Boyhood

We went to see Boyhood last night.

It’s a film that was filmed over 12 years following the life of a boy from childhood to adulthood. It has the same actors playing their roles throughout the whole film so as the actors age in real life the characters age on screen. It was a pretty fantastic movie, if only for the concept. The film itself felt like a rather real portrait of what it means for a boy to grow up. While Mason, the main character, had a life that was pretty different from mine I identified with many of the defining moments in his life as moments I remember as I grew up. Many of the conversations Mason had as a teenager, I remember having, or I have had with teenagers. This film felt real.

The film doesn’t have a spectacular plot. It just seems content to drop in once a year or so to show us significant moments in this boy’s life. It felt pretty special to see him grow and progress in such a condensed period of time. Usually we drop in on people’s lives for short periods of time, and hour, a day, a week, a year. A few people we have the privleged of knowing for many years. But over that time as they grow and change, you grow and change with them. In this film we get to be part of one boy’s life and see it all play out in about 165 minutes. It’s long for a film. Short for a life.

You should go see it. It won’t make you want to rush back to the cinema and watch it again, but if you’re like me, you’ll like you got let in on something special for a few hours, a little bit of everyday time travel, before you go back to your old life progressing at 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day. When you’ve seen one boy’s future play out, it might make you more hopeful for the future in general. It did for me.