Review - Boyhood

2002 was, as I recall, a pretty decent year for the movies; Old masters like Roman Polanski and Martin Scorsese were churning out vital and lovingly crafted historical dramas; Rising stars like Spike Jonze, Charlie Kauffman, and Rob Marshall made a big splash with conceptually daring genre experiments; Steven Spielberg was having a ton of fun with a one-two punch of smart and entertaining popcorn pics; The ever-opinionated Michael Moore gave the documentary industry an urgent shot in the arm; American audiences got to set eyes on a number of foreign treasures from Hayao Miyazaki, Alfonso Cuaron, and many more... And that's just scratching the surface.

But perhaps the most unique and singular cinematic undertaking of that year is one that wouldn't see the light of day until 2014, for 2002 is when Richard Linklater began filming his magnum opus Boyhood, which he shot in sequence over the course of a dozen years and has finally unveiled for us this summer.

This patient process (also evidenced in Linklater's decade-spanning Before trilogy) might be dismissed by some as a conceptual gimmick, and in the hands of a lesser director it very well could be. But Linklater's vision takes the fragmented instants of a childhood – the agony, the ecstasy, and the mundane – and elevates it to high art. Boyhood is in fact a masterpiece of objective observation, with a soft-spoken but profound epiphany about the ethereal constancy of life hidden amongst the minutia.