The passage of time for a character either to portray a “coming of age” or simply to recount the events of a life is a recurrent theme in many films. Unless the piece is a documentary that intentionally depicts the life of a single individual over time, such films most often use will cast actors of different ages to show the passage of time as a character matures. The exception to the rule is Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014), a feature length fictional film which uses the same actors over a twelve year span. Boyhood is unique in its manipulation of cinematic time. It is the only fictional film, which by virtue of using the same actors over an extended period of time, seamlessly meshes together the changes that the characters undergo as part of the script with the physical and emotional changes that the actors endure as a result of change in age and maturity.
Though Boyhood follows the lives of all of the members of a dysfunctional family it focuses specifically on Mason Jr., the main character. As such, the film follows Mason Jr. from the time he is in elementary school until he starts college. The strength of Boyhood lies in its ability to capture the authenticity of the cultural trends of each of the moments in time in which the film is being shot without forfeiting continuity. The end result is that Boyhood proceeds linearly and seamlessly. Despite the dramatic changes in Mason Jr.’s appearance as well as that of those around him, there are no moments of hesitation, leaps of faith or incongruence. Rather than specifically indicating a change or switch in time, in this film long periods are condensed into fragments which can sometimes take the viewer by surprise. This approach to the depiction of time gives the film an almost mundane and banal feeling. The passing of time in Boyhood captures the normalcy and individual moments of the film's fictional family without a lot of emphasis and interjection from Linklater or even the characters.
Unlike in Boyhood in which the lives of the characters continue to play out regardless of the outcome and the film persists from year to year, Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours (2010) takes the five day experience of a single character and transforms it into an agonizing ninety minute film that provides no respite from anxiety for the audience. In 127 Hours, Boyle recounts the true story of Aron Ralston, a hiker who becomes stranded alone in a canyon after a boulder falls on top of him and traps his arm. Ralston’s suffering in the film is portrayed as a “neo-documentary” as he is able to record his ordeal due to the fact that he had a camera with him during his accident, creating a video diary as events unfolded in real time. In fact, the use of the camera in both films exacerbates the sense of time being manipulated. Although the long shots in Boyhood give the feeling that the camera is acting as an observer over stretches of time, in 127 Hours the camera truly observes Ralston’s attempt to free himself from his situation, and at times is also very intimate. The moments of re-enacted actual footage from Ralston’s personal camera are interspersed with flashbacks of his past memories, which have a hallucinatory feel and give the film a sense of time warping.
Though Boyhood was shot in segments over a long period of time and is a fictional film, it is still able to provide a feeling of “real time” and authentic setting without so much as a hint of a lack of continuity. On the other hand 127 Hours, which is a true story that by virtue of relying on video documentation must be continuous, still manages to warp time and detach the audience from the “realistic” perception of time. This innovation and genius of manipulation of time in Boyhood, 127 Hours, and many other films rests firmly in the ability to have the audience feel its passage, real or imagined, without lulling us into boredom or disbelief.
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