Dazzling drama written and directed by Richard Linklater (who also made the excellent Before... films). It was filmed across 12 years, so you see a family literally growing and growing older before your eyes. It’s uncanny and very powerful.
Ellar Coltrane plays the boy, who we get to know at various points from ages six to 18. Lorelei Linklater (the director’s daughter) is his smart, pushy sister. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke play their divorced parents, trying their best in life and love and finding that just as difficult as we all do. All four of them turn in stunningly believable performances.
It’s very touching indeed – heartbreaking, funny and enthralling. There are so many threads and it’s an incredibly rich narrative, although never complicated. Each time-snapshot segment works like a short story in its own right, but then we leap forward a few weeks, months or years and see how each episode feeds into the next.
I can’t imagine how a project this ambitious could have been planned and executed so skilfully, but Linklater pulls it off.
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