The sublime can be expressed in the simplest of lives. To watch a ‘normal’ family grow and change and experience life & childhood & parenting can be like viewing a sublime piece of art. That feeling of being overwhelmed or of transcendence at the grand nature of an artwork.

And in this case it was an artwork, a film – Richard Linklater’s Boyhood – and the ‘normal’ family were fictional; filmed a couple of days a year over 12 years to truly capture people growing up & growing older, together.

In the Romantic view of the sublime, to experience this feeling of transcendence from our ordinary existence allows us to examine the nature of human kind itself. It is to try to recapture that feeling of childlike innocence from youth, of feeling ‘at home’ in the world.

Like a time capsule from the recent past Boyhood definitely brings to life childhood memories, the struggle to find our place in the world, to find ourselves. And it does it mainly by focusing on the quieter moments that fill a life in between the milestones.

The contemplation of the boy Mason lying on the ground watching the sky above at the beginning of the movie hints at this idea of the sublime and again at the end, as he sits watching the afternoon sun over the mountains, the day he moves into his college dorm, commenting on the endless moments that make up a life.