Let me just start this off by admitting that I love the 2014 movie, Birdman.
I even—wrongly I might add—called it the best Best Picture winner of the 2010s (I’ve since seen the error of my ways and now give that title to Parasite). I only bring this up since I definitely wanted Birdman to beat Boyhood back in 2015. However, if it had been any other year, I definitely would have wanted Boyhood to win Best Picture.
Ambitious, excellent, and unlike any other movie ever made, a lot of people believe that Boyhood (which we gave 5 out of 5 stars in our initial review) was robbed when Birdman won. That said, I don’t hear anybody talking about the film anymore, and I just find that weird given what a towering achievement this movie is. Don’t you? If not, then here’s why I, at the very least, find it strange that this masterpiece doesn’t get talked about more these days.
Boyhood Took An Astonishing 12 Years To Make. Who Does That?
Does Boyhood have the longest production cycle of any movie ever? Surprisingly no, as Orson Welles’s, The Other Side of the Wind, took a staggering 48 years to finish (and Welles didn’t even get to see its completion since it was released in 2018, and Welles perished in 1985).
However, while Wind is thoroughly unique in its elongated production cycle—and you can actually watch it right now on Netflix—it’s still arguably not as impressive as the feat performed by Richard Linklater, as he essentially filmed a child’s growth from adolescence to adulthood in 12 years.
And honestly, who does this? Most directors would just find a child, a teenager, and an adult to show the passage of time. Just think of the cast of Moonlight, and the three different actors who played Chiron to get a sense of what I mean.
But for Linklater? That’s amateur hour (I’m only kidding. I’m sure he respects his fellow directors to the nth degree). Honestly, Boyhood wouldn’t really be the masterpiece that it is if Linklater had just filmed it like any other director.
Watching not only the actors age, but also the setting change over the years really does give you a true sense of time. And, filming for 12 straight years should be remembered, don’t you think?
Not Only That, But Richard Linklater Didn’t Even Work With A Full Script. He Just Let Boyhood Take Its Course
Here’s the craziest thing about Boyhood if you ask me. Linklater didn’t even work with a full script. I mean, he knew where he wanted the film to end, but when it came to the rest of the story, he watched the footage he did each year, and then continued to write from there.
Again, who does that? You know how the cast of Stranger Things has grown up so dramatically from Season 1 all the way up to Season 5 that it’s almost comical how much they’ve changed? Well, in this fim that change is recorded in real time, and it’s intentional.
Our protagonist, Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane, starts out at 6-years-old, and by the end of the film, they’re 18. Throughout the movie, we see the character go from house to house as his divorced mother and father (played by Patricia Arquette, who won the Academy Award for her performance, and Ethan Hawke, respectively), go through multiple relationships and move several times.
Along the way, we also get to see the director’s daughter, Lorelei, grow up, as well as various cultural phenomenons, like the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and Obama’s presidential run, play a part in the film.
Again, Linklater was seemingly writing the screenplay to coincide with events that were both happening in the real world, but could also affect children growing up in this time period. In that way, it almost seems like Linklater was writing a screenplay not only for the characters, but also documenting the zeitgeist itself, and doesn’t that at least deserve to be remembered?
The Adult Actors’ Experiences Changed Alongside The Child Actor As Well
As a parent (whose 9-year-old-daughter just started watching The Simpsons), one of the most potent scenes in the entire movie doesn’t even really involve the protagonist. Instead, it involves his mother, Olivia, as she thinks about how fast life has moved as she prepares to send her son off to college.
And, that’s the thing about it. Even though we spend the majority of the film watching a boy become a man, the biggest blow (for me, anyway) is watching his parents grow up, too. Because we didn’t just see young Mason and his sister get older in the span of 12 years. We also watched Arquette and Hawke get older, as well.
Just think about that. When Linklater started filming in 2002, Hawke was just coming off of working with Denzel Washington in 2001’s Training Day, and Arquette had just finished working on a movie from one of Charlie Kaufman’s arguably lesser screenplays, Human Nature.
By the time Boyhood wrapped up its production, Arquette had had a successful run on the TV show, Medium, and Hawke had been in several movies, with some of them being certified bangers, like Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Sinister, and The Purge, just to name a few. Obviously, both actors changed a great deal over the course of 12 years, both personally and professionally, and you can see it all over their faces throughout the course of the film. It’s quite a thing to see!
And Yet, It’s All Still Really Good!
Honestly, one might look at a movie like this and think it’s all just a gimmick, but no! Boyhood is the real deal!
As a child of divorce myself, seeing the very real emotions of a child watching his parents start new lives with different people really impacted me more than I knew until I watched it again a second time. What’s interesting is that I watched the movie when it first came out, but watching it over a decade later has really changed my perspective on things, because I’ve changed as well.
I now have a house, two kids, lost my mother, and deal with my own mortality. In turn, watching the film is strange, because I can understand both the child side, but also the adult side.
My colleague, Phillip Sledge, recently wrote about how watching Malcolm in the Middle as a parent is a whole other experience, and I can say the same about Boyhood. The passage of time to tell this story is not just some flash in the pan experiment. It’s documenting what life actually feels like, both as a child growing up into adulthood, and also as an adult growing into middle age.
The whole experience is unbelievable, and I just find it strange that if I didn’t start talking about it in this article, you might have forgotten that this movie even existed, which is so bizarre to me when a film is of such high quality.
The Fact That It Didn’t Win Best Picture Should Have Cemented It As Being A Modern Classic, And Yet It Still Feels Forgotten
Lastly, there’s something to be said for movies that didn’t win Best Picture that most people think should have.
Citizen Kane losing to How Green Was My Valley is probably the most famous example, but there are several others, like Saving Private Ryan losing to Shakespeare in Love, Pulp Fiction losing to Forrest Gump, Star Wars losing to Annie Hall, and Brokeback Mountain losing to Crash (I’m still not quite over that one).
But, in every case, the aforementioned movies’ losses further cemented them as being classics, rather than diminishing their impact.
It’s for this reason that some people might have a Mandela Effect moment and think that Goodfellas or The Shawshank Redemption won Best Picture, when in reality, Dances With Wolves, and (again!) Forrest Gump, respectively, beat them both. Because for the general consensus, Goodfellas SHOULD have won Best Picture; Shawshank SHOULD have beaten Gump.
I’m surprised the same thing hasn’t happened to Boyhood. Because as much as I love Birdman, I know most people don’t see it as the masterpiece that I do. So, the fact that people have pretty much forgotten about both movies really doesn’t make much sense to me. I would think that Boyhood would be recognized as the Goodfellas, or the Shawshank of today, i.e. the movie that SHOULD have won, but didn’t. But no. Instead it’s just mostly forgotten, and that really mystifies me.
Do you also think it’s weird? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
