By Karen - 29 July 2021
The young Mason asked his father, what's the point of this?
My father is puzzled, what's the point?
Mason said, all this, what is the meaning of all this?
The father smiled, surprised that his son asked such a big and difficult question in a few words.
I forgot how he answered, but I know that many people must have had the same question, looking for various answers.
This answer, Mason is looking for, from 6 to 18 years old. Although he was a young boy, he said to the girl: Look at my mother, I finally went to the school I wanted to go to, got the job I wanted to do, my life is better, I have a house and a car, isn't it just as fucking confused as me? .
It is good for Mason, or for the mother who burst into tears when Mason left home to go to college. This kind of confusion has always existed and will continue. And the process of finding answers does not seem to end.
Normally, Mason is not a boy who is good at talking. He feels that words are stupid. However, it is this boy who is observant and insensitive to words. He is eager to talk in front of his favorite female high school classmates, eager to share, and talks endlessly. After all, people have a strong desire for expression, but they have different preferences and standards for the way of expression and the object of expression.
The age of adolescence is often the time when meaning is most hungry and meaning is not found. Teenagers are always pulled by two psychological forces: one is willing to become the mainstream and proud of everyone wanting to join my small group like me; the other is that I am the most special in the world, because I am not like anyone. Just as proud. Different teenagers have different ratios of these two kinds of psychology. With Mason's sister Samantha, I see more of the former. She is smart, mature, sophisticated, and independent, and she can learn to behave or make things worse. And Mason is more of the latter kind. He is also smart and early-minded, but his sensitivity and delicacy make him more restrained and twisted. From childhood to youth, we have seen Mason's doubts, his "suffering" and "happiness", the wrestling of "internal force" and "external force" on him, his changes and the unchanging, the limits he bears and the restrictions on him. Breakthrough, various stereotypes and the breaking of stereotypes, as well as his search for meaning in the double creation.
We saw that Mason proudly shared his private collection with his father during the weekend reunion with his father. This is an experience that everyone has in their hours. Those cool things that others have not noticed but have been discovered by themselves must be proudly displayed in front of the people they like or love. We saw that Mason was intimidated by his peers in the bathroom, but there was no "resistance" of heroism. We see that Mason, who has gradually fallen in love with photography, has begun to spend a lot of time focusing on his hobbies. He has fun in his artistic creation, and also has a channel to define himself, express himself, and affirm himself. His photographic works won prizes in the competition and were exhibited, including black-and-white images taken of his girlfriend-but "this love can be regarded as a remembrance, but it was lost at the time"-before going to college, Mason and his girlfriend finally broke up. The father comforted his son and said that although the girl is cute, she is too square for you. Our Mason is not a rectangle or circle, but a custom shape. Who to become and what to do—this process of groping is full of loneliness, incomprehension, resistance, and silent patience.
However, even though Mason is special, even though he is not on a straightforward growth path, on the other hand, he does not have any extraordinary and magnificent growth experience. Some people may think that the role of Mason is actually quite boring. It is nothing more than an ordinary young man who is in the rebellious period and has artistic cells. I think this Mason is extremely real. He didn't cry to anyone about the grievances of the shadow of his childhood, the tenderness to soothe his mother or his first love, the high spirit of fighting back his stepfather or his peers, and the blood of going online. Even if the photography teacher tempted him, he was downplayed with his seemingly unmoved calmness. "Hero" in Boyhood sings "I don't wanna be your hero. I dont wanna be a big man. I just wanna fight with everyone else." Divorced parents, alcoholic and violent stepfather, Bullying boys of his age, chasing girls, going home late, piercing his ears and growing long hair, drinking and smoking marijuana-many of Mason's experiences are not new. However, it is these not-new plots that have been photographed with new ideas. I feel that they are so natural in series, so restrained in expression, and so full and weighty supported by details. I am sure that it is the details that are difficult to capture but of great significance that make everyone see themselves in Mason. We are Mason, or have been, or still are; or have friends like Mason, or will raise children like Mason.
In Before Sunrise, Jesse said to Celine who met on the train, I have an idea, to shoot a reality show. The camera is aimed at an ordinary person's daily life 24 hours a day, from getting up in the shower to having sex in the middle of the night. Of course, this is impossible to achieve because of more than privacy issues. Nowadays, there are reality shows everywhere, but most of them are gimmicks, and the selections are the unconventional life fragments of conditional lives. Linklater's shooting of Boyhood this time is like some kind of practice of Jesse's idea. But it's not an all-weather reality show, but a movie that has been sharpened in 12 years.
At the end of the film, our protagonist said: "It's constant, the moments, it's just-it's like it's always right now". The deceased is like a husband, and the only thing that can be grasped is the present. The teenager Mason still doesn't understand that life is not elsewhere, but life itself—before college, he always wanted to escape, hoping to leave home as far as possible after graduating from high school. Which young man doesn't want to escape? At least I am. We always think that the real life is not here and now. However, life and its meaning are contained in every present, and the changes and unchanging of people in the continuation of the present and present are also contained in the broader picture of the many presents condensed.
"The moment seizes us" "it's always right now"-this may be the belief of Linklater himself. The world is changing rapidly, and what does not change is that moments will always come to us one after another, grab us, good or bad, no one knows what the next moment will be. Of course, for Linklater, what "the moment seizes us" emphasizes is by no means a priori and fate-like power dominating people's incomprehension. What I understand he hopes to express is precisely in all uncertainty, in the mystery of eternal existence, we are groping to participate in this mystery, to enjoy and accidental encounters. Therefore, we no longer confront or be controlled by the object world, but create a sentient subject that belongs to our own time and space. Whether it's chaos or ignorance, we will eventually achieve ourselves in the "out of nothing".
