We're a little late to the party with our Boyhood review. But there's no time like the present to give it a read.
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| "Dangit!!!Mommy said I'm too old to breastfeed." |
The tag
line on the poster for Boyhood says “A Moving 12 Year Epic”. It really means it.
Richard Linklater delivers one of the most unique and ambitious projects in
modern film. He captures the life of a young boy and his family in a
way no other film has done before. Linklater gathered his core cast for a
handful of days each year over the course of twelve years to craft this undoubtedly unique story. The effect is
both seamless and transfixing.
At the
center of the story is young Mason Evans, played by Ellar Coltrane, who is by
all accounts your average kid. The film features young Mason growing up with his single mother (Patricia
Arquette) and sister (Linklater’s real life daughter Lorelei) with visits from
his father (Ethan Hawke) on the weekends.
The magic of this movie is in the
small details. We get to watch Mason grow up before our eyes and struggle
with the ups and downs of childhood and adolescence. Make no mistake, this is a
scripted work of fiction, but it's presented in such a flawless manner that felt like I was watching real people. As the years go by and their
lives change, I couldn't help but become emotionally invested in these characters. I felt as though I had grown to know them through Linklater's remarkable gift for capturing near reality on film. The commitment Linklater draws from his cast
is truly amazing. By crafting current events and pop culture into the
background of each year, the story felt ambitiously authentic.
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| "Son, always remember. This car makes up for all your shortcomings as a man." |
Linklater
has become a master at conveying the nuance of human emotion. With his Before
Sunrise trilogy, he used a similar technique by making each
film 9 years apart. This allowed him to tell the story of his characters over an 18 year
period. By gaining the trust of his
actors, Linklater is able to use time to push his narrative storytelling in such
a natural way that it's easy to forget they're not real. Coltrane and
Arquette are especially impressive and deserve some serious consideration come
award season.
-Brian Rohe