Richard Linklater’s cinematic bildungsroman follows a set of actors playing fictional characters over a 12-year period. Rather than recruiting different performers to play members of the Evans family as they move ahead in years, Linklater waited for Boyhood’s dramatis personae to age naturally. The result is a bit like his semi-animated features Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, which were shot as live action features and then converted into animation through a special technique. It looks real-ish, but is in fact heavily worked on.

Sticking with the same cast does more than just maintain the continuity. It creates a novelistic structure, ensures committed performances, and boosts empathy for an otherwise deeply ordinary group of people who endure childhood, adolescence, divorce, re-marriage, marital violence, school bullying, and the beginning and end of romantic relationships with fortitude and a slightly worrying level of forbearance. The kids, especially, grow into adolescents with an air of calm that can be attributed to one of three things: they have strong survival instincts, abnormal is the new normal in their part of the world, or their instincts have been dulled by a combination of fast food, video games, and mall-centric leisure activities.

Living and learning in Texas

Boyhood is set in Texas, where Linklater grew up and continues to live. The opening shot is of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) lying on the grass, gazing with mild curiosity at the sky above. For the next 167 minutes, Mason, his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater), their mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette), and their father Mason Sr (Ethan Hawke) redefine American family values. Olivia’s endless quest for stability, which seems to have led to her divorce from Mason Sr, sends her into the arms of two difficult husbands. Meanwhile, Mason and Samatha deal with their father’s new relationships, moving to new schools and the making and unmaking of friendships.

Moments of tension, mostly to do with violent characters, are few in a mostly even keel portrait of resilience or stupor, take your pick. The movie remains an open canvas onto which wildly divergent readings can be projected. It could be a tribute to the never-say-die spirit of a family that survives multiple heartbreaks and flows along with life as it happens, or it could be a subtle tragedy about people who refuse to learn from their mistakes.

In keeping with Linklater’s just-do-it aesthetic, the drama is low-key, the dialogue conversational, the observations of human failings and strengths acute without being censorious, the narrative smooth, and the overall vibe easygoing. As he has done in his previous films, especially his much-loved romance trilogy starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, Linklater doesn’t burden his viewers with the weight of watching characters being put through the wringer.

Boyhood is neither judgmental nor analytical, which makes its characters interesting but hardly complex. Linklater opts for anthropology over psychology, letting even Olivia, whose questionable choice of replacement husbands puts her children in considerable peril, breathe. The intimate yet non-intrusive camerawork ensures that we are in the same living room as the Evans, watching them unravel and gather together over and over again. An alternate title for the movie is C’est la vie.