WORMHOLE TO THE NOUGHTIES
1:40 AM
Linklater’s most recent film “Boyhood” is a resounding triumph of patience in a world of ever-accelerating frame rates and editing speeds. Its unprecedentedly long production process which spanned over 12 years zooms viciously in on the unrelentless process of growing up and becoming older. The plot is fictitious but its emphasis on the prosaic rather than the illustrious makes it so easily relatable as to render the fact that it is indeed a product of someone’s imagination utterly insignificant. The main character Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) and their parents grow and age together in real time, with the step of a year. To use Ethan Hawke’s (who play’s Mason’s father) words, the film is “a timelapse photography of a human being”.
The inevitable passage of time in “Boyhood” is not labelled by title cards or shots of calendars, the flow of years is represented much more eloquently. It is hidden in the little things – a glimpse of an old X-box, standing in a queue for the release of a Harry Potter book, height lines on the door frame, t-shirts which are an inch too short to have been worn after 2004 and hair growing and going. Not to mention music (Coldplay and Arcade Fire, to name a few) which catapult the viewers back to the days of what seemed like yesteryear but, to everyone’s astonishment and surprise, actually occurred more than a decade ago. It plays on the nostalgia for the time period but it does not let it become to syrupy because the real-time weight of how long ago this “only yesterday” actually was, adds a certain sense of melancholy to it. The side-swept fringe has become a bob, muscle car has turned into a minivan and the little rouge with dreamy eyes is sporting quite a considerable moustache. These subtle but significant transformations combined with bittersweet nostalgia invoked through period-specific points of reference add a strong emotional charge to the film. The mom’s (Patricia Arquette) waterworks-accompanied “I just thought there’d be more, you know?” in response to her son leaving for college hits hard and cuts deep. Touche, my darling, don’t we all.
Despite the indisputable genius of the underlying idea, great period depiction and masterful representation of passage of time, “Boyhood” also has its flaws. The characters (especially Mason) always maintain a distance from all the drama surrounding them, which could either be perceived as an expression of profound inner peace or amateurish apathy. Furthermore, as the plot literally thickened on paper during the year between filming, the flow of the story might feel interrupted at times. Thus, “Boyhood” does not always provide for an easy watching. Long pauses of silence and scenes of emotional vacuum mixed with dialogue which at times veers on slightly awkward might prove to be not everyone’s cup of tea. However, the lack of expressions of drama and an abundance of uninterrupted contemplation emphasise the unbearable lightness of time and the presence of its passing. Out of this vacuum rises a spectacular account of the undefinable yet constantly felt experience of time with gravity of that comparable to “The Tree of Life” only on a more personal and mundane level. Whether you enjoy the film or not, you cannot escape the weight of seeing time pass far too quickly and the melancholically nostalgic “carpe diem” feeling which comes part and parcel with it. Slowly but surely, “Boyhood” taps on the universal (secret) fear of all mankind – the fear of perishing - which makes everything what happens in the film everybody’s business. You know that you also got older together with Mason and his family and this is an emotional force to be reckoned with. From ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
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