The movie Richard Linklater called the “most interesting editing experience”
American auteur Richard Linklater has always been deeply interested in the rhythm of cinema, an obsession that is evident starting from his early works. As a student of the films of the great pioneer Andrei Tarkovsky, Linklater has often tried to understand the flow of time through the cinematic medium, resulting in truly unique pieces.
While movies like Slacker try to latch onto the seemingly inimitable pace of time that structures our reality, the Dazed and Confused director has also used larger projects to further delve into the special relationship that cinema has with temporality. The most well-known example of this is, of course, Linklater’s beloved Before Trilogy.
Starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, Linklater set out to construct a portrait of a relationship that was fragmented into three periods, capturing not only the magic of falling in love but the devastating mundanity of falling out of it. However, when it comes to the editing of his works, there’s one particular film that sits at the top of his personal list.
The movie in question is none other than Linklater’s acclaimed 2014 coming-of-age drama Boyhood, which took more than a decade to complete because the director wanted to film the physical, emotional and psychological growth of the protagonist in real-time. During a conversation with the DGA, Linklater opened up about the special process he developed with his editor Sandra Adair to handle a project that required unconventional methods.
Linklater explained: “That was the most interesting editing experience. Sandra and I would watch half the movie, and I’m shooting the next sequence sometime that year, and I’d ask her, ‘What does this film need?’ She’d think about the future elements. It was a fun part of the ongoing storytelling process, to be editing while you go. And to have that kind of gestation time.”
“Like most movies, it was top-heavy early on,” he added. “I kept trimming away. And then on year 11, to go back and edit year one is pretty surreal. I’d take out a few things. Go back and put something back in year six. Sandra would say, ‘I don’t think we need this.’ Or, ‘We can cut right here.’ It’s been maybe five years since we shot that, but there’s another minute to that scene, and I really think I want that to play out to the end because of this, that, and the other.”
Linklater’s boldness and dedication to cinematic experimentation definitely paid off, because Boyhood earned widespread critical praise and commercial success. Currently, the Before Sunrise director is involved in anothe similar project titled Merrily We Roll Along, where production will take place intermittently over the course of two decades to replicate the effect he achieved with Boyhood.
