Shot over 12 years, Richard Linklater’s film about growing up is a devastatingly plausible biography of a real person – and a terrifying reminder that life is short.

历时12年的拍摄，导演理查德•林克莱特借这部电影真实地记述了一个人的成长历程，却也提醒了大家——人生苦短。

With so many movies contriving to be dumb, formulaic and yet messily over-complicated, the pure simplicity and clarity of Richard Linklater’s masterly Boyhood makes a glorious change. It is a marvel, particularly its refusal to bend itself into any traditional screenplay-seminar narrative structure. Like life, like old man river, it just keeps rolling along.

当许多电影失去了表现力、结构趋于程式化、情节过于复杂而又毫无章法，理查德•林克莱特的这部《少年时代》巧妙地让极简纯粹之风华丽逆袭。这是一部奇迹之作，它不拘泥于任何传统剧本的叙述结构，如同时光、如同老人河(美国密西西比河的别称)，兀自流淌。

The central conceit was endlessly and excitedly compared by critics to lots of different things when it arrived – largely Michael Apted’s 7-Up series and François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel movies – but the remarkable thing was that it really hadn’t been done before. The nearest attempt was probably Michael Winterbottom’s honourable attempt in his film Everyday.

《少年时代》一经上映，其主题就曾被影评家们不断拿来与各种影片热火朝天地比较，对比最多的当属迈克尔•艾普特的《人生七年》纪录片系列、以及弗朗索瓦•特吕弗的影片《四百击》。而《少年时代》的出彩之处正在于它并没有因袭旧作。相比之下，迈克尔•温特伯顿的佳作《日复一日》也许是最为接近的作品。

Linklater took a child, Ellar Coltrane, and filmed him playing a kid called Mason in various naturalistic settings and situations for a few weeks every year for 12 years. He then stitched together the result: a devastatingly plausible biography of a real person. Before our eyes, the child became a man in a movie time lapse. The movie was loose and open-ended because that was how it had to be. The filming procedure was like life. Actually, it was life. How incredible to have a repertory cast of actors ready to commit, like family, to such a project over such a length of time.

12年间，林克莱特每年都会抽出几周时间，记录男孩梅森(艾拉•科尔特兰 饰)在各种现实场景中的故事。当他将这些片段剪辑在一起时，一段无比真实的个人自传就诞生了。只是一部电影的时间，一个男孩就这样在我们眼前成长为男人。影片结构松散，留下了(现实本该有的)开放式结尾。同时，电影的推进就如同生活本身。而它确实就是真实的生活。像这样如同一家人一般的演员阵容每周固定出演，还能持续这么久，确实令人难以置信。

It is impossible to watch this movie and not be moved and awestruck by an obvious truth: grownups were once children. The adults and the kids we see in movies, or outside in the streets, in real life – they are not separate races or tribes. They are the same. Ethan Hawke, playing the dad – he used to be a kid. Patricia Arquette, so wonderful as the mom – she used to be a kid. And Lorelei Linklater, equally wonderful as Mason’s sister: she is, then was a kid. She, too, demonstrates a real-time growing up.

《少年时代》最令人动容、最让人感概之处莫过于影片将一个鲜明的事实展现在了我们的面前：每一个大人都曾是孩子。不论是在影片中，还是在真实的生活里，成人与孩子从来都不是身处两个“阵营”中的独立“物种”。他们就是彼此。影片中的父亲伊桑•霍克，曾经也是个孩子;影片中的母亲帕特里夏•阿奎特也一样;和母亲一样出色的姐姐罗蕾莱•林克莱特(也是主人公现实生活中的姐姐)，同样拥有她的童年，同样有过成长的经历。

And there is another simple, powerful truth that Boyhood demonstrates, one that I can’t remember seeing expressed with such force in any other film, or indeed any novel or play. And it is simply that life is terrifyingly short. It really is over in an instant. Watching this film as a parent is almost unbearably sad, especially when Patricia Arquette’s mom bids farewell to Mason as he heads off to college, cheerfully unconcerned about his parents’ empty-nest anguish.

《少年时代》所展现出的另一个简单而强大的事实则是：人生太短暂，总是稍纵即逝。而这也是我从未在其他电影、小说或是表演中所强烈感受到的。为人父母，看这部电影时更能感到无法释怀的忧伤，尤其是看到梅森的妈妈帕特里夏•阿奎特送他去上大学时告别的一幕。孩子离开时满心欢喜，却丝毫不知道父母心中的“空巢之痛”。

Boyhood is a film that inspires love. There can hardly be anything more worthwhile than that.

《少年时代》唤起了我们的爱——这世上最珍贵的存在。