By virtue of its unusual production history, Boyhood gives us two films in one: a work of fiction spanning twelve years in the life of a young boy growing up in Texas; and a shadow-documentary which escorts its fictional counterpart each step of the way. How could it be otherwise given Richard Linklater’s singular decision to shoot the film over a corresponding period of time, and with the same cast? The actors age before us, though it is the evolution of Ellar Coltrane (who plays the boy, Mason) and Lorelei Linklater (his sister) that has the most resonance.
Like Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel films and Michael Apted’s Up series, Boyhood’s power is accumulative, though Linklater’s longitudinal study is a lesson in compression: he gives us the incremental bloom of Mason’s life, and all of its attendant experience, in less than three hours. The seamless and unannounced transitions that introduce each phase of his development elicit from the viewer a commensurate gasp of delayed recognition: look how he has grown! But underpinning it all is a feeling of concern and even suspense, no doubt generated by our awareness of the cast’s deep investment, as well as the onset of time: what will become of Mason/Ellar?
As we follow Mason through the commonplace rituals of an American childhood, we begin to see that one of Linklater’s achievements is to have created something unerringly specific, deeply personal, and universal. And whilst the film is something of a paean to parenthood (Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette are both subtle and true as the boy’s divorced parents), Boyhood’s real subject is time, unfolding as it does in a perpetual present tense.
—Mick McAloon
Running From The Reels 