I tend to see movies as coming in two basic flavors. There are movies that tell a story and there are movies that somewhat passively invite the viewer to ponder certain ideas, emotions, concepts, or realities. The best films do both exquisitely (e.g. The Lives of Others). It is through this particular lens that I’m inclined to interpret Richard Linklater’s much praised film Boyhood.

Boyhood is an invitation to passively ponder childhood, in particular, an old fashioned, low-tech, small town, broken home, financially strapped childhood. It’s very effective; the main thing I took away from the film was a horrific reminder of why I don’t like to think about my own, wretched childhood as a slacking, misunderstood dreamer type, tormented by fucked up parents, jerky “mentors”, an emotionally and intellectually warped extended family, and a constantly upheaved residency pattern. I can’t say I found this aspect of the film all that pleasant to watch or to think about.

The film’s artistic gimmick – shot over 12 years, with the entire cast aging naturally – turns out to be amazingly impressive. It’s very true that this film has a sense of continuity to it that no other film could possibly have; it’s like physically living with the same family for 12 years, only compressed to under 3 hours, and honestly there is something incredibly and uniquely beautiful about this aspect of the film. But the pleasingness of that continuity comes from Linklater’s fantastic direction and well-defined artistic vision; shooting the same cast over 12 years is one thing, but making a movie out of it that is almost perfectly consistent visually and tonally is quite another. It’s this technical aspect of the film that makes it so pleasing and fun to watch. Linklater is one of the best and most original filmmakers out there, and it’s not surprising that it would he who attempts this kind of bold enterprise, and pulls it off so brilliantly. The film’s acting is superb across the board (again a testament to Linklater’s direction), and in particular the quality of performance and interaction of the two siblings as young children is simply fabulous.

I should also point out that the hauntingly moving song (Hero, by the band Family of the Year) that made Boyhood’s trailer so awesome is also featured, in full, in the film itself, again very movingly, as a kind of capstone montage, an emotional summary of the ideas and images in the film. It’s interesting how a movie and its music or a particular song can sometimes just merge so perfectly that you’re really not sure how much of what you liked about the film was actually how it set up the power of the music. I’ll always remember this film quite positively through its synonymousness with that particular song, even though I probably will never watch the film again.

But there are aspects to Boyhood which are less impressive. It is, again, very much a passive invitation to ponder the emotions and realities of boyhood. There’s no real story, and the main character Mason is, quite strangely, a bit of a non-participant in the film’s action. You get a better sense of many of the supporting characters than you do of Mason, and the result is a somewhat censored view of childhood. The kid is presented as a drifting leaf, blown this way and that by various assholes in his life (some belligerent, some insensitive, some benign-but-ineffective), but there is no sense of, and little detail concerning how he actually comes to be the young man he does in the end. For most of the film he’s a low-energy child who does very little except play video games, and then one day he “wakes up” as a confident, super-articulate, impossibly laid-back, hiply philosophical dude. Open questions abound about how this kind of super-self-possessed individual with cast iron emotional control and a profundity way beyond his years could emerge from a cold, empty, poor, disrupted, and violent childhood like the one he suffered. I’ve know various young people who emerged from such childhoods – some managed to mature in quite impressive ways, but they nevertheless still clearly bear the scars of their past struggles. In the final analysis, Boyhood’s main character just doesn’t seem that real to me, even though I kind of liked him in the abstract.

Boyhood is an egghead phenomenon here in New York City. IFC has had it on all screens for weeks, and it’s still selling out. We showed up an hour before the film on a Wednesday, only to find a line all the way down sixth avenue to get into the showing. It’s great for Richard Linklater, an immense talent who has always deserved widespread recognition as a one of the greatest filmmakers of his era. I personally think Boyhood is in many respects no where near his best work, as either a writer or a director – films of his like Before Sunrise, Waking Life, and School Of Rock eclipse Boyhood so thoroughly it’s hard for me to not feel a tad disappointed by this film. But setting aside that somewhat hypercritical feeling, Boyhood is very enjoyable to experience, and its 165 minute run-time does not feel overly long. I would definitely recommend it, but wait until the lines at IFC die down – it’ll be there forever, so there’s no particular rush.