Boy A - Behind The Scenes

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"Boy A"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
July 24, 2008

Watch "Boy A" Trailer

Boy A

BOY A is the adaptation of Jonathan Trigell’s novel of the same name. It was an odd case of serendipity that the film was made with a writer and director already working together.

“Channel 4 called me in and said, ‘We’ve got a few things you might like to have a look at and one is Mark O’Rowe’s script.’” They knew I had a relationship with Mark and we were developing another screenplay together for the last 3-4 years, notes Crowley. BOY A marks Crowley’s second collaboration with O’Rowe. The first was 2003’s highly acclaimed film, INTERMISSION, for which Crowley won the British Independent Film Award for Debut Director.

It wasn’t Crowley’s first introduction to BOY A. “I knew Mark was writing it because he’d talk about it from time to time,” recalls Crowley. “They asked me to take a look at it even though they were not going to do it until the following year. Mark’s script—it just socked me in the jaw. I read it and immediately phoned them and said, ‘Please can I make this movie and can we start this yesterday!’” Crowley wasn’t the only one eager to start production. “Mark was thrilled when he heard I was doing it and gung ho to make it. It all happened very quickly. We were all breathless by the end of it,” he adds.

Screenwriter Mark O’Rowe remembers, “When I read the book for the first time I found the first two chapters it terrifying. You know that this guy Jack has done something appalling, but you don’t quite know what, so there is tension there. So what we did with the film was try to make the audience fall for the character of Jack before we reveal the truth of why he was convicted.”

As soon as Crowley read the script he knew it was going to be a challenge to find an actor that would be convincing in such a complex and difficult role. “I realized that the key to it was in the casting—choosing a performer you would immediately engage with was the key,” notes Crowley. “We met an awful lot of brilliant young actors here but Andrew Garfield, who was actually shooting LIONS FOR LAMBS at the time in LA, put himself on tape and the second I saw the audition, it was an open and shut case.

Andrew, who stars as Jack, created a very naïve and sympathetic character that was no longer a boy yet never really grew into a man. “You just see him as an ordinary young man trying to adjust to a world he doesn’t quite understand—like any young person,” explains Garfield. “So it felt like a very universal journey up until we find out all that he is and what he’s done.”

Throughout the film, the audience becomes part of the story because so many relevant issues are addressed in such a real way. “First you meet Jack and he’s just a sweet natured young adult. The structure of the film is important to the characterization because you get to know him and go on an emotional journey with him, so the viewer starts off on his side,” remarks O’Rowe. “In fact the audience spends almost all of the film with him before they find out about the horrifying crime he committed.”

“Jack’s more of an expression of a young boy in a man’s body. He has come out of prison in his 20s and he hasn’t had a life and it’s very, very endearing and affecting to watch him stumble with Michelle, his girlfriend—trying to ask her out of a date. You just want to help him. You immediately want to give him the words. It’s very affecting to watch him at his first day at work. The fear of being caught and the desperate need to have people like him and the rush to throw himself at life and just have a go at the thing we all take for granted. Showing up for a job everyday and going out for a drink with a girl—these are not extraordinary things. There’s such a forward impulse in him, that you want him to have a go at life and for it to be ok,” declares Crowley.

Katie Lyons who plays Michelle, Boy A’s love interest, agrees with the approach O’Rowe and Crowley took. “As soon as I read the script the sympathy for Jack was, for me, the biggest draw in to the story. O’Rowe’s conscientious decision to do this, to gradually leak the facts behind Jack’s horrific past, not only pull the audience in but also pull in the surrounding characters,” Lyons says.

“There’s a fate tightened around him as you go forward in the story and also as we go backwards in the story and find out a bit more about what he was in prison for,” notes Crowley. As for Garfield’s portrayal of Jack, he describes it as “an astonishing performance.”

Garfield credits Crowley with setting the tone for the film as well as conveying the complexities to the cast. “[He] came in with a sensitivity everyday and real support. He knew how sensitive it was and he understands actors, which directors don’t always do. We talked about my process and how I liked to work and he made me feel as at home as possible,” notes Garfield. His character had additional pressures because if Jack didn’t come off as genuine so many other elements wouldn’t fall into place. “I never felt like it was totally on my shoulders. Obviously, there were a couple of moments where I was like, ‘If I don’t believe me, who the hell is going to believe me?’”

Playing Jack’s love interest was also extremely challenging. In many ways she is the character most people will identify with. She gets closer to him and knows him better than anyone—yet she doesn’t know him at all. With all the love she feels for Jack, if he can’t win her over—his new life is over. It was a difficult character to pull off because as an actress, Lyons was well aware of what the character was capable of. “I needed to forget how it all tragically ended during filming to allow the honesty of Michelle’s feelings to come through and hopefully avoid a contrived or tainted depiction of her feelings towards him. Luckily for me most of my scenes were shot in chronological order, which really helped,” notes Lyons.

It would have been ideal if the entire film was shot chronologically. “We were working as a small unit—we shoot and move on very fast. The schedule I’m afraid, as is often times the case, is dependant on the availability of the actors,” explains Crowley. “For Andrew we couldn’t shoot all his scenes chronologically. Where possible, I asked the assistant director to schedule in terms of that order. Katie got lucky,” he notes. It was also fortunate because Katie’s difficult role parallels that of the audience as they begin to learn more about Jack and experience what may be a painful introspection.

Garfield was well aware of the powerful affect his character could hopefully have on people. “The pure fact that he’s a human being and these people do exist and they are, at the end of the day, human beings,” he notes. “Human beings aren’t black and white and they aren’t good and evil. That’s not real, it’s storybook stuff.”

The film evokes many emotions and is polarizing because so many questions arise - the film doesn’t let anyone off easy in this regard. Having to deal with those issues for many months, the cast was constantly analyzing how they felt. Some had clear opinions going in but as a result of the film, many looked at the situation from a very different perspective. “My feelings towards these issues were a confusing mesh of rights and wrongs—and still are. There is no easy answer, which is why BOY A makes such a great piece of drama,” says Lyons.

It would be difficult to view without introspection and ultimately passing judgement—on Jack and those around him. “It’s a sign of a very complicated piece of work,” notes Crowley. “There are certain times, as a director, you absolutely want to unify the audience and you know at the moment what you want to have it be. And this is just not that kind of film. I know people have very different responses to it—it’s a film that returns you back to your own preconceptions and in a way is a challenge to them.” He also admits that not everyone is prepared to face such intimate revelations. “People may reject the film for that but it will still force them to look at things that they’d rather not look at.”

He continues, “That’s what appealed to me about the film. I didn’t know how I’d feel myself, which is what drew me. The idea if suddenly I was told that somebody who I was working with, who I knew very well—who I thought I knew very well, actually was not the person they said? What if, when they were 12 they had been involved in a horrific crime? Would you want your children around this person? Would you want your daughter to be around him? How would you feel?”

Further complications arise when factoring in beliefs that evil is innate or a learned behaviour. “I have always shared the view that children are the product of adults and ultimately adults need to accept the blame for the crimes of their children—and these were themes that particularly stood out in Jonathan Trigell’s novel as well as in the film and therefore have somewhat reaffirmed my feelings,” admits Lyons.

“For people to label a child born ‘evil’ is ignorant and it’s negating any kind of personal responsibility,” affirms Garfield. “When you immediately come to that conclusion you distance yourself from understanding and dismiss any other possibilities. I went in knowing it was going to be a point of controversy but also thinking it could make all of us look at this boy differently and then it just wasn’t a story they read in the paper. So the challenge was to humanize something that people want to believe is inhuman,” he adds.

“It’s all about whether [the] viewer, changes [their] feelings for Jack and whether having gotten to know him [they] can then forgive him, or not,” says O’Rowe. Rehabilitation doesn’t necessarily co-exist with forgiveness, which makes the film very complicated. “Hopefully it will make people think about redemption and forgiveness, and about how easy it is to forgive and whether or not they could forgive if it was their child,” comments Garfield.

For O’Rowe, “BOY A is more about giving someone a second chance. Jack has been in prison for 14 years. He has missed out on his formative years. Had I wanted to show him ‘coming to terms’ with what he did I would’ve changed the structure of the film and shown the crime earlier.”

The manner in which the crime is depicted is also deliberate. “I felt it is important to keep a necessary distance from some of those events in the story because there’s a line you can’t cross ethically,” Crowley explains. “The other kid is by far the more violent of the two. As outsiders their meeting is like a perfect storm—it’s a horribly fateful meeting. One boy is quite passive and easily led. He develops a loyalty to the other because he’s the only person who’s befriended him and stood up for him and given him some power or agency in the world. Unfortunately, he joins forces with a child who’s been horribly brutalized and who redirects that brutality into the world. It’s not intended that he was a witness—the intention from the book and the story is telling—even if its very subtle and delicately ambivalent at the end. He was part of that crime,” Crowley explains.

“As the film goes on there’s a denial aspect, you want to think ‘no, no, I’m sure he was only an accessory. I’m sure it’s not him it’s the other kid,’” notes Crowley. “In the end you realize he picked up the knife and he walked under that bridge—that makes you decide—guilty or not guilty? What does that say about your judgment? About the person you spent the last one and a half hours rooting for. I think they’re very tough, not easily resolved questions.”

“The story is also about him discovering the world again. So when the story starts it’s actually about his second chance and seeing if he can live in this world,” Crowley adds.

Living in this world proves difficult with the power of media to perpetuate a mob mentality—especially when using selective facts. Once anger is ignited, it is beyond any reasoning. Although it’s been 14 years since the crime, the media touts Boy A’s release from prison and splashes the gruesome details of the crime and trial everywhere once again. This stoking of public awareness not only drudges up the hatred, it introduces an entirely new generation to it. There is little doubt, in the publics’ eyes, that the perpetrator will ever pay for his crime with anything less than his own death.

“The film challenges the penal system and its view to reform and rehabilitate its users, but more pressing is the theme of guilt and forgiveness of the individual. It is the story of the individual as well as the facts that can often get lost in the media frenzy that follows such crimes. These are all things that sit uneasily with me, and even more so since making BOY A,” reveals Lyons.

With the intense public awareness of his crime and his personal, constant reminder of it, it becomes far more treacherous accepting a second chance. Jack is also less than convinced he wants one. The thought of navigating through a world he left as a boy and entered again as a man is a daunting task. What makes it possible is Jack’s caseworker Terry, played by award-winning actor and filmmaker Peter Mullan. The chemistry between Jack and Terry is remarkable—perhaps because Terry is also confronting his own demons. Andrew felt that closeness in rehearsals, when filming and long after the film was in the can.

Garfield says, “What was wonderful is that our relationship on screen was very reflective of our relationship in real life. I think that enabled our relationship to feel real—because it was real. We formed a relationship as soon as we started working and rehearsing. He was extremely supportive and he taught me because indirectly I was seeking his advice on acting, on the business, how to live with the business and keep a hold of myself.” Garfield continues, “He is a mentor to me now and he was a huge mentor to me through filming. So when the cameras were rolling we didn’t have to think about how we felt about each other. I was there with someone that I really loved and respected and aspire to develop qualities that he has. He’s very generous, openhearted and so well rounded – he has such a rich life. His life is written all over his eyes and his face and he can tell a really good story.”

Peter Mullan was first choice for Terry as his warmth, intelligence, and authority were exactly what John wanted. “I feel he did the most wonderful job portraying Terry,” says Crowley. “It’s a difficult role because really he is there as sort of an uncle or quasi father figure for Jack. The failure within the system and the failure of parenting unravel. Even Terry’s wish to do good by rehabilitating Jack comes at the cost of his own family life and that has terrible consequences. By focusing ostensibly on this case, he allowed his relationship with his wife to fall apart and hasn’t formed any relationship with his own son. No matter how much good he does for Jack, his issues with his own child ultimately bring about terrible destruction.

One of the most powerful exchanges occurs when Terry presents Jack with a pair of sneakers. The scene originally was put on the sidelines during editing because Crowley hadn’t found anywhere to use it. He describes a sudden ‘eureka’ moment. “It’s such a great scene because you immediately root for him and you feel sorry for this kid,” states Crowley. “That whatever he’s been locked away for, he’s so desperate for some kind of a life—some engagement with the world. A crummy pair of sneakers and the act of generosity mean more than he can actually express with words. It’s also a theme running through the film—Jack’s attempt to express himself. Occasionally he cannot find the words to express his emotions. I found that very moving and wanted to draw that out.” Crowley sums up, “All of that’s about the inner aspects of the character which an audience can immediately play into—hope for the best for him and then you begin the rather more complicated part of the journey which is a moral thriller. You’re gradually being placed in a little bit more of a challenging and uncomfortable position in relation to his actions in the past. And that is the full journey.”