Cinematic Realism In Boyhood, The New York Times

“Radical in its conceit, familiar in its everyday details, Boyhood exists at the juncture of classical cinema and the modern art film without being slavishly indebted to either tradition. It’s a model of cinematic realism.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Boyhood opens with a shot of clouds floating in a blue sky followed by an extreme close-up on the eyes of Mason Jr., the film’s 6 year-old protagonist. This second shot dollies back to reveal Mason lying in the grass, staring contemplatively at the sky. With these two simple shots, the film establishes its perspective (the unfolding of life from a boy’s point of view) and its tone (laid-back and observational). What follows in the 2014 film, written and directed by Richard Linklater,
For example, when Mason is ten and has long, shaggy hair, he is forced to get a haircut by his stepdad, Bill. Embarrassed by his now practically shaved head, the next day at school he his handed a note by a cute girl in class saying that she likes his haircut. They smile at one another. This appears to be a new storyline, a possible puppy love interest for Mason, but the girl is never shown again. Similarly, at age thirteen, and newly moved to San Marcos, Texas, Mason has an extended scene where he walks and talks with a girl after school. This character also never reappears. Linklater undercuts viewer expectations by introducing and dropping characters. However, these incomplete narrative diversions are appropriate to the broad scope of Boyhood’s story and the film’s realistic intentions; throughout one’s life, many people come and go without major
The film aims to depict what Manohla Dargis cites as being one of the original intentions of film, “to reflect reality as it occurs in time in a sequence of images.” As a result, almost more so than Mason Jr.’s coming-of-age, time becomes the main subject matter in Boyhood. With Linklater’s ambitious and groundbreaking conceit – constructing a film that tells the twelve-year story of a boy and his family, and shooting it over twelve years using the same actors – the theme of time becomes one of the most fascinating aspects of Boyhood. A classical Hollywood production would have been shot over a more typical two to three month period, would have cast several actors to play Mason Jr., and would have used make-up to age the actors playing his parents. With his manner of production for Boyhood, Linklater’s film performs a feat more in the spirit of a modern art film like Andy Warhol’s Empire, where a static long take of the Empire State building is played back at a slower rate, thereby forcing the audience to focus on the progression of time. A similar effect occurs in Boyhood. The audience is unable to not be aware of the real physical development and transformation of the characters as they age in real time. This not only makes their performances more authentic, but