence and romance, schools and boy-father bonding. All of this is fine, weren't it for a certain eagerness to churn out Epic Moments that capture the big changes in life. There's the "watchful, reflective intensity".

Not only are they Epic Moments, they also contain what at time - not always - can be felt to be calculated aims of capturing the touchstones of a specific year. In one such scene, we see the protagonist and his sister campaigning for Obama. In another, we see them lining up to buy Harry Potter books. To me, these scenes seemed to function mostly as such touchstones of time.

There's also the Boyhood thing. Even though I would not say Linklater prescribes to a strict traditional masculinity the role of gender in the movie was a bit puzzling. On the one hand, this is a film about fighting with one's siblings, going to parties, falling in love, dealing with one's parents. (And parents caring about or worrying about their kids.) On the other hand, I don't think reviewers are wrong when they claim that Boyhood is about becoming a man. My problem is the image conjured up here. Mason is a kid who learns that being a boy involves certain rules about how to express oneself and how to act. We see a certain independence in him as he matures, he chooses his own way. I don't doubt that this can be a good description of how people grow up and turn out different from their sexist environment. The only problem with how this independence is rendered is a tiny element of self-satisfactory Universalness this boy comes to inhabit. To make my point a bit crude: what would you imagine a film called Girlhood to be? Could you even imagine an equally solid image of Growing up and Maturing? I'm not so sure. I have a hard time articulating my worries here, but some of it concerns a certain non-resolution when it comes to gender in this movie.