Anyone who’s been paying attention to film writing over the last few weeks is likely aware of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. In the past month there have been Internet think pieces, behind-the-scenes reports, a New Yorker profile of the director, and online detritus with such embarrassing headlines as “The Real Reason ‘Dazed & Confused’ Isn’t Mentioned in ‘Boyhood’” (I won’t link to it). Mainly this has to do with the movie’s unusual production: Over a period of 11 years, for about two weeks each year, Linklater filmed portions of Boyhood using the same principal actors, then edited the footage together to create a continuous story that follows its protagonist from first grade to freshman year of college. Along the way, actor Ellar Coltrane matured from a seven-year-old to a 19-year-old, and because of the unique way in which Linklater captures physical transformation, Boyhood is being praised for its portrayal of how people grow and change.
Seemingly trivial events from childhood can become the basis for an adult’s passions, but Mason’s seem intrinsic to his character, not imposed from the outside. In one of the earliest scenes Mason and his friend tag a wall with crude spray-paint drawings; eight years later he shows off much more colorful and detailed graffiti drawings to a girl in his bedroom. When Mason is young he spends a lot of time playing video games (first on a Game Boy Advance and a few years later on an Xbox); to get him interested in other visual pursuits, someone gives him a camera, and photography quickly becomes his calling.
Boyhood is hardly a perfect movie—the last quarter isn’t quite as strong as what precedes it, and by the time Mason gets to high school the movie has grown less subtle, rushing to a stirring, blissful conclusion. But in recording how people grow physically but remain the same inside, Linklater has done something sublime: he’s made a film that captures the messy wonder of being alive. And being alive is about accepting the people you love for who they are, because even if the people you love don’t ever really change, it doesn’t change all of the things you love about them.
Directed by Richard Linklater
