Boyhood (2014)
Shot over twelve years by director Richard Linklater using the same cast throughout, Boyhood depicts the childhood and adolescence of Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) from ages six to eighteen as he grows up in Texas with divorced parents (Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke).
An experimental film that started in 2002 without a complete script other than the opening and potential ending with the rest constructed during the next eleven years.
Richard Linklater's films have a varied history with me. His second feature Dazed and Confused is one of my all time favourite films whilst i thought his debut feature - Slacker - was a load of rubbish and his acclaimed 'Before' series - Sunrise, Sunset and Midnight - overrated unless your idea of fun is watching an annoying couple squabbling across three movies. Boyhood is somewhere in between.
During the first forty minutes i was having difficulty relating to Mason and sister Samantha (Played by Richard's daughter Lorelei Linklater) growing up in a world of Harry Potter and Nintendo video games. It was okay, watchable but nothing really too interesting, until Mum marries her professor (Marco Perella) and the marriage slowly turns abusive which is when the real drama begins, although it is only a few chapters of this near three hour journey of growing up.
Following this the film becomes a lot more relatable as Mason gets older, goes to high school and later college, gains an interest in girls and photography (Although not necessarily in that order) and generally lives the life of a teenager going to all night parties, discovering booze and weed... Linklater's in familiar territory here as the second half of the film could almost be Dazed and Confused part two.
Although huge in technical scale and achievement (It was interesting to see the cast grow older. Arquette's hair continually changing, although Hawke always looked like Ethan Hawke, whilst Mason as a young man was virtually unrecognisible to Mason as a six year old boy) Boyhood is an extremely intimate affair which at times will have you on the edge of your seat, at others you'll feel like crying and and others laughing.
I did find it really amusing when Hawke's Mason senior remarries and takes Mason and Samantha to his new wife's parents for Mason jr's 15th birthday. A devout religious couple. The wife gives Mason a bible for a gift whilst grandpa gives him a shotgun. Typical America.
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