The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Family drama

DIRECTOR

Richard Linklater

WRITER

Richard Linklater

STARS

Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke

BEFORE

1993 Dazed and Confused, Linklater’s coming-of-age movie set in 1970s Texas, does poorly at the box office but soon acquires cult status.

1995 Before Sunrise is the first movie in a romantic trilogy by Linklater starring Ethan Hawke as an American in Europe and Julie Delpy as his French lover.

2012 Linklater’s Waking Life, a story that takes place within a dream, uses a technique called rotoscoping to make real actors look like animations.

In his own low-key, low-budget way, Richard Linklater has always been interested in revolutionizing movies. Filmed in his native Austin, Texas, like his debut Slacker, Boyhood is at once an incredibly simple idea and a hugely radical one. Probably one of the most authentic coming-of-age stories ever told, it follows its protagonist, Mason (Ellar Coltrane), from the age of six right up to his graduation from school at 18. And if the movie feels real, that’s because it practically is, with Linklater shooting with Coltrane and the other cast for a few days every summer for 12 years, the actors aging in time with the story.

Capturing childhood

Boyhood deals subtly with the changing times: as family life shifts and changes, iPods replace CD players and Barack Obama replaces George W. Bush as president. After Mason’s flaky father (Ethan Hawke) leaves, his mother (Patricia Arquette) embarks on new relationships. Everything and nothing happens in the exquisitely paced 165 minutes, which capture the bittersweet, haphazard, scrapbook nature of childhood and adolescent memories.

While the focus is on Mason, the other performances are captivating too—notably from Hawke as the man who married too young, Lorelei Linklater (the director’s daughter) as Mason’s sister, and Arquette, who would go on to win an Oscar for her role in the movie.

Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) offers some rare fatherly advice in a tender scene with his son (Ellar Coltrane); for both, perhaps, childhood has ended.

What else to watch: The 400 Blows (1959) ✵ Slacker (1991) ✵ Before Sunrise (1995) ✵ Before Sunset (2004) ✵ Before Midnight (2013) ✵ Girlhood (2014)