A boy enjoying pictures of women in swimwear with his friends. A boy being devastated after having his mane cut off. A boy debating the necessity of Facebook with his high school girlfriend. In all honesty, Boyhood is a rather apt title for this film. But it could just as well hold the name of another picture currently running in cinemas: Life Itself. That simple yet profound thing is what lies at the core of Richard Linklater's unique 12-year-spanning story and makes it relatable for everyone, regardless of sex, age group, descent, social status, or character.
I, for example, have never experienced the American lifestyle, growing up with siblings, or the troubles of patchwork families, but was utterly overwhelmed by Boyhood nevertheless. There is something extraordinary about Linklater's directing, making his unspectacular, almost documentary way of dealing with youth what may quite possibly be my all- time favourite film.
Only once does the writer-director resort to the hackneyed Hollywood way of telling stories instead of his own amazingly realistic approach to the subject and as a viewer, one feels this detour like a splash of icy water piercing the steady, warm flow Boyhood otherwise is. A presumably Mexican yard worker, wised up about his intelligence and urged to continue school by the mother of the film's protagonist in a less-than- 10-second conversation, suddenly overturns his life and later meets his source of inspiration for a second time, to proclaim the glad tidings in a restaurant scene on the verge of overflowing in mawkish pathos.
No such issues emerge in the remaining scenes of this almost three hour long epic, however. Rather, Linklater lets his audience live through the fun and the pain, the love and the misery, and the excitement and the disappointment of his protagonist Mason with yet another wonderful screenplay in his repertoire. Leaving the cinema, it's hard to grasp one has just spent the better part of an evening in front of a screen, but at the same time, there's also a feeling of having relived your own adolescence along with Mason.
Upon its release, Boyhood never held attributes such as "most qualitatively promising feature of the year" and the concerns were simple: how would meeting up with aging actors for a couple of days every year for more than a decade result in a tightly-structured and cohesive film? I can't exactly respond to the how, but Richard Linklater is better at it than most of his colleagues are at the "regular" version. Counting in his talent at capturing everyday events through a beautiful lens and his picking of the soundtrack to accompany the images (I think we can agree that Garden State has just been thrust off a throne), the American should, without a hint of doubt, receive each and every film award for directing there is. Yes, even the sci-fi and horror ones, because with a film as spectacular as Boyhood – who cares about genres?
I, for example, have never experienced the American lifestyle, growing up with siblings, or the troubles of patchwork families, but was utterly overwhelmed by Boyhood nevertheless. There is something extraordinary about Linklater's directing, making his unspectacular, almost documentary way of dealing with youth what may quite possibly be my all- time favourite film.
Only once does the writer-director resort to the hackneyed Hollywood way of telling stories instead of his own amazingly realistic approach to the subject and as a viewer, one feels this detour like a splash of icy water piercing the steady, warm flow Boyhood otherwise is. A presumably Mexican yard worker, wised up about his intelligence and urged to continue school by the mother of the film's protagonist in a less-than- 10-second conversation, suddenly overturns his life and later meets his source of inspiration for a second time, to proclaim the glad tidings in a restaurant scene on the verge of overflowing in mawkish pathos.
No such issues emerge in the remaining scenes of this almost three hour long epic, however. Rather, Linklater lets his audience live through the fun and the pain, the love and the misery, and the excitement and the disappointment of his protagonist Mason with yet another wonderful screenplay in his repertoire. Leaving the cinema, it's hard to grasp one has just spent the better part of an evening in front of a screen, but at the same time, there's also a feeling of having relived your own adolescence along with Mason.
Upon its release, Boyhood never held attributes such as "most qualitatively promising feature of the year" and the concerns were simple: how would meeting up with aging actors for a couple of days every year for more than a decade result in a tightly-structured and cohesive film? I can't exactly respond to the how, but Richard Linklater is better at it than most of his colleagues are at the "regular" version. Counting in his talent at capturing everyday events through a beautiful lens and his picking of the soundtrack to accompany the images (I think we can agree that Garden State has just been thrust off a throne), the American should, without a hint of doubt, receive each and every film award for directing there is. Yes, even the sci-fi and horror ones, because with a film as spectacular as Boyhood – who cares about genres?