Richard Linklater’s twelve-year family drama is tender, funny and moving without pressing for tears. Its 165 minutes sometimes drift, but the changing faces of Recognising Coltrane, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke give ordinary moments an unusual force.
Boyhood is a moving family drama whose long production earns its place on screen; it is also a film that occasionally takes longer than it needs to. Writer-director Richard Linklater follows Mason through childhood and adolescence, letting the years pass without insisting that each one supply a major event. The same performers return across twelve years, growing older rather than handing their parts to someone else. The pleasure is in getting to know the family well enough to notice small changes for ourselves.
Recognising Coltrane gives Mason a watchfulness that suits this approach, though he is not always the most compelling person on screen. He leaves enough unsaid for us to wonder what the boy is making of the adults around him. A more insistently expressive performance might have made those feelings easier to read, but it would also have made the childhood feel tidier. Coltrane is allowed to keep something to himself, even with all this attention being paid to him.
Patricia Arquette, as his mother, gives the film its strongest performance. Frustration and affection sit close together in her acting, so that parenting feels like something being worked out under pressure rather than a settled ability. Ethan Hawke’s father is looser company, and the contrast gives the family scenes much of their humour. The adults do not simply stand by while Mason develops; watching Arquette and Hawke age makes it harder to pretend that only the child is changing.
Lee Daniel and Shane F. Kelly’s photography keeps the small changes in the performers visible without making each one an occasion for admiration. The restraint helps: a familiar face, seen clearly, gives us enough to look at. Gay Studebaker and Rodney Becker’s production design gives the everyday surroundings the same unshowy treatment. Their work helps the separate episodes feel like parts of a life being lived, with no distracting insistence on making each setting memorable.
Sandra Adair’s editing is crucial: the years can slip by before we have registered the change. She keeps the separate episodes moving without making each one explain a fresh development in Mason’s personality. We found the changing faces unexpectedly painful. Recognising Coltrane again after another jump in time means also noticing that we will not see that younger child again. Linklater gets this response from actual ageing, without needing a catastrophe to make an ordinary stretch of childhood matter.
The looseness is not always rewarding, and a few episodes depend too heavily on our existing affection for the family. Linklater sometimes gives an ordinary exchange more space than its interest can bear. We are not asking for a busier plot: the quiet scenes are often the reason to watch, but the weaker ones make us conscious of waiting for the next change. Adair cannot entirely disguise those lulls across 165 minutes.
For a coming-of-age drama, Boyhood gives unusual attention to what growing children ask of their parents. Arquette and Hawke make that attention worthwhile, and the film need not belong only to viewers who recognise themselves in Mason. We recommend it even to those who feel they have seen enough films about teenagers. Give it an evening when nobody is watching the clock.
