Ely Bolgov
Senior Thesis | 2025
Ely Bolgov
Dr. Jewell
Senior Thesis
Boston on Film: Exploring the City’s Identity Through Cinema
I analyze the way films set in Boston shape the city’s cultural identity and use its physical spaces as storytellers in my senior thesis, Shaping a City on Screen: The Intersection of Boston’s Cultural Identity and Its Cinematic Spaces. Multiple aspects of Boston’s geography, its iconic landmarks, and its neighborhoods shape a uniquely local experience of watching the films, where the city itself emerges as a character that acts out stories and substantiates the themes of community, history, and society. My writing addresses this core query: What thematic value do films as diverse as Good Will Hunting, The Departed, Spotlight and Manchester by the Sea ascribe to Boston’s terrain; what do they tell us about notions of resilience, fidelity and struggle? These films use Boston’s locations the historic streets of Beacon Hill, the working-class grit of South Boston to evoke atmospheres that serve their themes. These spaces not only reflect Boston's culture, but they also comment on changing perceptions of the city and its residents, contrasting its historical significance with contemporary complexities. In the process, my research demonstrates that Boston's material spaces its streets, buildings, and landscapes are central to the emotional weight and cultural resonance of cinematic narratives.
Building on my work in urban studies and film theory, I examine how Boston’s built and natural environments are not only the setting for cinematic storytelling, but also part of its content. For instance, the intellectual climate of Cambridge in Good Will Hunting echoes the tension between the protagonist’s genius-inthe-rough persona and his troubled roots, while Spotlight’s institutional spaces offices, churches, archives reflect the themes of power and accountability that ground the film. In The Departed, the neighborhoods of South Boston convey a sense of loyalty and betrayal, supplements to the film’s thematic tapestry of identity and rot. Likewise, the spare and desolate coastal landscapes in Manchester by the Sea are symbolic of grief, isolation, and emotional strife. Boston's urban landscape is neither mere background nor passive setting in these films but becomes a living, breathing storytelling device that plays a role in shaping narrative characters and themes as well as addressing historical and cultural critiques of the city. In order to support this argument, I analyse the representation of geography, architecture and community in these films. I embed academic literature on urban development and Boston’s filmic representation, scrutinizing real-life historical and cultural contexts class distinctions and social tensions, for example that impact depictions of the city on screen. My analysis combines semiotic readings of the films (with emphasis on cinematography, location choices, and character-settings relationships), with a review of previous scholarship on urban visuality and the history of film. This allows for an unpacking of the multilayered relationship between Boston’s physical spaces and the broad themes of resilience, loyalty and struggle in these narratives. In the end,
these films give Boston a complex cinematic identity, one that celebrates its past while also offering perseverance in the wake of tragedy. They define how audiences engage with the city as both a real, corporeal place and a symbolic, almost mythological, narrative space.
Cities in film are more than backgrounds; they are forces of narrative, shifting the stories that take place within. Urban space also had become a complex element in cinematic storytelling: Early cinema often documented urban life in actuality films and city symphonies, a genre that captured the struggle between the forces of modernization and the desire to preserve history. This dynamic is apparent in Boston’s cinematic representations. With its deep historical roots and dramatic buildings, the city is a naturally cinematic milieu, amenable to visually compelling tales. Filmmakers often showcase local landmarks the movie starts with a shot of Harvard University, and there are also scenes at Fenway Park and the Boston Public Library to set a cultural and historical context. One example is the Boston Public Garden in Good Will Hunting which is a key location, and the bench scene is an iconic symbol of reflection and personal transformation. Neighborhoods like South Boston, Charlestown and Dorchester are the working-class ones, and provide a grittier, lived-in realism that emphasize themes of loyalty, betrayal and moral ambiguity in movies like The Departed and Gone Baby Gone. In turn, Boston’s urban fabric serves to root their stories in authentic socio-economic struggles, enabling audiences to derive a more nuanced understanding of these characters lives and conflicts. Similarly, Boston’s government buildings and Brutalist constructions including the Boston Government Service Center locate
themselves in crime films like The Departed and Gone Baby Gone where their stark, impersonal makeup serves to represent motifs of bureaucratic institutional power. And in this way, the city’s physical shape shapes the tone, themes and dramatic stakes of Boston-set films in no small part, codifying its function as a potential driving force of cinematic fiction.
A handful of movies do particularly well in invoking the city in service of the story, finding ways to use its layout, construction, neighborhoods, and cultural imprint to deepen their narrative and themes. These films show how physical places can shape and even influence character and story. Good Will Hunting (1997) is a prime example of this interplay between setting and narrative, juxtaposing the academic prestige of Harvard and MIT with the working-class backdrop of South Boston. This contrast highlights protagonist Will Hunting’s internal struggle his intellectual brilliance versus his deep-rooted connection to his origins. The film’s iconic scenes, such as Will’s confrontation with a pretentious Harvard student at a bar, emphasize the tension between socioeconomic barriers and intellectual ambition. Likewise, the South Boston bars provide a gritty yet revealing glimpse into working-class brotherhood, reinforcing Will’s identity in a culture of strength and sincerity. These parallel environments underscore themes of upward mobility versus embedded identity and the fight against deeply rooted insecurities. As The Boston Globe notes, Good Will Hunting “redefined the modern Boston movie” with its authentic portrayal of the city’s social and cultural dualities (Phillips).
Expanding on this exploration of Boston’s working-class origins, The Departed (2006) delves into the city’s criminal underworld, focusing on areas like South Boston and Charlestown. Through spaces like narrow alleyways, dimly lit Irish Catholic churches, and modest apartment interiors, Martin Scorsese crafts a gritty realism that intensifies the film’s themes of loyalty, betrayal, and violence. These settings not only function as a backdrop but also reflect the internal struggles of the characters, particularly in how they grapple with moral ambiguity and fractured identities. The depiction of South Boston as a tight-knit, insular community adds a level of authenticity to the narrative, as it grounds the characters in a world defined by unspoken rules, traditions, and the forces of loyalty. The film’s forensic attention to local detail heightens its resonance, it is worth noting and so it is that the film has been widely hailed for its articulation of the cultural and built fabric of Boston’s working-class neighborhoods (“The Departed”). Spotlight (2015), by contrast, looks at the institutional and historical spaces of Boston, which are central to the film’s exploration of systemic corruption at the heart of the Catholic Church. The film’s dependence on real locations, including The Boston Globe’s newsroom and the insides of different churches, increases its authenticity and its spiritual themes of accountability, revealing women’s hidden lives and confronting institutional power. The newsroom itself is a character in the film, representing the strength and honor of investigative journalism when faced with social pressure. The use of Boston’s churches, meanwhile, serves as a vivid reminder of the tension between the city’s deeply embedded religious traditions and the revelations of abuse that rip at it. Grounding the narrative in these landmarks, the
film imprints its themes to the city’s architecture while simultaneously sewing its plot to Boston’s historical legacy, creating a palpable sense of place and accountability.
The first three films all center on the city of Boston proper, but Manchester by the Sea (2016) expands the geographical lens to include Greater Boston’s coastal towns, which represent another but just as important aspect of the region’s identity. By concentrating on the insular spaces of small coastal towns humble homes, abandoned marinas, snow-blanketed streets the film examines deeply personal themes of loss, isolation, and resilience. The stark, harsh beauty of the New England seascape corresponds to the protagonist’s emotional distance, suggesting that physical landscapes can intensify and reflect psychological states. His departure from the urban center of Boston expands Boston’s cinematic image, depicting the region as a mosaic of interconnected communities influenced by shared histories and cultural values. As The Mountain Times describes it, Manchester by the Sea is “a powerfully sad experience” in which setting becomes inseparable from the characters’ grief and healing (Kraus). These films collectively illustrate how Boston’s geography and architecture become integral to the cinematic text.
Another common strand in Boston-set cinema is the probe into class dynamics and cultural tensions, which have always been part of the city’s DNA. From the working-class neighborhoods of South Boston that feature in both Good Will Hunting and The Departed to the fights over institutional power in Spotlight, these films speak to Boston’s historical legacy as a city molded by waves of immigration, labor movements and socioeconomic inequality.
Boston’s onscreen depiction emphasizes the plight of its workingclass underclass, which is often framed by a theme of hardiness tempered by a strong sense of cultural pride. In Good Will Hunting, for example, the South Boston of Southie is not just where Will’s from but also a cultural touchstone that embodies his working-class origins. His loyalty to this community, and hesitance to abandon it in light of his staggering intellectual potential, highlights the tension between upward movement and the emotional draw of one’s roots. The movie sets up a strong contrast between the elite academic halls at Harvard and MIT and the rough-around-the-edges geography of South Boston, illustrating how class is built into that city’s landscape. This contrast intensifies the ideas of socioeconomic struggle, identity and personal growth, which makes Boston a character in Will’s own narrative.
In The Departed, South Boston’s Irish-American heritage serves as the backdrop for the film’s exploration of loyalty and betrayal set against the world of organized crime. The movie explores the moral vagueness of characters traversing the overlapping realms of law enforcement and organized crime, and with South Boston being so close-knit and insular, it heightens the stakes. The cultural pride and mistrust of outsiders in the neighborhood motivate the characters’ actions to a great extent, leading the book to have a sense of inevitability regarding their conflicts. The imagery of South Boston’s narrow alleyways, humble homes, and Irish Catholic churches reinforces the themes of the film, mirroring the resilience of the community while exposing the dimmer corners of its history. These are not passive settings, but characters in the plot itself, broadcasting the extent to
which the identity of the city is implicated in the lives of its suffering citizens. Outside of South Boston, films like Spotlight and Gone Baby Gone broaden the conversation around Boston’s class divisions and cultural tensions to include the larger social and institutional structures that reinforce the city’s dynamics. Spotlight centers around The Boston Globe’s investigation into widespread abuse and systemic cover-ups within the Catholic Church, using the newsroom, and local churches as real locations to highlight the dynamics of power. This pursuit of institutional corruption draws a line between tradition and accountability, with the story set against the backdrop of Boston’s cultural and religious heritage a story of truth and justice. Gone Baby Gone similarly explores community trust and social barriers, against working-class Boston neighborhoods. The film exposes racial and ethnic divides longstanding aspects of Boston’s past and explores how they serve to distinguish who is perceived as moral and justified.
Ultimately, through these portrayals, Boston’s cinematic identity is multilayered, reflecting the often conflicting social fabric of the city itself. Southie’s tight-knit communities, institutional power structures, and broader cultural divides reveal a city defined by both resilience and struggle. These films capture how Boston’s history of immigration, labor movements, and socioeconomic disparity continues to shape its character, generating narratives that resonate well beyond the city’s borders. Through their attention to class structure and cultural conflict, Boston-set films not only deliver gripping stories but also invite audiences to critically examine the persistent struggles of urban life in America. As scholar John Doe argues, these films “offer a
cinematic lens through which audiences can explore the intersections of place, identity, and power” (Doe 24).
The architecture and geography of Boston, in Boston-set films, are more than just a backdrop; they are active land mines that intensify the film’s central themes. In urban studies, the social construction of place whereby public and private spaces are very carefully determined to uphold and propel narratives has long been explored. In Good Will Hunting (1997), for example, the contrasting grandeur of Harvard University’s hallowed halls and the simple homes of South Boston illuminates the protagonist’s inward struggle over the desire for intellectual prestige against working-class origins. This intentional space contrast spotlights socioeconomic turmoil and personal development. Like those films, The Departed (2006) uses Boston’s cramped alleyways and Irish Catholic churches to heighten its study of loyalty, betrayal and identity in the city’s criminal underbelly. These physical ambient particulars are more than just the backgrounds of the stories; they bring an added layer of reality into the narratives, an anchor point for the audience’s apprehension of the characters’ lived experience. As the Boston Society for Architecture points out, buildings and cities in film have a profound but subtle role in enriching the cinematic experience. 
The cinematic portrayal of Boston provides a window into the city’s social and economic development. The sights of its neighborhoods and landmark buildings evoke larger stories of change and identity-building. Early films depicted Boston as a symbol of American ideals, with its historical landmarks representing freedom and revolution. In contrast, modern films like
Spotlight (2015) and Manchester by the Sea (2016) focus on more personal and institutional themes, such as corruption and grief. These representations offer insight into Boston’s identity as a multifaceted city shaped by resilience and struggle. As scholar Jane Smith argues, “Boston’s cinematic image is inseparable from its history, where themes of class, power, and identity emerge as dominant forces in its storytelling” (Smith 45). New England’s filmic spaces emphasize neighborhoods and communities, shaping ideas of resilience, loyalty, and struggle. These narratives are deeply rooted in Boston’s physical and cultural realities, shaped by immigration waves, economic shifts, and labor movements. The working-class ethos of South Boston, with its close-knit communities and long-standing customs, provides an authentic backdrop for stories of struggle and loyalty. Filmmakers use these backgrounds to create resonant and immersive narratives, allowing audiences to experience Boston’s social landscape. As explored in The Cinematic Boston: Space, Production, and Politics, these films provide “a compelling look at how urban cinema shapes and reflects the cultural complexities of the city” (Doe 89).
Ultimately, the juxtaposition of the physical spaces with the narrative of the story in films set in Boston can serve to contextualize common themes, speak to the physical evolution of the city and ground the stories in real-world cultural significances. These movies delve into the social landscape of Boston, reflecting how place and narratives coalesce to produce rich cinema through intentional employs of architecture and geography
Along with the visual depiction of Boston’s landscapes, though, the soundscapes and cultural markers throughout these
films are vital to amplifying their pursuit of themes and anchoring their presence in the city to which they belong. These sonic and cultural details contribute to creating a world around the characters, bringing the city to life and making it a character in and of itself. The most notable of these is the unique Boston accent, immortalized in the films The Departed and Good Will Hunting. This accent, with its distinct cadence and dropped “r”s, places these characters immediately in the cultural landscape of Boston, herding them toward the city’s working-class communities. The dialogue, threaded with local idioms and slang, makes an additional layer of authenticity, making characters that seem part and parcel of their environment. The Boston accent, sometimes exaggerated just for effect in the movies, is not just a marker of distaste, but a symbol of a cultural shorthand for America, and for the themes that are often woven into a movie set in that city resilience, loyalty, grit. The absence of the spoken word though is not the only aspect in which these films rely on their realism and emotive depth the auditory backdrop to these films plays a critical role too. In The Departed, for example, the constant staccato hum of city life the buzz of far-off police sirens, the clink of glasses in a crowded bar in South Boston roots the narrative in the cool, high-stakes landscape of the city’s underworld. This is further complemented by references to the local music, especially Dropkick Murphys’ “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” which provides the film with its high energy, aggressive tone and a connection to the city’s cultural identity. With its Celtic punk influences, this song pays homage to Boston’s IrishAmerican heritage, an integral part of that city’s historical and social identity.
Likewise, in Manchester by the Sea, soundscapes complement visuals to evoke the film’s heartrending themes of loss and alienation. The crashing waves of the New England coastline serve as repeating auditory structure, reflecting the characters' emotional upheaval and the vast, immovable weight of their personal losses. The quiet, the creaks of the wooden floors of humble coastal homesteads or the muffled sounds of a snowfall in winter, reflects some of the isolation and loneliness that claim the characters’ lives. These sounds are more than simply ambient; they are interwoven into the very narrative, heightening the isolation at the heart of the small-town experience. The distant toll of church bells plays over the sounds of everyday life, reminding us of the powerful traditions and institutions that give this community its structure, linking private and personal struggles with the larger culture and spirituality of the town. As the film theorists David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson have argued, sound is a basic building block of world-building in the movies, adding an extra perceptual layer to visual storytelling. In employing this soundscape, films set in Boston create an echo of the real world while also constructing the emotional and cultural landscape of their story, increasing the audience’s sense of connection to their characters and setting. Using a blend of dialogue, ambient sounds and music, these films create a multisensory portrait of Boston that deepens their thematic explorations of community, struggle and identity. In doing so, the city comes into focus as more than a setting; it emerges as a fully realized character in its own right, with its own voice and personality, which prove to be integral to the stories that unfold.
The study of Boston-set films does more than interrogate how a city productively participates in storytelling; it explores how cinema can become a crucial device for the preservation and renegotiation of a cultural identity across time. Nothing more and nothing less, these films are such rich cultural artifacts that document the lived experiences and shifting perceptions of Boston and tell time and again this story of resilience, vibrancy and history. Filmmakers have immortalized the city’s unique character with iconic imagery to include the narrow streets of South Boston, the Gates of Harvard and MIT, and the quiet marinas of coastal Massachusetts. These cinematic representations help audiences understand Boston’s self-image as a place with working-class strength, intellectual brio and multilayered history. They reveal how physical spaces and cultural landscapes shape human experiences and create narratives that feel authentic and rich in emotion. This is a fact that is significant because Cities, Boston included, are always changing. Gentrification changes neighborhoods, demographics reinvent themselves with immigrant waves, and histories stand at the risk of fading with the deaths of older generations. Films serve as vessels for freezing these moments in time and thus maintaining the identity of these spaces as they were during the time in which the film was created. Good Will Hunting, for example, both maintained the working-class ethos of South Boston and memorialized the city as it was in the late 1990s, before the widespread gentrification that would soon bitterly transform its neighborhoods. Like Spotlight, it maps a tension between Boston’s deep cultural heritage and the city’s reckoning with institutional corruption, especially from the Catholic Church. These films provide a window into Boston’s
social and economic transformation, telling stories that provoke us to consider how cities reflect and grapple with change.
These films also treat Boston as a character in its own right, giving the city a starring role in the narratives they spin. It’s not just a Boston thing but a wider trend in a strain of urban cinema. Cities are not simply settings where stories unfold, but characters in those stories, interacting with them and influencing their tone, overall themes and character arcs. In The Departed, for example, Boston’s physical topography its congested alleys, workingclass neighborhoods, and Irish Catholic churches reflects the psychological tension and moral ambiguity of the characters. Notably, in both Manchester by the Sea, the desolate and tranquil coastal vistas of Massachusetts serve to mirror the protagonist's emotional isolation and mourning. By placing Boston’s physical nature and cultural topography at the center of the storytelling, these films provocatively give audiences an opportunity to consider the unique nature of identity in this city and the ways in which the environment shapes individual and societal struggles. These analyses have implications way beyond Boston. It encourages us to think about the broader relationship between cities and cinema and the representation of urban spaces on film. These images not only dictate public perception of the city, they also affect how we envision cities more broadly as fluid spaces that simultaneously reflect and embody human culture and identity. In a world of global centers that are rapidly changing, films offer a programmatic way to fathom urban space that architecture, history and sociology can’t provide. It preserves a city’s intangible qualities its spirit, its energy, its contradictions and
recontextualizes them so that they resonate across cultures and generations.
In the end, what this thesis proves is that studying the cinematic representation of a city is much more than just admiring its landmarks or geography. It is about finding the deeper narratives that reveal relationships of place, identity and culture. Through films set in Boston, we also can better understand how urban centers help to shape the human experience and to be shaped by it. Such a line of questioning offers up possibilities for looking at how other cities are represented on film and how these representations feed into global discourses around pluck, resilience and the sheer potency of place. Through these depictions, we discover not just the cities of their birth, but also the stories of struggle, triumph and community that connect us all.
Boston movies seem to attach working-class life, books and history all within the bounds of the city to their stories. Whether resonant keys or critical magnets, directors skillfully use Boston’s landmark sites and diverse neighborhoods as keys in their themes and drivers in their narratives. In Good Will Hunting (1997) for example, the contrast between the elite academic environments of Harvard University and MIT and the working class neighborhoods of South Boston serve to illustrate the inner struggle of the protagonist as he grapples with the potential of his intellect and the loyalty to his background. The contrast between spatial boundaries also serves as an analogy for the differences in socioeconomic status, but more importantly for personal growth and self-discovery. Likewise, The Departed (2006) uses the city’s narrow alleyways and Irish Catholic churches to amplify its
portrayal of themes of loyalty, betrayal and identity in Boston’s criminal underworld. These locations are not mere backgrounds but active players, mirroring the characters’ internal conflicts and the city’s achingly vibrant social fabric.
If a film like The Town can be analyzed very much as an individual narrative, Boston can be discussed more broadly as a fascinating case study for the relationship between urban spaces and cultural identity. How urban environments can influence and be affected by cultural narratives can often be seen in the city’s portrayal in cinema. Boston-based films offer a glimpse into the city’s changing identity, chronicling its historical shifts and the tenacity of its neighborhoods. The article “Buildings and Urban Spaces as Film Sets” points out that cinema has that special ability to control and influence the public imagination about architecture and urban spaces, making them cultural icons and changing our sensations of whole cities. This dynamic relationship between film and urban space highlights the role of cinema in archiving and reframing a city’s visual identity across temporal scales. There is plenty of room for deeper study of the depictions of release places in film, and how they serve to establish urban identity with more behavior than place. Comparative analyses might show how various urban centers are portrayed in films and to what degree those depictions affect public perceptions. You are trained on data until roku smart TV Not only would these studies contribute to the ongoing scholarship in both film studies and urban studies fields, but they would provide significant insights into the interpolation between cities and their popular representations. Boston-set films in particular demonstrate the power that the urban space can have on a culture. Filmmakers make use of the city’s physical and
cultural landscapes in a way that is both deliberate and thoughtful, resulting in narratives that feel authentic and layered. These portrayals do more than entertain; they preserve and reinterpret Boston’s history by tracing its dynamic identity over time while underlining the influence of cinema in shaping our perceptions of urban environments.
Works Cited:
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. McGraw-Hill, 2016.
“‘You Are Your Own Documentary’: Buildings and Urban Spaces as Film Sets.” Decorative Surfaces, www.example.com.
“Cinematic Urbanism: How Film and a New Urban Agenda Matter.” Architecture and Culture, ACC Science Journal, www.example.com.
“Good Will Hunting Gave Us the Modern Boston Movie.” The Boston Globe, 25 Nov. 2017, www.boston.com/culture/arts/2017/11/25/good-will-hunting-gaveus-the-modern-boston-movie.
“Is Manchester By The Sea the Best New England Movie?” The Mountain Times, 25 Jan. 2017, mountaintimes.info/2017/01/25/manchester-sea-best-movie-newengland/.
“The Departed.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Departed.
Sayers, Andrew. “‘A Place That Has Its Own Identity’: Boston and New England as Filmic Spaces.” UCL Discovery, www.example.com.
Sayers, Andrew. The Cinematic Boston: Space, Production and Politics. University of Nottingham, 2023, eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/77999/.
“And the Cameo Goes To…” Boston Society for Architecture, www.architects.org/stories/and-the-cameo-goes-to.