Why the film Boyhood means so much to me now by Janice Turner of the Times

There could not be a film more calculated to move me than Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, which features the same young actor Ellar Coltrane from the age of six to 18. It was not the storyline — the movie could have been about anything — but the simple visual reminder of how quickly a child grows.

We first see Mason, soft-limbed, holding his mum’s hand, then before our eyes he turns leaner, sharper-edged, his starry gaze closing into adolescent wariness. It is time-lapse footage of the whole human miracle.

Towards the end, as Mason follows his older sister off to college, his distraught mother laments that the last of her golden milestones has passed. “All that I have ahead is my funeral,” she wails. Which is a tad melodramatic, but given that my elder son left school this summer, I get her drift.

The toddler era with its wakeful nights and labour-intensive days moves at glacial pace; the primary school phase is dense and hands-on. But once a child goes to secondary school: whoosh! Where did that seven years go? It barely touched the sides. And who is this lunk with the hairy knees who can throw me over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift?

Boyhood also reminds us that the cocky swagger of young men belies their tenderness and fragility. Last week, sharing a house with five amusing 16-year-olds, I saw that for all their bluff and braggadocio, they can be pierced by a single off-hand adult word.

Sorry, I’m being sentimental. Luckily there is an antidote to Boyhood: it’s The Inbetweeners 2.

Janice Turner's notebook in the Times on Thursday August 7 - 2014

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Helen Rumbelow

Last updated at 12:01AM, August 30 2014