Review: Boyhood
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: A] Linklater's unconventional approach — filming a short segment each year for 12 years — has been well-publicized, but in practice it never feels like a gimmick.
SALAD DAYS: Mason (Ellar Coltrane) grows from a chubby-faced boy into an 18-year-old on the cusp of adulthood over the course of 12 years.
City Paper grade: A
With the Before Sunrise trilogy, Richard Linklater proved himself to be an insightful chronicler of the changes wrought by time on a relationship. With Boyhood he develops that notion even further, watching one young boy’s growth and maturation over the course of nearly three hours, like time-lapse photography of a plant blooming.
Linklater’s unconventional approach — filming a short segment each year for 12 years — has been well-publicized, but in practice it never feels like a gimmick. Despite precedents in series of films (Linklater’s aforementioned trilogy, Michael Apted’s Up), seeing characters age during a single film without using makeup or switching actors is unexpectedly moving and evokes the loss and change that are part of any life.
The focus is on Mason (Ellar Coltrane), who is introduced as a 6-year-old pondering the heavens to a Coldplay soundtrack and exits as an 18-year-old college freshman poised on the cusp of adulthood. His round, chubby face takes on angular definition and his inquisitive boyishness sharpens into an actual personality. But we watch his family age and grow as well. His older sister Samantha, played by the director’s daughter Lorelei, goes from a teasing annoyance singing Britney Spears songs, to jaded teenager, to thoughtful young woman. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke appear as Mason’s divorced parents, who reluctantly settle into maturity, their less-dramatic physical changes showing the burdens and wear of time.
As we check in on their progress year after year, what we see are not necessarily the most dramatic moments. Crucial events unfold offscreen and are implied at best, and thread that seem important at one age are dropped and never heard from again. Major players disappear as they pass out of the family's lives, and we feel their impact even as they're never mentioned again. Banalties accumulate and if nothing in Mason’s experience is particularly novel, it’s stunning to watch how the same truths become new discoveries in each person’s life on the road to becoming an individual.
