\u201cWe happen upon ourselves when nothing much happens to us, and we are transformed in the process.\u201d \u00a0(Anthony Lane’s review of Boyhood <\/em><\/a>in\u00a0The New Yorker,\u00a0<\/em>July 21, 2014)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In Richard Linklater\u2019s wonderful film, <\/a>Boyhood<\/a>, <\/em>we see a boy and his family grow up throughout 12 years of real rather than simulated aging. Time itself is one of the lead actors. Toward the end of the film, the boy, Mason, talks with a young woman he meets on his first day of college. \u201cSeize the moment,\u201d they conclude about the adage, has it backwards. Actually, \u201cthe moment seizes you.\u201d<\/p>\n Every one of Boyhood<\/em>\u2019s \u00ad\u00ad164 minutes seized me through its assemblage of ordinary moments that constitute life. At my urging, my 23- and 26-year-old daughters went to see the film. They liked it, but both said it was more for middle-aged people than young ones. This strikes me as true, but\u00a0why?<\/p>\n Perhaps a fundamental difference between how my daughters and I perceived the film stems from the fundamental difference between how children and adults perceive time. For kids, time passes slowly, excruciatingly or deliciously so. Adults, on the other hand, want to stop if not reverse the clock. They have a consciousness of aging that children lack. Linklater simultaneously captures a child\u2019s moment-by-moment experience and the palpable nostalgic ache of adulthood. Longing for what is lost to time itself adds an extra dimension for the viewer old enough to have moved midway through time’s trajectory.<\/p>\n During one of Boyhood<\/em>\u2019s earliest scenes, Mason\u2019s mother hands him a can of paint and asks him to cover up stray marks in preparation for moving. Mason whites out the lines on the door jamb marking his and his sister\u2019s heights\u2014measurements that are a yearly ritual for\u00a0any family. We don\u2019t know how six-year-old Mason experiences the moment. Perhaps he is eager to complete a task for his beleaguered mother, perhaps he\u2019s annoyed that his sister chats on the phone while he works, perhaps he\u2019s sad about the friends he\u2019s about to leave behind. But surely the child feels the disruption of the present moment, not retrospective longing as his paintbrush obliterates the record of growth spurts.<\/p>\n Such nostalgia is the purview of adult viewers, if not Mason\u2019s mother, who is mostly too harried and pragmatic to feel its pull until she is on the brink of the empty nest. That\u2019s when time\u2019s passage wallops her. As she despairingly imagines it, everything\u2019s over in the blink of an eye,<\/p>\n For much of the time Linklater was writing and filming, \u201cAlways Now\u201d was his working title. But the film might also be called \u201cLooking Backward.\u201d Again, it\u2019s the difference in perspective between young and old, and between the young and old viewer. One unfolds to new possibilities while the other feels the sharp poignancy of what is already gone.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s why when young people get married, \u201cSunrise, Sunset\u201d makes it onto the band\u2019s playlist not for the newlyweds, but for their parents. And why Boyhood<\/em> makes it onto my, but not my daughters\u2019, all-time-favorites list.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n How has your perspective on time changed with age? And if you’ve seen <\/em>Boyhood, what did you think of it? If you have kids who saw it, what did they think?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cWe happen upon ourselves when nothing much happens to us, and we are transformed in the process.\u201d \u00a0(Anthony Lane’s review of Boyhood in\u00a0The New Yorker,\u00a0July 21, 2014) In Richard Linklater\u2019s wonderful film, Boyhood, we see a boy and his family … Continue reading ![\"Hourglass\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/r9f.352.myftpupload.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Hourglass.jpg\" "\\"Source:")
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