“It’s an America where people
transform their lives for the
better, but like political
promises, we never see
how any of this is achieved.”
the same thing on a larger scale,
spending 12 years chronicling a
fictional character essayed by an
unknown child actor.
The lead character of Winterbottom’s film was a prison inmate, the film broken into chapters revolving around his annual
weekend leaves from confinement, which he spends with his
family. I didn’t think much of it
at the time, but having now seen
Boyhood, I can fully appreciate
why Winterbottom employed
this device. It allows us to share
the character’s sense of how
much of life, and his children’s
development, he’s missing. Each
time he sees his children, they’re
a little more unrecognisable to
both himself and the viewer.
With Boyhood, however, the
lead character is the child himself, so the narrative jumps become jarring. Imagine, if you
will, watching a random episode
of, let’s say, since we’re dealing
with Texas here, the third season
of Dallas, followed by a random
episode from the show’s fourth
season. The characters have dramatically changed, but you’ve no
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