Boyhood is the culmination of Richard Linklater's fascinating, career-long obsession with time

"You process your life by hours, days, minutes. As humans, we find patterns and impose it on our reality."

Boyhood
(Image credit: (Facebook.com/Boyhood))

Boyhood, the new film from Richard Linklater, is about one boy's evolution to young adulthood. The film follows Mason Jr., played by Ellar Coltrane, and his family as they grow and change over the course of 12 years. But the real star of the movie is time itself; shot in installments over those 12 years, Boyhood captures Coltrane's actual development into a man, a feat of cinematic realism that has earned the film a 99 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Time is a subject that Linklater is all too familiar with, and his fascination can be traced from the very beginning of his 30-year career. In that sense, Boyhood is more than just a movie that look a long time to make — it's a culmination of Linklater's body of work.

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Matt is an arts journalist and freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. He has written about film, music, and pop culture for publications including Washington City Paper, The American Interest, Slant Magazine, DCist, and others. He is a member of the Washington D.C. Film Critics Association.