Boyhood Review

Title: BoyhoodMPAA Rating: RDirector: Richard LinklaterStarring: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei LinklaterRuntime: 2 hrs 45 mins

We watch 5-year-old Mason (Coltrane) go through life for 13 years. We’re here for his entire academic career. We follow Mason his sister Samantha (Linklater) and their mother (Arquette) as they go through life’s infinite, and ever-changing circumstances. We see the young man go from a little guy just trying to get along in this giant world he doesn’t really seem to understand and watch him turn into a sharp as a tack teenager with unique, and interesting views on exactly what's going on in the world, his world. Throughout that experience, we meet his father and grow to learn about him as well. It’s a character study in the most grandiose of fashions.

What We Think

This film is simply the best of the year. And though come Oscar time it’s unlikely we’ll see it get a nomination one really has to credit Linklater’s precision of what it is he wants. His camera never feels like an unwanted eye; instead, we feel like an observer, a friend, and second parent helping Arquette’s mother with our off-screen suggestions on how to fix whatever’s broken. She herself has some demons to exorcise. In fact, most of the characters do. And the ones that aren’t too built up we can make our own story out of. We can wonder how they got to that point, or where they went.

Our Grade: A+

This is one of if not the best film of the year. This isn’t JUST a movie; it is an experience. The passage of time here is real. It makes you reflect on the fact that time can escape us. We can blink, and in what seems like 3 hours is actually 13 years. Life passes faster then we’d like. Let’s enjoy every moment we can. That theme, that singular ideology permeates throughout. Linklater seems like a man walking a tightrope. Not wanting to make it seem “scripted” though it is. From the looks of it, he didn’t even have the Coltrane wear makeup during the pubescent scenes, adding further to the fly on the wall curtain he’s cast. Go see this, it’s a breathtaking piece of cinema. Contemporary artistry from a wholly unique filmmaker.