It was one of the best movies of 2014, but there’s nothing so special about Boyhood. Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is 6, and then he’s 7. And then he’s 8. Before long he’s 18 and leaving home, confused about what life means but willing to go along for the ride. He and his sister (Lorelei Linklater) spend weekends with their father (a wonderful and firing-on-all-thrusters Ethan Hawke). And there’s Mom’s (Patricia Arquette, great) crappy second and third marriages. And there’s teenage drinking and smoking pot and bonding and the first girlfriend and all the banality of life wrapped up in 164 minutes.
Yet Boyhood is magnificent, and the banality is charming. Imagine the hubris of making the same movie for 12 years with the same cast, as Linklater has, and not doing it as a documentary. Linklater had to assume he’d still be a viable filmmaking force from start to finish for anyone to care about this project. And imagine the sell—a movie with the same cast made for 12 years, during which nothing much happens.
Boyhood has been compared to Michael Apted’s Up series, and even to Hoop Dreams, and it’s more reserved, but no less ambitious. Its aspirations lie in capturing the everyday, even the boring stuff. Perhaps Linklater has enough footage to edit the sister’s side of the story and is on the verge of releasing Girlhood.
BOYHOOD
Directed by Richard Linklater
With Coltrane, Arquette, and Hawke
CCA Cinematheque
R
164 min.
Santa Fe Reporter