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‘Boyhood': Richard Linklater on Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane Film | Variety

At 53, Linklater has built a quietly unassailable case for himself as either the most experimental mainstream artist or the most mainstream experimental artist now at work in American movies. Possessed of an essentially comic temperament, he has become an intimate, emotionally generous observer of everyday life whose finest films — among them “Boyhood” and the romantic trilogy of “Before Sunrise” (1995), “Before Sunset” (2004) and “Before Midnight” (2013) — are not just relationship studies, but also compelling exercises in form and content. Taken together, “Boyhood” and the “Before” pictures amount to one filmmaker’s monumental reflection on the passage of time, the irretrievability of the past and the uncertainty of the future, and the two projects are more closely linked than even their shared themes would suggest.

Boyhood review – Richard Linklater makes the complex appear casual | Film | The Observer

Perhaps this is the key to Linklater's film-making – the peculiar absence of voyeurism that is so often a core facet of cinema. While other directors may appear to be looking at their characters, Linklater seems to be looking with them, sharing in their hopes and dreams, encouraging and allowing us to do the same.