The premise of Boyhood seems inherently contradictory: a grand, 12-year epic focused unwaveringly on the personal and domestic. But this unorthodox premise succeeds on director Richard Linklater’s inspired decision to film the same central cast over 12 years of real time, so that they grow up as their characters do. Since the protagonist, Mason (played by Ellar Coltrane) and his parents are constant presences, rather than a group of different actors playing them at each stage in their lives, the film feels no need to artificially tie events and characters together: instead, the ‘story’ can exist as a stream of loosely connected vignettes. The detail within each of these ‘constant moments’ (as a teenage Mason refers to them) is a pleasure, such as the glorious juxtaposition of the birthday gifts Mason receives from his relatives (a shotgun and a Bible), and arguably no other film comes closer to capturing the patchwork of randomness and meaning that is real life. The film’s emotional crux, however, is Mason’s relationship with his father (Ethan Hawke) which, unexpectedly, focuses as much on Mason Senior growing out of his own arrested ‘boyhood’ as it does Mason himself growing up. Boyhood possesses a particular nostalgic power for student-age viewers: Ellar Coltrane is only a couple of years older than most of us, which results in many of the incidentals of media and popular culture which surround Mason’s childhood being almost uncomfortably recognisable. This extends to the soundtrack: before Boyhood, I was almost certain that a film featuring songs from both The Flaming Lips and Blink-182 wouldn’t exist until I made it myself! But above all (barring a rather absurd subplot involving a plumber-turned restaurant owner), Boyhood enthrals with its universal meditations on life and its brilliant, unapologetic honesty.
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