Brow Beat

Apehood Is a Beautiful Story About Growing Up … as an Ape

The franchise film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Richard Linklater’s meditative cinematic experiment Boyhood, both opening this weekend, may seem to have nothing in common. But at the heart of each film is a classic bildungsroman narrative—an ape and a boy, respectively, being shaped over the years by their surroundings, and coming into adulthood.

That’s what makes “Apehood,” film editor and video essayist Nelson Carvajal’s clever mashup of the two films, such fun. Throw in a few clips from Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the wistful song from the Boyhood trailer (“Hero,” by Family of the Year), and suddenly Caesar the ape is the perfect faux-Linklater star.