"Boyhood' A film starring Ella Coltrane, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke. Directed by Richard Linklater.
"The child is father of the man," the poet William Wordsworth wrote over 200 years ago.Whatever kind of man, Mason played by Ella Coltrane turns out to be the film 'Boyhood' turns out to be a pretty good flick.
Spread out over 12 years 'Boyhood' takes place in the state of Texas in the 21st century. When we first meet Mason he's a small child. At the film's end, he's a newly enrolled university student, poised for another romance.
During these 12 years that director Richard Linklater filmed from 2001 to 2013, Mason's parents played all the time by Patricia Arquette and Nathan Hawke, have split up. They live in separate places at the film's beginning.
Arquette marries again to a university professor. "This is the reality," he says at dinner time. "I'm a parent." But he's also a dictatorial alcoholic and a wife beater. End of Arquette's second marriage. And she's on her third coupling at 'Boyhood's' end with an Iraqi veteran.
So goes part of Mason's life as he fights and then bonds with his sister played by director Linklater's daughter, Lorelei Linklater.
Maybe there'll be more future chapters to this film that stretches out for over 166 minutes. One other theme dominates this film and that's the Texas roads and highways. Like life in all the burbs, much of the film's drama takes place in the back or the front of cars.
That too is part of the charm of 'Boyhood'.
