All right, let me try this again. I had a hard time summing up why I loved Boyhood so much right after seeing it, the whole experience was too fresh. Let's try again.
Boyhood is an incredible emotional journey that everyone has been on. You weep for the death of childhood, you cheer for the birth of adulthood, and you weep again. You know this kid, you've spent his entire life with him. When he grows up, you grow up. Everyone in the world has been on this journey. It could be argued that Mason's characterization is somewhat vague throughout the whole movie, but I don't think this is the case. He's young, he's finding himself. We see him slowly develop, slowly begin to become interested in photography. We see he's become a good kid, we see that he cares for his family. It's an emotional journey. The movie begins with his mother picking him up from school when he was a toddler. I quite recognize the dialogue the two of them share, dialogue that every young child has with their mother. Then, we see him as an adult. That dialogue has stopped, and instead he and his mother are having grown up conversations. There's a part of you that wishes they could go back to the old days, when life was so much more simple.
Mason is the not the only character to grow, and I loved that. It's mentioned that his parents were in their early 20's when the children were born, nowhere near ready to become parents. The father starts of as a weekend father. It's mentioned he spent a lot of time in Alaska, and decides to become a musician rather than settling down and finding steady employment. He clearly loves his children dearly, but has no clue how to be a father. As the movie goes on, he starts to grow and mature. He tries to become more of a father, trying to set up more of a connection with his kids. Then we find out that he has found work for an insurance company. He then settles down, remarries, and buys a minivan. He really becomes more aware of what his shortcomings are. He may have been an irresponsible parent, but at least he tries to fix his own faults. I deeply felt sorry for the mother. She deeply loves her children, but is also not ready to be a parent. She makes many bad decisions throughout the movie, and spend huge amounts of time trying to fix them. That's life, it's full of trying to fix your mistakes. That being said, her mistakes do lead to various terrible situations. She marries two men a different points throughout the movie, both of which turn out to be alcoholics. She does not have a great life, and all she ever does is sacrifice for her children. We don't know what her interests and likes are, but that's okay. Neither does she. Early on she mentions she put her entire life on hold for her children, thus giving up her own enjoyment of life at times. She also goes throughout a lot of change, but not all of it is positive. She ends up becoming a sad character who you pity, but certainly don't hate. All she ever did was try to raise her children, and she should be commended for that.
As I mentioned, the mother ends up marrying two alcoholic men, and these men lead to some horrifying situations. And yet, Richard Linklater does not turn them into cardboard cutout jerks. They have dimensions. The first man originally comes off as charming and kind hearted, and later we find out about his alcoholism. His drinking gets worse from there, and he becomes abusive. And yet we do see him as a person for a while, and see more sides of him than the abusive monster he became. We certainly don't like or pity him later on, but we do at least get to know him. The second marriage is much shorter, which shouldn't be surprising. We assume that the mother would get in a divorce as soon as she saw the first hints of alcoholism. The second one however, there is a drop of pity towards. Again, he comes off at first as likeable and kind. He is a former soldier who went on several tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. We can assume his alcohol problem is a result of PTSD. We never see him hit anyone, but we do see him talking terribly to the children. It's a brief character, but I'm glad he was in the movie. Life is full of people that we know for a brief time and then forget, only to revisit in brief memories. That's what this movies feels like, memories. We briefly remember the little moments throughout the movie, as the characters would. It's like revisting memories of our own childhood.
Again, go see this movie. It's ingenious, like nothing I've ever seen before. Highly recommended.
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