What
has brought a lot of attention to “Boyhood” is the fact that the
director/writer Richard Linklater took 39 days in 12 years to film this
picture. He used the same boy, Ellar Coltrane, same girl, Lorelei Link
later (yes, the director’s daughter) plus the main adult actors such as
Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as Coltrane’s divorced parents. The
film is fiction covering a period of time from when Coltrane was 6-7 and
Linklater was a couple of years older until we see the latter off at
college and Coltrane, at 18, graduating from high school and he too is
going off to college. We watch these two children grow into adults,
physically, as they did in real life. Whether the same technique was
used with Hawke and Arquette is hard to tell as they were/at the age
actors don’t change too much physically.

The story is linear as
we see Mason (Coltrane) going through life in Texas much as boys have
grown all time. Samantha (Linklater) goes through her rebellious period,
pink hair anybody?, and  we too watch her grow up but the picture
concentrates on her brother. Dad (Hawke) and Mom (Arquette) get
divorced  when the children are young and Mom keeps choosing wrong men
though she is smart enough to go back to school, gets her degree and
finds an excellent job as a college teacher. Dad goes though a period of
not knowing who he is and what he wants and becomes a weekend Dad who
spoils the kids and is the ‘fun’ parent while Mom is the stern,
disciplining one. There is no doubt that both parents love their
children.

It has been two hours since I left this film that is 2
hours and 40 minutes long and I still don’t know whether I like it or
not but I am still thinking about it. Hawke and Arquette are as
professional and good as you would expect with Hawke giving one of his
best performances on film. None of the supporting cast makes a false
step. It is watching Coltrane and Linklater as they grow that is
spellbinding and the director took a chance not knowing if they could
act expressing their changes over 12 years but he certainly can be proud
of his daughter’s performance and Coltrane is a natural actor.

I
think parents who have had teenagers, and watched them grow, will
appreciate this movie more than a childless person but the latter will
find this movie different from the run of movies about teenagers and the
evolution of Samantha and Mason from children to adults.

This is a work director/screenplay writer Rivhard Linklater should be proud of and will be very involved with awards time.