Parvati Magazine December 2014/January 2015: Consequence/Beginnings | Page 33

FILM
fessor in her own right and
a less fraught relationship
with Mason Senior (Ethan
Hawke), yet comes to the
end of raising her children and finds a sense of
emptiness and disillusion
at how fast her life has
gone by. Mason Senior
also goes on his own journey as a part-time dad,
playing in a band, working low-end jobs, but finally settling down into a
new marriage and steady
work.
In yearly vignettes, Mason goes through the ups
and downs of boyhood
from riding his bike to the
upheaval of moving and
changing schools, being
disciplined by step-parents, finding his own selfexpression,
developing
a disciplined work ethic
and navigating through
relationships. We first see
him as a child looking up
at the sky, then getting
into his mother’s car. By
the end, he drives off to
college in his own truck
and the final scene is of
him in Big Bend National
Park, contemplating the
sky and the moment.

Anyone who’s been involved in the production
of even a short film or
video knows that there is
inevitable risk of cast or
crew suddenly becoming
unavailable due to unexpected events. For director Richard Linklater to
quietly carry out a film production over twelve years
and trust that he and his
cast would be there every
year, well and able, was
a gamble that paid off.
Similarly, the actors knew
they were committing to
something long-term regardless of how their lives
or careers would evolve
over twelve years. (Linklater even apparently
told Hawke that he would
have to finish the film if Linklater died before it was
complete.) The kind of
work done in “Boyhood”
is a leap of faith by all involved in the production.
Thankfully, it has paid off,
appearing on several critics’ lists as the best film of
2014 and winning or being nominated for several
awards including Golden
Globe and Critics Choice.
At time of publication, the
2015 Oscar nominations

have not yet been made
public, but “Boyhood”’s
nominations under Best
Picture, Best Director,
Best Original Screenplay,
Best Supporting Actor
(Hawke), Best Supporting
Actress (Arquette) and
Best Film Editing seem all
but a foregone conclusion.
“Boyhood” is particularly engaging because
every period displayed in
the film is not contrived.
The actors are really the
age they are, not aged
or made to look younger,
and current events are really current. Each scene
is set in, and true to, the
era in which it is filmed.
As Mason says at the end
of the movie, “It’s always
right now.” As such, there
is a richness to the twelveyear journey that could
never be matched by a
shorter-term project. It’s
understandably rare that
such projects will be carried out, but cinema as a
whole is richer for the work
of “Boyhood”.

Pranada Devi is a communications professional living in Toronto,
Canada. She is the Managing Edi