About a boy

You can Benjamin Button your way to the Oscars with CGI all you like, or lay on the aging makeup if you want to capture the passage of time on film, but if you’re Richard Linklater, you go old school: he was in it for the long haul when he filmed Boyhood over a dozen years, charting the growing-up years of his actors and actresses in one of the most satisfying movies of 2014.

And it’s not just a directorial stunt. Linklater started filming in 2002, assembling young Ellar Coltrane and (daughter) Lorelei Linklater as brother and sister with Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke playing their divorced parents, filming a bit each year as the kids grew up. Hawke described filming Boyhood as “a little bit like time-lapse photography of a human being,” as he watched his young co-actors morph into teenhood.

Coltrane and Linklater are magical as Mason and Samantha, involved in kid adventures — from checking out lingerie catalogues to enduring bad haircuts — as their mom moves from one bad relationship to another, and their dad stays in perpetual slacker mode, driving a GTO and playing in a local blues band. The movie takes on the perspective of the kids, but it’s interesting that Linklater didn’t stick to a tight script, instead relying on a broad story outline and what was going on in his young actors’ lives (one can imagine the director of Before Sunrise and School of Rock debriefing them each year, to find out wassup).

One fun aspect of Boyhood is that it parallels our own developing technology and pop culture as the years go on: early scenes show kids using the first iMacs, or sporting Gameboys; then the film progresses through to cell phones and Xboxes. The kids attend a screening of the first Harry Potter movie in full Hogwarts regalia. Music, too, goes through changes, with Britney Spears making an appearance in the first scene as Samantha taunts her brother with a version of Oops, I Did It Again, and one amusing bit where Hawke discusses the Beatles as solo performers versus their collective identity. Linklater gets to interject his political views too, about the Bush and Obama years, though it’s hard to pigeonhole him as either Red State or Blue State. (Obama lovers are lampooned as much as McCain gun toters.)

And naturally, there are many philosophical moments, because people in Linklater movies like to talk. And think. And walk a lot.

Think of it as a series of small moments that make up the monumental shifts in people’s lives — seemingly random, like playing Charades or learning how to catch a football, or how to bowl without bumpers. (As Mason’s dad points out: “Life doesn’t give you bumpers.”)

What’s also interesting is how Hawke and Arquette (who is better here than she’s been in mostly everything) mutate, physically and acting-wise. We are truly watching a time-lapse experiment in cinema.

Boyhood will unlikely blow the minds of people expecting a bunch of telegraphed story arcs and character developments and typical Hollywood machinations; not much “epic” happens to his characters, except the director caring and trusting them enough to just let them be.

Does it have a plot? Well, like about 75 percent of Linklater’s projects, Boyhood has “indie” written all over it. He mostly works below the radar. But it’s also got some of the most honest moments in American film seen in years.

Timeline: With Patricia arquette (Mason's mom), sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) and (Ethan Hawkee), from age eight to 18.

Like the scene where Arquette, watching her son get ready to leave for college, starts sobbing uncontrollably at a breakfast table. When Mason asks her what’s up, she points out that her life has been organized around a series of milestone moments — births, marriages, divorces, graduations — and now there’s nothing left. “You know what’s next? Huh? It’s my f***ing funeral!” Mason is oddly comforting: “I think you’re jumping ahead about 40 years.”

Or the many scenes where Hawke bonds with his son over camping and Smores, or has long talks about girls and what the future holds. “What’s the point of all this?”, Mason, 18, asks his dad, as he prepares to embark on college life. “What’s the point? I sure as sh*t don’t know,” Hawke says. “Neither does anybody else, okay? We’re all just winging it.” This may not be an earth-shaking revelation, but there’s something refreshingly honest about this kind of father-son talk in a movie.

In the end, as the title of the movie may give away, this is Mason’s story, and it’s a little sad to see brother and sister sort of drift apart, but that’s kind of what happens in real life. Samantha’s story is backgrounded, as Boyhood focuses on Mason’s “experimental” years — wearing earrings and nail polish, and finding his artistic self through photography. We kind of want to know more about what happens in Samantha’s life, but that would be another movie, with a different title.

Linklater has tracked the lives of his characters before — the Jesse and Celine trilogy ending with Before Sunset did this, of course. The final scene highlights another ongoing Linklater concern: What is reality, what is the “now,” and how can we appreciate it more? His conclusion: “Everyone’s always saying seize the moment,” says one of Mason’s new college friends over a hash brownie. “But maybe it’s the other way around, like the moment seizes us.”