Boyhood

— I missed “Boyhood” at the True/False Festival in February 2014 but I’m happy I finally got to see it! The film chronicles a Texas boy’s adolescence while his mother cycles through a few unsuitable husbands and his father takes a long time to become a responsible adult. The remarkable thing is that it was filmed over twelve years, using the same cast. We watch everyone grow, moving in and out of each other’s lives, and it’s a remarkable evolution, filled with lots of questions, with sadness and happiness, and with a sense of real time unfolding, sometimes too slowly and sometime too fast. It really is unlike anything I’ve seen before and it’s well worth seeing. I’ve always liked both Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette and they’re perfect as the boy’s parents. It’s hard to imagine how director Richard Linklater picked a 5-year-old boy who’d be up the 12-year task, but Ellar Coltrane certainly was.

---

[2014. 165 min. Directed by Richard Linklater. Starring Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, and Ethan Hawke.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/movies/movie-review-linklaters-boyhood-is-a-model-of-cinematic-realism.html?_r=0