The Oscars are coming! As longtime MCC followers should know, I’m one of those guys who makes a habit of seeing all the Best Picture nominees every year for fun and entertainment and amateur prognostication purposes. It’s been my thing since 1997 and there hasn’t been a nominee repugnant enough to ruin the ritual for me yet. I had a couple of close calls full of regret, to be sure, but so far I’ve not backed down.

With the official nominations announcement coming next Thursday morning, January 15th, I decided getting a head start on my marathon might not be a bad idea, especially if we end up with nine or ten films on the docket. By a stroke of luck and/or shrewd marketing calculations, this week saw the home-video release of one of the likeliest nominees, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Even if it somehow misses the shortlist because of a crowded field or ballet-box stuffing or whatever, no harm done here — I’d been wanting to see this one anyway. If I bothered with an arbitrary rating system, I’d give Boyhood seven out of five stars, an A-super-plus, a two-minute standing ovation, and the loveliest fruit basket I can afford.

Short version for the unfamiliar: The movie follows twelve years in the life of a kid named Mason, a Texas everyboy with divorced parents, a bratty older sister, not much interest in school, and a long line of random happy moments and alarming incidents just like any of us see throughout our lifetimes. Boyhood was filmed over twelve literal years, a few scenes at a time each year that amount to deceptively random snapshots, with a then-unknown Ellar Coltrane selected as the youngster committed to the project from start to finish.

Not only do we watch him grow, transform, and broaden before our very eyes — as Mason and as himself — we’re also privy to the effects of the twelve-year process on his parents, well-known actors likewise aging in unvarnished real time. Ethan Hawke is the non-custodial fun-Dad who enters the picture on weekends and special occasions, dispensing single-guy wisdom and fries in equal volumes until it’s time to drop the kids off and go back to his wannabe-musician’s low-rent life. Patricia Arquette is the custodial mom who yearns to provide a stable life for their kids, tries hard, means well, makes headway, but doesn’t always make the best personal choices.

There’s no over-arcing “plot” per se. Their respective metamorphoses are the story. By the end, just as in our lives offscreen, twelve years later everyone’s the same character but no one’s the same person.

Hey, look, it’s that one actor!: Linklater prefers using local talent and non-actors in his films rather than the typical Hollywood process of staffing minor roles with character actors and soon-to-be-major-stars. That being said, a deep dive into the roster reveals some fun trivia I didn’t know: Dad’s bachelor-pad roommate is actual musician Charlie Sexton; one of Mom’s romantic interests used to be a Power Ranger; and the liquor store clerk played the very same role in Dazed and Confused.

Nitpicking? We’re given no title cards, musical segues, CG face-morphing sequences, or any other blatant cues alerting us to each time-jump from one year to the next. Part of the fun is catching when one Mason stops and the next Mason begins. Overall, though, I’m a little disappointed that Teen Mason seems to receive more screen time than Starter Mason. Not that I prefer one over the other; it just seems unfair.

Least favorite side effect of the long-term project: Mason’s sister, played by the director’s daughter, doesn’t transition as gracefully in terms of acting. She’s supposed to be frustrating at first, but over time her line readings become increasingly insincere and self-conscious, like someone who’s trapped in English class, reciting aloud with fake enthusiasm so Teacher won’t give them an F. I prayed we wouldn’t be verging on Godfather Part III territory, but it’s possibly not coincidental that her screen time dwindles in the final hour, until she at long last completes her extended quasi-contractual agreement with one final, short, candidly awkward moment for which I imagine Dad promised she’d only have to do one take before she was allowed to run screaming from the set forever.

Also, I raised my eyebrows when an early scene sees a kid saying, “I know, right?” And I’m thinking, “AHA! Anachronism! That totally wasn’t a thing a decade ago!” But then I had to remind myself it was filmed over a decade ago. I glared at the DVD case. I could feel it laughing at me. “Shut up, DVD,” I muttered.

Meaning or EXPLOSIONS? Some adults over 40 may recognize their own best and worst moments in Mason’s family history. A boy’s growth patterns and spurts are easy to chart, like pen marks on a wall. When adults evolve, it’s easier to miss it until you look back decades later and realize what just happened.

In one corner there’s the happy-go-lucky parent who doesn’t do much parenting when the kids are young, who lives in happy squalor because he’s still not finished growing up himself, and who treasures the possessions that keep his youth captured and stored. When he cleans up years later and develops relationships you could never predict, it’s up to you to judge whether he’s selling out or buying in, and whether his philosophies deepen or ring hollower.

In the other corner, there’s the ostensibly more responsible parent who has to be the better of the two whether she likes it or not, even though it means greater expense and sacrificing youthful pleasures. She takes steps to better herself and she finds a calling, but other decisions are made too hastily or superficially, and the ensuing heartbreaks sabotage what she was trying to accomplish and hoping to avoid.

Between the opponents, there’s the lad who grows into a teen, learning lessons good and bad from both lifestyles, becoming unlike either of them and yet sharing more of their unspoken qualities and deficiencies than he realizes. He’s sometimes distanced, sometimes too worldly, and eventually convinces himself like many a young rebel that he really, truly “gets” the world more than his parents do. He’s right and he’s wrong.

These are just some of the arcs to be seen in this anthropological examination of the human condition in progress. Or you can get swept up in the complicated emotions that surge and fade between family and friends. Whichever works.

So did I like it or not? Setting aside the career-best performances by Hawke and especially Arquette, I can’t speak to how the film might play out for younger adults or for anyone who’s never had a kid. All I can tell you is how I took it:

I’m a dad who’s been an empty-nester for sixteen months and counting. I thought I was at peace with my son’s move to college. I don’t spend a lot of time flipping through photo albums or telling hours’ worth of embarrassing when-he-was-just-a-kid anecdotes to anyone who’ll listen. I do love my son and I really like being a dad, though I’ve failed at times. Not constantly, thankfully. But my bouts of parental angst are less frequent than they used to be.

A lot of moments were all but ripped from the pages of my own life’s book, as both a father and a son. The sadness at watching Mom scrape by and survive without Dad. Father and son chatting about movies and music they both enjoy but no one else cares about. Courteous diplomacy with the in-laws from another planet. The trauma of a mandatory haircut. The secret hangouts with the bad influences. School bullies whose actions are both intimidating and head-scratching at once. Adult bullies who should know better but lose their way and their minds. The consequences of trying to learn about life from too many aimless grown-ups. The shock of realizing the twelve-year school process has reached The End. The odd sensation of occasionally hanging out with your now-older kid, as opposed to role-modeling for them from your pedestal. That whole young-stupid-male phase in general, really. Everywhere I looked, I saw echoes of phases past and present.

Boyhood is one of the most beautifully quotidian, achingly relatable, jarringly close-to-home films I’ve ever seen. (Well, despite the parts where teen Mason is kind of a nattering, self-absorbed lunkhead. I hear that’s normal for, y’know, other folks.) Parts of it made me smile with recognition. Other parts had me wistful and nostalgic, both of which are extreme rarities for me. Still others left me gutted and in no shape to write all this down after watching it last night. Somehow the movie kept finding and plucking at raw nerves I didn’t even know were exposed.

My wife has kept some pretty vivid scrapbooks for us over the years, but our memories contain the only known copies of our voices, our moods, our movements and gestures and varied expressions, and our quieter times together between the photos. Above all else, Boyhood inspired me to recall, relive, and appreciate my own long-running narrative all the more.

How about those end credits? No, there’s no scene after the Boyhood end credits, but music lovers of various ages can catch the rundown of all the not-yet-classics peppered throughout, from Coldplay’s “Yellow” to the present. And I confirmed for myself that yes, I did hear some Jeff Tweedy more than once.