Max Bakke examines ‘Boyhood’ and finds, there are no small parts.
—
I am not Mason Jr., but I wish I was.
I wanted so badly to be Mason, the focus of Richard Linklater’s latest film Boyhood. Ellar Coltrane, who began the role at age 7 in 2002, and I are nine years apart, but I trusted Linklater. As a storyteller he made romance, lost love and relationships feel timeless and relatable in his before series. I grew so attached to the characters Jesse and Celine, and even saw so much of myself in the young Ethan Hawke, pontificating about relationships and loss.
I expected that 12-year story, spanning the same era in which I also grew from slightly larger boy into slightly older man, would stick to me in the same way. But it didn’t.
I recognized Mason, but I didn’t identify him. Seeing the young Coltrane sitting next to his mother as she attended class reminded me of when I sat in the back room of a portable classroom doing my homework and reading while my mom earned her Associate’s degree at the local community college. I remembered the baggy pants and the bands, Flaming Lips, Wilco, Yo La Tengo, and laughed when I saw them playing Halo on the very first Xbox. But I don’t remember feeling the way that Mason felt. Not in the slightest.
But halfway through the film, when Mason discovered photography, I realized that I wasn’t watching the story of my own childhood unfold in front of me, but my younger brother’s. Jesse, who is only two years younger than me, got to grow into the artistic, sensitive young man that Mason developed into at the end of Boyhood. He was the lean kid in dirty jeans taking photographs, drifting in and out of relationships and waxing philosophically, in that trademark Linklater way, about the sinister side effects of a life lived through Facebook.
Like Mason, Jesse and I had parents who lacked the tools to be successful. But while as a kid, Jesse remained curious and sensitive, almost immune to the chaos that surrounded us, I absorbed all their anger, fear and resentment and winding myself tightly into a ball of rage and sarcasm, ready for fights that sometimes came and sometimes didn’t. We didn’t have much money, like Mason. Jesse learned to roll with the punches, get by on very little, but I inherited a paranoid fear of paying bills and losing my independence that exists to this day.
Thinking about Boyhood, the character that I saw myself in the most was actually Mason’s older sister, Samantha, played by Linklater’s daughter Lorelei. Throughout the film, she experiences the same heartbreak Mason does, the same terrors that scar little kids, as well as the same abandonment and chaos. But unlike Mason, the events hardened her making her more cynical to the world and less trusting of the people around her. And, the first chance Samantha gets, she leaves home for school in Austin.
Maybe that’s just the way things go for an older sibling. They’re the first line of defense for their younger brothers and sisters. While they’re off pursuing love and happiness, creativity and knowledge, we’re grinding out the days, getting through on the hope that the next thing, whenever it happens, is better than this thing.
It’s just like an offensive line in football—the hulking lineman who exist to protect the quarterback and create running lanes for the halfback. They seldom get recognized for how much work they do, but their contributions are vital to the teams the success. If the ball can’t move, the team can’t score. So while I was raging and fighting and taking on anyone and everyone in front of me, I was clearing a hole for the sensitive and caring kid who loved taking pictures.
So what if that means I wasn’t able to connect with this movie in the way that I wanted to? Getting to see my brother on screen, even as young Mason, with a camera in front of his face, held up by painted fingers, is worth it. If it takes people like Linklater, his Samantha, and myself, to make that possible, then maybe it’s true what they say that there’s no such thing as small parts.