Boyhood: Richard Linklater makes history with latest film

Writer-director Richard Linklater presents 'Boyhood', the life of a young man filmed over 12 years.

Filmed in 39 days over the course of 12 years, Richard Linklater teams up with his old-time favourites Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette in a film that charts the growth of a boy from childhood to college.

Calling Boyhood a film doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s a cinematic vision of unprecedented dedication and perseverance. The uniqueness of this work is that, instead of using a number of different actors to show a process of ageing, the director sticks with the same actors over 12 years, giving the film a pseudo-documentary feel in its bid for authenticity. 

Hailed as the jewel in the crown of this year’s Sundance festival, Boyhood is both an extension and a maturation of Linklater’s oeuvre. Linklater is an art-house favourite, known for directing cult hits Dazed and Confused, Slacker and the Before Sunrise trilogy (essential film viewing). The indie director typically set each of his movies in a 24 hour period and these films give life’s unnoticed banalities and seemingly insignificant moments the courtesy of a wide-screen landscape.

But whereas his earlier films focus on a condensed period of time, Boyhood balances incredible scope with a foregrounding of understated vignettes, all this set to the background of a changing American political landscape. A divorced father’s attempt to reconnect with his teenage son over an enthusiasm for Star Wars, first loves and broken hearts, a series of alcoholic step-fathers and marital spats: all these scenes eschew melodrama for subtlety. Although adolescence is a popular and ripe subject matter for films, Boyhood avoids the pitfalls of clichéd teenage angst and creative awakening. It is as much a study of the intricacies of family life and a wider meditation on change as it is a portrait of the artist as a young man. 

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