Always right now: On Richard Linklater's Boyhood

The director's new movie goes deep on time's relationship with the self

Boyhood Richard Linklater
(Image credit: Facebook)

On my dresser is a black and white photograph of a boy who is about five years old. He is sitting for a formal portrait, wearing a white polo shirt. He is looking upwards, slightly away from the camera, probably at the photographer himself. His cheeks are chubby, and his hair is clipped short in a jagged line across his forehead. His eyes are very soft, so soft that they seem to be trembling.

The boy, of course, is me. Or at least that's what I have been told, for the child peering out from my dresser bears little resemblance to the man who shaves in the mirror each morning. I have no idea what the boy was thinking as he sat there in his nice clothes, fixated on the stranger who was about to take his picture. Whatever his thoughts were, they were colored by a consciousness that was vastly different from the way I see the world now, some 28 years later. He may as well have been another person altogether.

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Ryu Spaeth

Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.