Boyhood

I still have to see this: I missed our screening, but have bought the DVD as the reviews made it look too good to miss.

Here are my notes:

Boyhood

USA 2014                    165 minutes

Director:                      Richard Linklater

Starring:                        Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater, Ethan Hawke

 

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for six Oscars, including Best Film, Director, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor (Ethan Hawke) and Supporting Actress (Patricia Arquette)
• Won two BAFTAs (Best Film, Director and Supporting Actress) and nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Original Screenplay
• A further 138 wins and 119 nominations

“Like the fabled Jesuit, Richard Linklater has taken the boy and given us the man. In so doing, he's created a film that I love more than I can say. And there is hardly a better, or nobler thing a film can do than inspire love.”

Peter Bradshaw

Over a period of 12 years, from 2002 to 20014 Boyhood depicts the adolescence of Mason Evans, a young boy growing up in Texas.  His parents are divorced: Mason and his sister live with their mother (Patricia Arquette) who subsequently remarries while, initially at least, their father (Ethan Hawke) is just an occasional presence in their lives.

Richard Linklater had long wanted to make a film that told the story of family relationships from the perspective of a boy over an extended period of time and without a completed script: for Boyhood he knew the basic plot points for each character as well as the ending, but otherwise wrote the script for each year’s filming to reflect the changes he saw in each character. He only filmed for three or four days each year, but the production team spent two months in pre-production and one month in post-production each year.  Once he had finished filming in 2013 Linklater named the film 12 Years, but then changed it to Boyhood to avoid any confusion with 12 Years a Slave.

In the 12 year shooting schedule for Boyhood Richard Linklater also directed eight other feature films that ranged from the directly commercial (Bad News Bears (2005)) to literary adaptation (Me and Orson Welles (2008)).  More significantly, he directed Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) completing a trilogy starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy that had begun with Before Sunrise in 1995 and which revisited the same two central characters at different points in their lives, a common theme in many of his films.

Boyhood received its premier at the Sundance Film Festival and it was also entered in the Berlin Film Festival where Richard Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director.  On its commercial release the film received almost unanimous acclaim from critics from around the world and Sight & Sound, after polling more than 100 international film critics named it as the best film of 2014. The film also appeared on more “best of” lists for 2014 than any other film: it appeared on 536 lists and was in first place on 189 of them.

Here's the trailer: