One of the main themes of the films written (sometimes in collaboration with his actors) and directed by Richard Linklater is time. The relationship between real time and cinematic time is also one of the main problems that filmmakers face. How can the passage of time be brought to the screen in a cinematic epic whose action spans several decades? How can real-time stories be put on screen without boring viewers? Richard Linklater combined these two problems and gave them an original solution both in the trilogy ‘Before …’ and in the film ‘Boyhood‘ (2014). Actors play their real ages. They are filmed at different points in time, decades apart in the trilogy, over a continuous period of 12 years in ‘Boyhood‘. For that, however, he himself needed Time and the chance to work with actors who would agree to collaborate, be or make themselves available every year. One of them, Ethan Hawke, appears in both projects. ‘Boyhood‘ is an exceptional cinematic adventure and its filming (a few days, at most a week over each of 12 consecutive years) is an excellent subject for a film script. It’s difficult to judge this film for what it is, trying to forget the experience of making it. However, that is exactly what I will try to do.
‘Boyhood‘ can be considered as the ultimate childhood and adolescence film, depicting 12 years in the life of a Texan boy named Mason and of his family – especially his mother Olivia and older sister Samantha – from the age of 7 until the age of 18 when he leave homes to go to college. This may be quite an average American family, but in 12 years many events take place in the life of even the most average family. When the story begins, the parents are about to divorce. The children will be raised by the mother who has the ambition to continue her studies and become a professor, in parallel with several changes of addresses and another short marriage that ends in disaster. The biological father seems OK, but he is far away and his influence does not extend beyond biweekly visits at best. The boy becomes a teenager, then a young man interested in the arts, has his first drinking and girls experiences, seeks his way in life. Without experiencing major existential crises, the film’s heroes struggle with life and try to live the moment, but – in the words of one of the characters – it is the moments that envelop their lives.
Most of the acting is excellent and the narrative flows smoothly without being marked by explicit time markers. We see the children grow up before our eyes and adults go through the different ages of adulthood. As viewers we realize where we are in time by the political allusions and especially by the music, always present, always current for that moment in time. The film does not have a specially created soundtrack, but makes heavy use of the music of the period in which it was filmed and in which the episode takes place. Ellar Coltrane begins the stoary as a child actor and grows up before our eyes, acting as a young man with big dreams, looking for the roads to their fulfillment. Patricia Arquette (who received an Academy Award for a supporting role, the only one got by film) and Ethan Hawke are excellent in the roles of the parents, as we are also experiencing their evolution as actors and as individuals. I would have liked the script to tell more about their relationship and even bring them back together, but the movie is trying to represent life and life decides differently than we want it to. The only casting that didn’t stand the test of time so well seemed to me to be that of Lorelei Linklater as Samantha. Her character has moments of absence from the story, and that’s why the brother-sister relations don’t seem to be explored enough either. ‘Boyhood‘ is an exceptional technical achievement and a film we enjoy watching. At the end of the viewing, I regretted however that the story was not more dynamic and dramatic. In life most of us prefer to avoid too much drama. When we go to the cinema, however, the exact opposite is true.