Boyhood (少年时代, 소년기)

No one has time to watch a 3-hour movie anymore, especially me who doesn't watch the movies, I mainly see the first 5 minutes of a movie, see who the main characters are, read through the credits (director, top 4 actors/actresses, NAME of the movie), general plot, and........move on. Take it from me, it's not the most enjoyable experience, it's like getting a hot bowl of ramen served to you but only getting to take one bite before it's wrested away from you, only I'm doing this willingly to myself because I know I won't be able to watch all the movies I ever want to watch why my life ends, but can learn about almost all of them, or at least the key ones that deserve my attention. And with comments like "Boyhood is one of the best movies you'll every see," or "my favorite movie of the 2010s," I gave it a shot. After all, I also had a boyhood, and it was mostly in the United States. Minor quibble: I wish the movie had spent more time of him as a boy! In my mind my "boyhood" was from like 5 years old (coming to America) to about 14 years old, and then high school is a whole another dimension of surviving in between boyhood and adulthood. The movie is great about showing Mason's life shuffling between living with his mom and some weekends with his dad, but then.......halfway through the movie he's already grown up! I don't consider those emo days of doing art and photography in high school boyhood necessarily, and his whole face had changed by then from the innocent angel of a boy to a hairy beard-wearing teenager. I root for boys growing up like "Stand By Me," by the time they're in high school I think most are stupid with lack of purpose... I was one myself! Otherwise I loved the movie and how it felt like a real person's life growing up, not some sensationalized "raised by wolves" or other Hollywood trope of something traumatic happening and a deep dark secret..... this movie was like Forest Gump living through the 2000's and seeing everything happening around Mason. I recognized so many of the things that Mason went through with video games, not understanding what the meaning of life was, why adults have so many flaws, having a mother that is doing her best amidst all the circumstances. Mason was a little bit too cool of a dude for me, though; I kept thinking when I was a boy how unfair everything was, how public schools are like these miniature animal kingdoms with social hierachies that certain students who have all the power dominate the ones lower on the pyramid, and the adults don't do anything to change that dynamic, so boys like me at the bottom of the hierarchy never had a chance to fix that, and could never break out. Well, once I turned into an adult I realized that social dynamics don't really end when you turn into an adult, but some part of me still is trapped in that boyhood time of awkwardness and not knowing how to act, but amplified by other kids who made the experience much worse. There was a little of that in Boyhood, but I don't know if Richard Linklater (director) wanted to depict Mason as the most even-keeled, calm kid ever, but he never raised his voice, fought back, or yelled or anything. There was a LOT of yelling and being frustrated at the world in Robert Yan's boyhood, and the movie of my boyhood would have some seriously cringey scenes of me breaking down crying or throwing fits or saying something really regretable at school. I hope our baby has a great girlhood! ( I looked it up, there IS a female equivalent of boyhood). There won't be a sequel because the actresse who played Mason's sister already grew up (Lorelei Linklater, director's daughter), but a sequel with a different set of kids to look at Girlhood, or just trying to know how the Mason's sister navigated through that time as well focused on her, would be something I'd watch, if only to get the female perspective and to know what I'm in for!