Boyhood (2014)

Read more

There has never been another movie like Boyhood, from director Richard Linklater. An event film of the utmost modesty, it was shot over the course of twelve years in the director’s native Texas and charts the physical and emotional changes experienced by a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette, who won an Oscar for her performance, and Ethan Hawke), and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater). Alighting not on milestones but on the small, in-between moments that make up our lives, Linklater fashions a flawlessly acted, often funny portrait that flows effortlessly from one year to the next. Allowing us to watch people age on film with documentary realism while gripping us in a fictional narrative of exquisite everydayness, Boyhood has a power that only the art of cinema could harness.

Filmed over a period of 12 years with the same cast members, the film begins as Olivia moves to Houston, Texas, with her son Mason and daughter Samantha after the disintegration of her marriage to the children`s father. From then on we follow Mason as he progresses from a child to a young man while dealing with his parents divorce and the numerous other difficulties of growing up.