Boyhood 2014

Easily the film of the year, and a remarkable  feat of narrative movie making. This is a long and leisurely look at a young boy and his sometimes disjointed family in Texas as he grows into a young man with all the usual local stops along the way and what could be simpler than this. We all know by now that the film which was written and directed by Richard Linklater takes place over a 12 year span of real and movie time, so we are actually seeing the little boy grow and change before our eyes. This is done smoothly and without the seams showing. We also see his family change including the sometimes out of sorts and put upon mom played to perfection by the wonderful Patricia Arquette, her missing in action ex husband and father to the children Ethan Hawke and the young sister actually played by Linklater’s daughter. So we get to see the parties, the bantering and fighting, the camp outs, the graduations and much more since the film runs nearly 3 hours but feels like two. One of my favorite scenes is a midnight Harry Potter book party with the kids dressed up as their favorite characters picking up the books with expressions of pure joy and expectation for what waits for them within the pages of the book and is one of the most evocative scenes of childhood happiness I think I’ve ever seen in a movie. What really makes the film work (at least for me) is that the boy Linklater found is a terrific child, we like him and want the best for him so it’s a real pleasure for us to see him grow up to be a lovely 18 year old young man, ripe and willing to take on the future and hopefully do good things, this is a remarkable performance by Ellar Coltrane who plays Mason. Arquette is a good mother and Hawke for all his faults is a good father, loved dearly by his kids and his scenes with Coltrane are believable and touching and will be familiar and nostalgic to those who grew up with a loving dad, and sad for those who didn’t.  Arquette does her best in raising her children on her own but is always making the wrong choices when it comes to the men in her life, and most of the tension in the film comes from her conflicts with her abusive 2^nd & 3^rd marriages, which are hair raising and disturbing.  Unique and richly rewarding and the best film of 2014.