There are many films that are stuck in lengthy developments for ages. Director Richard Linklater’s latest film, Boyhood, is not one of them, despite taking more than a decade to make it to the screen. That’s because this is very unique in that Linklater intended for it to take this long. Starting in 2006, Linklater cast the then six-year old Ellar Coltrane as the star of his movie, with Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette playing his parents, and Linklater’s own daughter, Lorelei, his sister. Over the course of the next 12 years, he then filmed bits and pieces of this family’s story, with the actors aging in real-time along with their characters.
It’s an epic, highly ambitious and never tried before approach to telling a coming-of-age drama by actually showing an actor come of age, and based on the massive heaps of praise it won on the film festival circuit, it was totally worth it. Here’s the first trailer for the film, so you can glimpse a bit of the magic for yourself.
Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” is a groundbreaking story of growing up as seen through the eyes of a child named Mason (a breakthrough performance by Ellar Coltrane), who literally grows up on screen before our eyes. Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason’s parents and newcomer Lorelei Linklater as his sister Samantha, “Boyhood” charts the rocky terrain of childhood like no other film has before. Snapshots of adolescence from road trips and family dinners to birthdays and graduations and all the moments in between become transcendent, set to a soundtrack spanning the years from Coldplay’s Yellow to Arcade Fire’s Deep Blue. “Boyhood” is both a nostalgic time capsule of the recent past and an ode to growing up and parenting. It’s impossible to watch Mason and his family without thinking about our own journey.
Boyhood is scheduled for a limited release on June 11, 2014.
Last Updated: May 2, 2014
