Richard Linklater’s expertise – or at least his largest triumphs – has been in the capturing of rapidly burning candles. By comparison, Boyhood (a project filmed over twelve years) is a great fire; burning warmly and magically through the darkness of time.

The story of Mason, his family, his haircuts and his history is both unique and yet affectionately familiar. Boyhood is a beautifully moving drama, but it’s also a time capsule. Audience members whose own childhoods flowered in the ’90s are in for a charming stroll down yellow-bricked memory lane.

This is an achievement. This is cinema. This is life.

Boyhood’s nigh-on three hours of twelve years flies by in a happy daze. It is an incredible film; a power walk through the chapters of childhood and adolescence, an epic poem of candid photographs sellotaped together with strips of sticky, sugary nostalgia. It is pure cinema.

RATING: 5/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Lorelei Linklater

DIRECTOR: Richard Linklater

WRITER: Richard Linklater

SYNOPSIS: The life of a young man, Mason, from age 5 to age 18.