Paul’s Note: Last week, I put Boyhood on my “best of” list, just as so many other critics have done. It’s a pretty weighty movie, and I may unpack some of its themes in a few weeks. But in the meantime, I just had to share a dynamic take on Boyhood from friend and fellow blogger Esther O’Reilly.
O’Reilly has been a guest contributor for Christ and Pop Culture, The Retuned and Patheos Evangelical, and you can read more of her insights at her own blog, Yankee Gospel Girl. When she’s not writing (and correcting my spelling), she still finds time to pursue, of all things, a math degree. Hope you enjoy her thoughts as much as I did.
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“I remember when I was six, you and mom were fighting like mad. You were yelling so loud and she was crying.”
“That’s what you remember, huh?… You don’t remember the trips… all the fun we had?”
“Nope.”
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is coming to DVD, and it’s generated perhaps the most Oscar buzz of any 2014 film. It’s been hailed (perhaps over-effusively) as a “masterpiece” of cinema due to its unconventional production: The same cast committed to the same project, shooting a little bit at a time over 12 years. The plot? A typical American boy grows up. That’s it.
Much of the focus has been on the remarkable transformation of the boy Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane, as we watch him go from 6 to 18 in the span of a few hours. But I’d like to focus on a different aspect of the film that’s just as thought-provoking, if not more so: what Boyhood has to say about marriage.
From the first few shots of the movie, it’s established that the boy Mason’s parents are divorced. We watch as his harried single mother (Olivia, played by Patricia Arquette) struggles to raise him and his sister. Mason eavesdrops on a tense argument between her and her latest boyfriend as she tries to explain the limitations motherhood has placed on her romantic life. No babysitter, no date night. Meanwhile, whatever alimony has trickled through doesn’t seem to be enough. So one morning, she announces at breakfast that she needs to uproot the kids and move, so she can start fresh in a new city and work her way to a better job.
How, we wonder, did her small family wind up in this tragic, messy situation to begin with? Bit by bit, we learn more as the movie unfolds. The father (Mason Sr., played by Ethan Hawke) has become something of a deadbeat dad. We’re told that he left them in Texas and took off indefinitely for Alaska, but it’s never fully explained why. It’s not as simple as another woman. When he moves back to Texas and the children visit him for a weekend partway through the movie, he’s sharing an apartment with a sloppy male roommate. We learn that he had ambitions to be a musician that never panned out. We can read between the lines and surmise that he probably realized songwriting couldn’t feed a family, but he was too lazy and immature to come home and admit it.
Yet it’s not simply the father’s fault. After the establishing first scenes, he shows up to announce that he’s tentatively back for good and wants be a presence in the kids’ lives. They ask in that forthright way children have, “Are you and mom getting back together?” He answers, “Well you know, that’s not entirely my call.” When Mason asks his mom, “Do you still love Dad?” she says, “I do. But that doesn’t mean it was healthy for us to stay together.” Cue endless parade of poorly-chosen boyfriends and stepdads. The irony is painful and poignant.
Meanwhile, the few screen moments Mom and Dad share together are painful to watch. Dad first swoops in all charm and smiles, bearing Alaskan souvenirs and brushing away Grandma’s warning that he not personally drop the kids back off at their mom’s place. The children, meanwhile, are excited to bust out accumulated school pictures and show him their rooms. Then Mom arrives. He tries to be casual: “I know you wanted me to drop them off at your mom’s. I just thought it’d be easier if I brought ’em over here.” “Well, it really screwed up my plans,” she replies coldly, and they walk outside. The kids spy with binoculars. “Do you think he’ll stay the night?” He hands her an envelope and walks away. They sigh. “Guess not.”
The collapse of this marriage, it would seem, was a joint endeavor. As so many are. We get another glimpse of insight halfway through the film, when it’s revealed that marriage came after an unplanned pregnancy. It’s an interesting question whether Linklater’s unspoken intent is to discourage marriage, or worse, to imply that they shouldn’t have had the children. However, the youthful irresponsibility and heartbreak that has obviously resulted is certainly all too plausible.
There’s no question the movie does an excellent job of showing the after-effects of this broken marriage in Mason’s life. In the most harrowing section, his mother marries a charming, divorced psychology professor who gradually emerges as an abusive alcoholic. Mason senses trouble before the stepdad’s full character is revealed, but the mother tries to look on the bright side: “Bill has his good qualities. Nobody’s perfect. And now we have a family.” Mason shoots back: “We already had a family.”
Meanwhile, Mason Sr. mostly keeps his emotions to himself, but we catch a glimpse as he strums a lullaby for the kids on one of their visits:
Well babysitters say they miss me.
I know I shouldn’t hope it’s true.
The teacher says my son paints pictures
Of a family all in blue.
She says she caught him whispering to the window
“Will my daddy please come home?”
I know I could call him up
But what if his mother answers the phone?
When the crisis comes, Olivia literally bundles Mason Jr. and his sister in the car and takes off without looking back. She has an emotional breakdown at a friend’s temporary new home, fielding painful questions from the kids. Why couldn’t their step-brother and sister come too? Will they ever see them again? How long are they staying in this new place? Olivia finally covers her face as the tears pour down: “I don’t know. I don’t have the answer to everything.”
Yet, broken and battered as she is, she pulls it together. Eventually, she works her way up to her dream job as a college professor.
Meanwhile, as the years wear on, Mason Sr. becomes an oddly comforting constant in Mason Jr.’s life. In an online interview from DP/30 (caution, the language can be pretty rough), Hawke describes him as “the moon to the mother’s sun.” The boy starts to look forward to their every-other-weekend outings. They bond over sports, Star Wars, music, camping. Yet every moment they share together is an aching reminder of what could have been. Even the funny moments have an undercurrent of sadness.
Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette’s performances are remarkably intelligent and sensitive. Both show a keen awareness of the tragedy of divorce. We as the viewers can see the good qualities each parent brings in their separate scenes with Mason and his sister. The characters see only the bad, the “junk” that they resolved long ago could never be cleared away. The subtle implication is that if they could only sit down and watch this movie together, perhaps they could learn to love each other again.
Mason Sr. eventually gets a real job, re-marries and starts a new family with a sweet Texas girl from a Bible-thumping Baptist background. Yes, there are some annoyingly patronizing asides in the portrayal of her folks as lovable but dimwitted rednecks. (But in fairness, the movie caricatures the father’s youthful flaming liberalism too. It’s an unlikely coupling for the guy who was spotted stealing McCain signs on the Obama campaign trail with his kids in 2007.) The blended families connect sporadically. At Mason’s high school graduation, Olivia tells the second wife ruefully, “You got him at a good time.”
After the guests are gone and the Coke bottles are being cleared away, Olivia and Mason Sr. share their first real moment of reconciliation. “Am I your only ex at this party?” he asks with a wry smile. “Yes, but I’m not your only wife here though.” “Yeah.” There’s an awkward beat of silence. Then he leans in and says quietly, “You did a great job with [the kids], by the way.” She’s caught off guard, touched. “Thanks for saying that. I never thought I’d hear you say that.” “Well, it’s true. Thank you.” He then fumbles with his wallet and offers to “pitch in, help with this…” In one of real life’s extra bits of awkwardness, there’s no cash, and he exits to get some from the car. We never see him and Olivia on screen together again.
By the very end of the film, Olivia is all alone, husbandless and boyfriendless. In one of the last scenes, Mason Jr. is packing for college with a photography scholarship, and she keeps tucking his first picture ever into one of the boxes. He doesn’t want it. “Come on, it’s the first picture you ever took.” “Well,” he argues, “All the more reason to leave it behind.” He leaves the room and comes back to find her silently weeping. “What?” “Nothing.” “No, what is it?” “Nothing.” He presses, and she unleashes this devastating reflection:
You know what, I’m realizing my life is just gonna go, like that. This series of milestones. Getting married, having kids, getting divorced. That time we thought that you were dyslexic. When I taught you how to ride a bike. Getting divorced, again. Getting my master’s degree. Finally getting the job I wanted. Sending Samantha off to college. Sending you off to college. You know what’s next? Huh? My f—ing funeral. So just go, and leave my picture.
“Aren’t you jumping ahead, by like, 40 years or something?”
She shakes her head. “I just… thought there would be more.”
It’s a powerful summing-up of the entire movie. And it’s yet another piercing reminder of the tragedy of divorce. Olivia must experience the double pain of letting her children go and potentially living the rest of her life alone.
Broken promises, missed chances, lonely years. The stuff of life. In a single moment, Olivia is overcome by the yawning hopelessness, the weight of it all. We know Olivia needs the Gospel. We don’t know if her heart is prepared to receive it. She may be bitter and hardened beyond saving. Or, there may be hope for her yet.
Regardless, the film is a sobering reminder that we as Christians must seek out the broken single moms like her, the Olivias in our own lives. And it’s a sobering reminder that every marriage lost is a microcosm of paradise lost.
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