In the 1990s, Richard Linklater, an Austin-based filmmaker released works that not only defined his career, but captured the free spirit of a generation. Slacker (1991) marked the beginning of his voice, while Linklater was still an auteur. As one of the key films of the American independent film movement, Slacker presents the unambitious and aimless younger generation at the time. And while Slacker portrayed that constant state of nothingness, his next film Dazed and Confused (1993) focused on the same themes, but through the lens of high schoolers on their last day of school looking for something to do. Linklater got to represent what it was like to be a teenager leaving high school in the 1970s, redefining the teen movie genre. In 1995, he moved to the genre of romance and gave viewers one of the most definitive romance films of its time, Before Sunrise. The special quality of Before Sunrise was in its depiction of randomly discovering another person, and forming a strong bond with them, not thinking whether it will last or not, but living in that moment forever.

Fast forward to 2014, Linklater releases Boyhood, a film that took nearly 12 years to make. Boyhood is a study portrait of Mason, a boy growing up from the age of seven to the age of nineteen. We get to see him grow from primary school to his first days of college. As a concept, it is a simple coming of age film, but its execution makes it all the more interesting. Mason’s character was not portrayed by many actors to represent the different stages of his life, but was rather played by the same actor, Ellar Coltrane, for the entire twelve years of production. From 2002 to 2013, Linklater captured the natural process of growing up, with each year becoming a sequence of roughly 15 minutes that covered the boy’s coming of age story. And as Mason’s faces change through time, he not only learns about which face to present to the world, but which person to be in that world.

As the Mason grows up and the grown-ups grey, we follow Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane), as a child of divorce, along with his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) and single mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette), who is trying to replace her ex-husband Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke) in an attempt to bring her family whole again. Mason’s free spirited dad on the other hand, Mason Sr., comes back many times to see his kids again in his cool car as he works a series of strange jobs. But the film does not dramatize these events; it instead offers a realistic look at all the moments these people go through. It shows how parents do not grow wiser the older they get. They simply grow old. They are still the same teenagers trying to figure out their life, with slightly more responsibilities, and in older bodies. As for the children, it encapsulates in a blur those fading memories and rites of passage in childhood. From laughs about the first buzzcut in fourth grade, the innocent first kiss and love, the first day of high school, the need to be the coolest and most fashionable kid around while also being the most nonchalant about it; all of these blurs are offered and begging the question - what is it that makes us normal and just like everyone else? What makes us relate to these characters either as children, women or men? Is being normal even good for us? Or does it disturb those of us who cannot function in those normal environments, after they realize they can not be who they always dreamt of becoming, just like Mason’s parents? All of this gives an embodiment of the fleeting nature of existence, slipping through our hands like sand.

Within the visual and stylistic technicalities of the film, Boyhood invites comparisons to many other films, or series of films, that capture growth over time. One of which can be easily compared to Ellar Coltrane’s natural progression in time is Daniel Radcliffe’s evolving portrayal of Harry Potter through the years. But no other project compares to the level of singular commitment put into Boyhood, condensed into one film only, which blurs the line between documentary and fiction. At times, the film feels like a coin with the two sides. One is a cinematic portrayal of a group of actors and a director making a movie about what it means to grow up in a fractured family through a long period of time. On the flip side, it is the camera quietly documenting these actors pretending to be a broken family through a long period of time. As we move forward with the film, we get to see brief glimpses of beauty in the form of who each actor is, and how they pretend to be another person. How they choose to perform to the camera when their private selves subtly surface amid their performances. When the camera observes, the acting dissolves, and the pretending fades, and what remains is the ambiguity of the inner lives of these characters: from Hawke’s portrayal of a father burdened by regret yet striving to be better, to Arquette’s unwavering motherly devotion that endures past her children’s departure. Lingering in the air is the uncertainty if Linklater sculpted these performances through time, or if time sculpted what we see.

The answer to which artist is truly behind this shaping is of little importance. What matters is that regardless of what the future holds, just like Mason and his family in Boyhood, we will be fine. The beauty of the film lies in the portrayal of time’s uncertainty. While we do get to see Mason grow through time from a vantage point, we are uncertain of who he will become in the future. While watching the film, we live with the knowledge of historical disruptions and disturbances: the Iraq war, Obama's election, Hurricane Katrina's devastation, the 2008 financial crisis, and countless other world tragedies. Yet, amid all these tragedies the world goes through, Mason’s story affirms that, despite the chaos surrounding us, we will endure. We will be fine, not as an erasure of suffering or dismissal of tragedies, but rather as a recognition that our resilience will persist. Even when everything is not fine, we will be okay.

*Chadi Saadoun is a Columnist. Email them at feedback@thegazelle.org