Object #15 - Mason Jr.'s first picture - Boyhood (2014)

Dir. Richard Linklater

It's just struck me how apt Richard Linklater's surname is to the filming of this film. Link-later. They started shooting Boyhood with an initial script but the rest of the plot was planned at each interval over the years. As you likely know already, the 'gimmick' of Boyhood is that it was shot over 11 years, from 2002 to 2013, with the same cast. It's far more than a gimmick however, and I disagree adamantly with anyone who thinks the film only works as well as it does because of its unique production. It enhances the film, that's for sure, but the story is so applicable to many, particularly children of the 90's, that the film works alone. It wouldn't have had such a critical-buzz I think, but it still would have been seen as a great film. But yeah I just find it funny that the script was literally linked-later, as time went on.

Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane), who becomes a novice photographer over the course of the film, is leaving for college and packing his things. He talks to his mother, Olivia (Patricia Arquette), about his plans and what he'll do with his old belongings. The scene is here. He laughs at the fact that his mother has put the framed first-picture even taken by him into his leaving box. She says "Come on, it's the first picture you took". He responds "All the more reason to leave it, right?". And Olivia breaks down crying. 

We get this exchange:

Mom: This is the worst day of my life.

Mason: What are you talking about?

Mom: [Starts crying] I knew this day was coming. I just... I didn't know you were going to be so fucking happy to be leaving.

Mason: I mean it's not that I'm that happy... what do you expect?

Mom: You know what I'm realising? My life is just going to go. Like that. This series of milestones. Getting married. Having kids. Getting divorced. The time that we thought you were dyslexic. When I taught you how to ride a bike. Getting divorced... again. Getting my masters degree. Finally getting the job I wanted. Sending Samantha off to college. Sending you off to college. You know what's next? Huh? It's my fucking funeral! Just go, and leave my picture!

Mason: Aren't you jumping ahead by, like, 40 years or something?

Mom: I just thought there would be more.

It's tragic really. This is the final scene we have with Mason Jr's mother, in a near three-hour film, and what Linklater chooses to do is end it with this message. It's true to life, if a little more pessimistic than some of the other characters' responses in the film to life at large. "I just thought there would be more" sums up what everyone feels at some point in their life, normally when they reflect on their past, and where they are now. Some are happy at where they are, but I've felt it, and I'd be very surprised if at some point you haven't thought that "there would be more" to life. We are promised a long-life journey since we're children: go to university/college, get a partner, get a house, get married, have a kid.

When Mason Jr. discards the picture, something his mother finds to be an important milestone in his and her own life, and is ready to move on to live his life, she thinks of her own life, and how it's reached the point where her child is 'ungrateful' for the life she's given him. It isn't that negative an emotion, but you get my meaning. It's more a sense of worthlessness, as Olivia realises her life has all been milestones, and now they've ran out, the only one left is death. In the film she's had a hell of a life, her first husband, Mason Snr. (Ethan Hawke) and her don't work out. We don't see this in the film, but she's been a single mother raising Mason Jr. and his sister. Her next husband we see as an abusive drunk, and the husband after that is a drunk military-man, but not as bad. She gets to a reasonably good point in her life goals, teaching at university, a happy mother, yet steeped in bills and worries of providing for the family. As Mason Jr. leaves for college she is planning to move to a smaller, cheaper house; hence, the business with the picture.

The length of the film is a pro in this respect, as we've seen this life, in the background of Mason Jr's. And of course, we've seen the three of them, mother, son, and daughter actually age. It's Arquette's stand-out moment in the film, as it's a culmination of everything her character has gone through, in a reflection. The scene after this has Mason Jr. take photos of old objects with his camera, Linklater hammering home the 'snapshot' nature of life, as moments are caught in the shutter, then pass into the past. Life is funny in that respect, it's both slow, yet so fast. And this is what Mason Jr.'s first picture shows, the image captured isn't important, but it has significance to the two of them, clearly more to Olivia. The act was simple, snap, click. But what it's used for here, near the end of the film, is a trigger for Olivia's reflection on her life in relation to Mason Jr.'s.

There are a few other objects in the Boyhood I was going to discuss, the saw blade, a whale heart, and the black Beatles album. Who knows, I may still write about them one day, but it's Mason's first picture that struck me as the object that really sums up most of the themes of the film, particularly the motherhood of Boyhood. See the film if you haven't, it's very powerful, very real, and I think everyone can find something in it that reflects their own life.