Boyhood is
a project Richard Linklater created about a boy’s life from age 6 to 18. His
goal was to capture a boy’s perspective on growing up and his relationship with
his parents. Normally, you’d expect the filmmaker to cast different actors to
portray the lead at various ages.
Linklater went a step further. He cast the movie in 2002 and shot it
intermittently until 2013. With some superior editing by Sandra Adair (who won
an ACE Eddie Award and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film
Editing), Boyhood became a masterpiece. Linklater started filming
without a complete script, adapting it as the cast grew and incorporating parts
of their lives into the film. It has some great performances in it, but some performances, particularly from the younger cast, can feel uneven.
Linklater wrote
and directed this movie, and his directing is something you’ll appreciate. The
movie’s flow is steady and inviting, pulling you in to see it through. He went
all out to make his dream of creating this film a reality by casting and
retaining the same lead actors for 12 years and working with a relatively small
budget to bring it to life.
In Boyhood,
we see the life of Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) as he tries to cope with divorced
parents, Mason Sr. and Olivia (played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette,
respectively).
Mason also has to deal with growing up and his mother’s struggle to find a
suitable partner. Olivia gets married three times and divorced three times. In
her defense, the men were great at first but soon became dead weight.
The movie’s
focus is on Mason, but it also gives much attention to his sister, Samantha
(played by Richard Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei), who deals with boys and
rebellion. We see Mason’s father grow into responsibility and the pain mothers
go through when they live their lives for their children.
Boyhood appears
on numerous critics’ lists of the best films of 2014. It also won many awards,
including both the Golden Globe Award and the British Academy Film Award
(BAFTA) for Best Film. Among its six nominations at the 87th Academy Awards, it
received its sole Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, which went to Patricia
Arquette.
As a critically
acclaimed movie, it went on to make over $46 million at the box office against
its $4 million production cost.
For me, Boyhood is another masterpiece—one many will remember for a
long time. If you want to see a good movie and admire the production, this is
one for you.
But I must add, that even though the movie is unique, some might find the pacing slow at times, especially with the long runtime and episodic structure. Then the idea of following a character’s life over 12 years is ambitious, and the focus on the lead sometimes leaves other character arcs underdeveloped.
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