文章题目：Memories of Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood
By Ben Sachs
Source: http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2014/08/06/memories-of-rainer-werner-fassbinder-in-richard-linklaters-boyhood
Translator: Novan / Proofreader: Liang Dabai
I am curious about how many conscious references and references there are to Rainer Werner Fassbinder's filmography in Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Linklater revered the German, who was an actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker, as one of the most important figures who had a great influence on his work (which is why I couldn't avoid Fassbender when I talked to members of the Northwest Chicago Film Association last month), even though the two directors seemed to have little in common. Fassbinder is one of the most determined pessimists in film, and Linklater's work is usually dominated by a positive worldview. As a believer in Bertolt Brecht, Fassbinder always draws our attention to filmmaking, while Linklater (who said He was Jean Renoir of American cinema by Newtown Weekly) leaned more toward an invisible style. Both are self-taught filmmakers, with anarchist compassion for the world and a love of literature, trying to live in the film in their own way. Fassbinder did everything possible to make more films, seeing his private life as a nuisance. Linklater, on the other hand, allocates his time to two things, filmmaking and managing the Austin Film Society, and most of his films (Dazed and Confused, The Before Trilogy in the "Love in" trilogy, and Boyhood) use the transient nature of cinematic art to complete his reflections on his own memory and death propositions.
Unlike fan-genre directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Quentin Tarantino, Linklater rarely makes it clear that he references other films. His metaphors are more like personal spells, presented in the film for their own satisfaction. For such a director, it is difficult to confirm whether certain details in the film intentionally invoke elements from other films, or whether such similarities are purely coincidental. Did the character of Ethan Hawke in Boyhood drive a Ferrari GTO because Warren Oate also drove it in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971, one of Linklater's favorite films) ? Or is it because Hawke's character, in the chase of rock 'n' roll dreams, naturally likes the car? In Linklater's remake of Bad News Bears (2005), the group of kids pored over the unconscious coach's pockets, or was it a homage to the last shot in Fassbinder's Fox and His Friends (1975), or simply to show how far those kids can be jerks?
I acknowledge that the above questions are all theoretical, but I am still keen to ask these questions. As a fan of Linklater, I'm excited to explore his sources of inspiration and how he maintains continuity between the running of the association and the production of the film. I especially like to look for his allusions to Fassbinder in Linklater's films, seeing it as a derivative of a fandom complex in the Game of Where's Waldo (an eye-testing game). I thought I had found some imprint on the part of junior high school life in Boyhood, when Mason, at the age of twelve or thirteen, walked with a female classmate who had a crush on him. Linklater used a single long mirror to shoot the walk, with the camera aimed at the two protagonists, moving backward along the alley as the characters walked (i.e., the "front heel shot"). Obviously, this shot is very similar to some of the scenes in Fassbinder's Katzelmacher, which refuses to break the same space to which the characters belong by switching to different camera angles, thus preserving the dramatic origin of the script.
Mason and female classmates in "Boyhood"
Hanna Schygulla and Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Katzelmacher
The walking footage of Katzelmacher shows how two people become intimate without any meaningful communication. The same is true of the clips in "Boyhood". Both Mason and the female classmate love to read (Mason is reading Breakfast of Champions, and the female classmate has finished watching To Kill a Mockingbird for the third time), and both envy suburban high school students for being able to drive to Austin and San Antonio on weekends. That seems to be all they have in common. Mason has long been accustomed to being in a passive position, a trait that will follow him throughout adolescence, but this girl (I don't remember if she has a name in the movie) is a stubborn person. In fact, she is more like a mean girl, telling Mason about the suicide attempt of her already broken friend, taking pleasure in it, and bragging that she will go to the hospital to "visit" her. Like most of the characters in Katzemacher, they have developed the habit of stabbing a friend in the back. The scene in which she appears causes the audience to be extremely anxious – when you watch the scene, you expect Mason not to respond to her words, because from the small information provided in the film about her, we can tell that the girl will eventually cause Mason pain.
This is the highlight of the screenplay, which clearly explains the identity of the girl in just a few minutes, Mason's understanding of the conversation with the girl, and how they are two people who are honed into very different people in the same out-of-norm environment. But it is nowhere near as sharp as the irony revealed in Katzemarell. Linklater also showed respect for the girl's unwavering will and intellect — we can see her path after that — perhaps captaining the high school debate team or going to college to study law. But the similarities in thematic expressions and prominent styles suggest that Fassbinder is not far removed from the Texas filmmaker's inner world.