Movies and television shows sometimes take great care to re-create a time and place from the past. Period costumes, decor, and technology are studied with craft and diligence. We once had a single scene from the TV show The Americans (set in the D.C. area in the early to mid-1980s) shot in our house in Queens, and the production company took the place over for three days, bringing in period-appropriate items like telephones that would end up not even being seen in what made it onscreen.

Yet, it’s often the films and TV shows that aren’t trying to be period pieces that serve that role most effectively, becoming time capsules for the place and time in which they were shot. I was thinking about this recently rewatching the 1997 film Good Will Hunting for the first time since I saw it in the theater. The movie’s outdoor scenes were shot in South Boston and Cambridge in the spring of 1997. The filmmakers, including Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (who wrote the original version of the screenplay together as unknowns), made sure to include some authentic Southie and Harvard Square flavor, but much of what they captured was particular to the time: the cars on the street, the attire of the extras, etc.

My wife and I got married in the summer of 1995, so our first year of marriage was in Cambridge for my third year at Harvard Law School in 1995-96. That means that I remember that particular place at that particular time very well and was not prepared for quite how powerfully nostalgic it would be to see it spring back to fresh life, down to the stone chessboard tables at the Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square. It felt like watching a home movie. But when it was made, it was just supposed to be a movie.