Review of Boyhood (2014)
Seen in 2021.
Over the course of twelve years, an ordinary US child grows to adulthood.
45 days of shooting in twelve years, with a consistent cast, picking mostly formative or memorable scenes rather than random slices of life, and spinning a few ideas into the mix. It’s often funny, and when it’s serious, the drama works because it’s carefully grounded in the simplest form of mimesis. To borrow the film’s most florid language, it’s a coming of age as a “voluptuous panic” underneath a stream of moments that seize the living. I find it brilliant, including the way it bulldozes all of the Aristotelian unities. The scene with two bullies in the bathroom at Mason Jr.’s new school is a perfect example of this: They’re stereotypes, they’re credible, they illustrate Mason’s personality at that point, and they are not allowed to take control of the narrative. Once off the screen, they’re a memory in the viewer: No more, but no less, like all the memories of childhood that can never be reclaimed.
References here: Moonlight (2016), The Florida Project (2017).