Time plays an important role in the films of Richard
Linklater. His debut feature Slacker was
built from brief conversations over the course of an Austin Texas day; a tapestry
of quick glances which expressed the whole lazy scene. It was fresh, 90's and so
very generation X. This format would come to serve Linklater well over the
course of his career; Dazed and Confused used it; Waking Life sort of did it too; perhaps his
greatest achievement so far took, for now, three such days in three different
countries only Linklater let 14 years go by between them.
The results were incredibly moving. The second part of that series, Before Sunrise, hadn't even come out
when Linklater began shooting this remarkable film. It’s called Boyhood and shows us through a fictional
piece of film, shot roughly one week per year since 2003, the growth of a young
boy called Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from the age of 6 to 18.
Gathering Coltrane, his daughter Lorelei and stars Ethan
Hawke and Patricia Arquette as their separated parents, Linklater has crafted an
entirely unique real-time story of what growing up in Texas must be like. We
follow Mason and his sister Samantha as they go to school, their relationship
with both parents, Mason’s first girlfriend and job, his mates and interests
and everything else, before ultimately leaving for college.
Linklater pulls off an incredible trick in keeping such
continuity of tone over such an enormous breath of production. The cuts are
subtle and steady, facial hair, fashion and broken voice providing the clues.
It’s
all so impressive and yet somehow so tragically unmoving. When Linklater shoots outside his age bracket, he has a tendency to induce cringe. He made Slacker at 21 and Before Midnight
at 52 and both of them worked a treat. Sadly seeing him depict free
spirited youths comes off, well, like someone of a certain age depicting free spirited
youths. But that only comes when Mason hits his teens, really what disappoints is how the director has failed to get to the guts of
the human condition and with all that time and effort that is truly this film's tragedy. Still, Boyhood remains a wonderful, charming piece of work and an astonishingly impressive cinematic achievement. It really has never been done before. It might never be done again.
Well, for another 12
years at least...
