Review – Boyhood (2014) directed by Richard Linklater.

Rewatched on January 29th, 2025
Rating: 5/5 Stars

Hits different when you grew up at a similar time; all the cultural beats and references are so spot on, making this movie feel like a transformative journey and its own personal time capsule as well. And what’s amazing about the film is that it’s almost like a “greatest hits” compilation of scenes of growing up over 12 years, except it’s not really “greatest hits” at all. There’s a lot of struggle, a lot of sadness and horror, misfortune. But also, a lot of joy, everyday mundanity, childhood “rites of passage” that are like universal experience but may not necessarily progress the story or narrative, and just the experience of coming-of-age but more like most of us experienced it rather than exaggerated fiction. But that’s so much of the beauty in this film. It captures life, growing up, but not just through the big milestones that we expect to (and usually do) remember; this life is told through some of those, but mostly the in-between stories. It’s made up of the moments that shape us into who we are, even some specific memories are lost in time. Sometimes those moments do come back to us later, sometimes they’re forgotten forever, but they’re always a part of us even when they’re gone. To quote Jonathan Lethem’s essay included with the Criterion blu-ray of this film:

“It is possible that Boyhood compiles a history of forgotten moments, not recollected ones.”

The movie is so spectacular in how it’s made, not just with its gag of shooting with the same actors over 12 years, but in how it seamlessly blends these sagas together with little-to-no transitions. Uniquely, the aging of the actors tells the story of the passage of time for us, with no need for hard cuts or intertitles physically sectioning years of the film and Mason’s life. It works brilliantly and it’s almost a “blink and you’ll miss it” switch, but then again, time flies just like that in real life sometimes. You never quite realize how fast things are moving until you look back and realize you’re no longer where you used to be.

A beautiful film about the fragility of moments and the passage of time, but also how special those moments are in life, regardless of if we keep them in our memories or in our character.

Check out the original review posted on Letterboxd here.