Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane, Lorelei Linklater, Steven Chester Prince, Bonnie Cross, Libby Villari, Marco Perella, Jamie Howard, Andrew Villarreal, Shane Graham, Tess Allen, Ryan Power, Sharee Fowler, Mark Finn, Charlie Sexton, Byron Jenkins, Holly Moore, David Blackwell, Barbara Chisholm, Matthew Martinez-Arndt, Cassidy Johnson, Cambell Westmoreland, Jennifer Griffin, Garry Peters, Merrilee McCommas, Tamara Jolaine, Tyler Strother, Brad Hawkins, Savannah Welch, Richard Andrew Jones, Karen Jones, Sam Dillon, Jesse Mechler.
When seen from outside of your own perspective, life is nothing but a series of vingettes punctuated by seemingly random occurances and happenings of your own making. Such is the premise of Richard Linklater’s incredibly well observed and utterly unique film, Boyhood.
This tremendously touching look at the early life of a young man called Mason from the age of 8 to 18 is arguably Richard Linklater’s magnus opus to the world of cinema, a real life exploration of what it is to grow up and find your role in society whilst navigating parantal seperation, mental and physical cruelty from your mother’s new husbands, sibling rivalry and a father who had disapeared but who becomes a huge stabilising force in his life.
What Richard Linklater does is distinctive, almost exceptional. By taking a core group of actors over a journey of 10 years, the writer/director is able to truly capture what it means to grow, to evolve on screen. Like a series of photographs taken of the same face every day over the period of a lifetime, you get to see existance as its meant to be, lived and beautiful, frustrating, painful, awkward, unsatisfying, challenging and magnificent. Each segment of time, of your life is just a moment in which to feel something and be anything.
The core group of actors, the ever impressive Ethan Hawke, the wonderfully talented Patricia Arquette, giving one of the finest performances of her life as Mason JR.s mother, Lorelei Linklater and Ellar Coltrane is nothing short of vital to the flm’s success. To have this foursome age togther properly as they are reunited year in, year out, to have them see the world through Mason Jr.s’ eyes over a decade’s worth of filming is nothing short of a true cinematic delight.
Ellar Coltrane deserves the full attention of every critic and fan’s attention. He brings it home completely what it means to have a childhood, the pain of imperfection, to be the the social misfit, the much loved son and well liked and admired High School student and yet all the time trying to deal with the time when growing up is replaced by the inevitable aging. A terrific and compelling performance.
Boyhood is a film in which to remember what it was like to be that young, in which emotional certainty was at best felt day by day and nothing was every truly taken for granted; not sensation, not the passion of the day but always keenly taken on if at all possible. A startingly unique and cleverly filmed piece of cinema. Well worth enjoying.
Ian D. Hall