‘Boyhood’: all ages film – The País.com (Spain)

The actor Ellar Coltrane, in six of the 12 years of his adolescence that portrays ‘Boyhood’.

Richard Linklater saying goodbye is a disaster. The Texan filmmaker has continued to work with Ethan Hawke (in fact up to co-sign the scripts of his trilogy Before … together with Julie Delpy). With Jack Black has worked on a couple of occasions, and Linklater was who put Matthew McConaughey in the film map with a couple of movies at the beginning of their careers. However, his latest work, Boyhood, which looks like a farewell toast of this eclectic director 54. “It will be my last film but which precedes all, many, so many …” rambles led by emotion. “I still have not accepted it’s over. It was a magical experience, life and art joined in the project of my life, “says a summary of her latest film. Berlin won the Silver Bear for Best Director Oscar and drums resound around. It is seeking the lost Linklater time, his desire to capture the essence of childhood or the “everyday epic” to grow, growing up through Mason, the display goes from 6 to 18 years . Your first day of school, the divorce of their parents, their offspring respective lovers, her first love. All this seen through eyes that are always the same because during the 12 years of shooting Linklater had the same actors. “I could not imagine it any other way,” he explains. “Proust never had that problem. The filmmakers, yes. I wanted to tell a great story without hiring different actors to mark the passage of time. I wanted a single actor. And the only way was to film Boyhood slowly, letting his actors as their characters grow old. “

A players liked the idea. The producers, not so much. Hawke, your continued Sancho Panza, is said without hesitation. Just like Patricia Arquette. The pact was together in Texas a week once a year and shoot a new chapter in the life of Mason. “In total, 39 days of running in a production of 4200 of July 2002 to October 2013 The longest history of production,” laughs at his own folly. Money, 3.9 million euros, got self-financing the project with what would be his salary. Linklater own your movie, something quite unheard of in Hollywood, but it has been able to choose how and when is released

.

matters most to me is how to tell what I want to share “

the key piece was missing, the child at the center of this study time. I wanted a professional not found in vicious and Ellar Coltrane. “I said, ‘I still see you in 12 years when you’re a looking for work and I keep trying to make the same movie actor,” he recalls. It was not clear whether the boy understood his joke. “I admire Ellar that 12 years later still the same kid I met when I was six. Someone ethereal, mysterious, with whom we discover what the passage of time “

Cinematically speaking, the idea is not new. As Linklater remember, nothing is. I recently discovered that the American Stanley Kubrick thought about making your Napoleon Al Pacino filming over 12 years. “With the Control freak that Kubrick was not know how it would have worked,” he reflects. The age, fatherhood, memories of her own childhood … those were the keys that led to rolling Linklater Boyhood. also his desire to accompany a child to the time when ceases to be and becomes independent emotionally. And he would narrate without artifice. “I wanted the film to reflect the way we go through life, not knowing what awaits us. All opposed to a movie set where directors want to have everything under control, where rigged reality to fit his narrative. “

The film illustrates that we never know what to expect “

do not mean by this that the film was at the mercy of improvisation: Linklater clear that from the first I knew which day would be the last shot of the film. Only space left in the dialog to add details today, culture, the young man who was emerging in the child. “We incorporate personal details but never rolled waiting for something to happen in front of cameras. What matters most to me is the narrative of the film, how to tell the stories I want to share. And not express what I have in my mind if the film was an improvisation “argues angry. Linklater wants well separated from the documentary by Michael Apted The Up Series with which it is compared. Nor sees similarities with the series of films that led Antoine Doinel François Truffaut and 400 hits. “That was four films over 20 years. They are a great inspiration but have nothing to do with Boyhood. is closer to Before sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Sunset “, granted. Given how hard it is the moment of goodbye, is there any plans to continue the experiment in Linklater’s mind? “No, but if I had perhaps might someday meet a girl on a train somewhere in Europe. And so do the metapelícula, right? “Jokes the director. And with that carambola sums up his career as a filmmaker indie.