BEFORE MIDNIGHT Cuts To The Core Of You

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (directed by Richard Linklater, 2013)

 

"Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, y'know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me, y'know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on."

--Jesse, "Before Sunrise" (1995)

"So tell me about this time machine."

--Celine, "Before Midnight" (2013)

There we have two scenes separated by almost two decades but bleed directly into each other. From "Before Sunrise" to "Before Sunset" and now "Before Midnight," here is film series that builds and builds relentlessly, each movie absorbing all that came before while following it to the next logical step. To see one without the others is to collapse the Jenga tower. Cinema with a memory. 

Time drags for us all. It doesn't march. It drags. And it drags slowly, damnedly, to leave us with moments enough to realize that. Little things like, "Are my teeth really this decayed?" and, "I guess this is what I'm doing with my hair now." But also bigger stuff, our possibilities delayed and our limitations lazily embraced. Life might get easier as you go, as you learn what you want and ignoring the rest. But it can also gets a whole lot more painful - the romantic ideals you once held close and the versions of yourself you assumed you'd become all steamrolling forward and slamming you into the present. 

Richard Linklater's "Before Midnight" is a beautiful movie for so many reasons. Beautiful for its lush photography of Greece that seems to come packaged in a frame. Beautiful for capturing those little moments in life between what we believe life is. But most of all it's beautiful for understanding that passage of time better than almost any movies I can remember.

Lets go back to the first movie in 1995. Two young lovers (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) meet on a train bound for Vienna and discover a romantic connection so potent and out of their control, it's like they stumbled upon buried treasure. That movie chronicled where they dreamed of going. Next came part II in 2004 where they meet again for the first time, having never followed through on their plan to reunite. With characters in their early 30s, lines starting to trace their faces, that was the movie of where they went.

Now here we are again, but something's different. Not off, just different. Things are darker. More searing. Gone is the idealism that trademarked "Before Sunrise" and even the hopeful realism of "Before Sunset." Now we're left with two people in their 40s facing the unwavering realization of no where else to go. Where they once had "hopefully," now they're left with "actually."

This is the movie of where they're stuck. 

Jesse and Celine aren't kids anymore. Nor are they adults with the time to find a new path. They're married. They're parents with twin girls together. They made a life together in Europe. Now Jesse yearns to return to America and be closer with the son from his previous marriage. Celine, meanwhile, worries that she's not making enough of an impact in the non-profit sector and considers a new job with the government.

What's brilliant about the structure of "Before Midnight," though, is it doesn't dive headlong into those "Scenes From A Marriage" confrontations you read so much about. Anyone who knows Richard Linklater movies knows how much he loves putting intelligent people together and watching them be intelligent. As with the first two "Before" movies, these people have dictionaries and aren't afraid to use them. And the first half basks in the unadulterated joy of putting these two people together again, including a conversation in a car ride presented in two unbroken shots and lasting longer than ten minutes. Crucially we also get them separated for the most extended time period in the series, talking to two different groups of people, demonstrating their lives have grown and allow for others.

This is the fantasy half of the picture. The half we'd feel content to bathe in forever. The half where the two of them can still walk and talk, still amusingly bullshit each other, still share anecdotes the other person somehow hasn't heard, while inspiring thoughts in each other they didn't know they had. It's also essential to the power of the second half.

We too easily frame the first two movies as a classic love story, and that's fine - we're the audience. We can do what we want. But what's dangerous is Jesse and Celine believe the same thing. Jesse, the writer, has immortalized their multi-year courtship in his novels, and now they believe the bulletproof myth of their own fairy tale. They believe that happily ever after comes next because it's the third act and that's what happens.

Thus, when we enter the actual third act of "Before Midnight," it hits like a punch in the gut because Linklater strips away the veneer and reveals their marriage for what it is, in the early stages of decay. It relied so much on fantasy, it didn't make room for reality. Presented almost exclusively inside a hotel room, this last act harkens back to Eric Rohmer art house films of the 70s - intense, behind-closed-doors arguments where people cut loose and let what they desire fuel what they do and say. 

And the screenplay, cowritten by Linklater with Hawke and Delpy, doesn't hold back. When Jesse and Celine finally argue, they don't do it in the cute way sitcom couples fight, more akin to banter than anger. This is rough and messy, Peckinpah with words instead of bullets. They argue like people who have known each other for a long time, know the other person's sore spots, and know exactly what to say and when to say it to hurt the other person the most. 

Celine is emotional and insecure and feels reduced by the mother role she now plays. Jesse likes to believe he is pragmatic and reasonable and deep, while those descriptors are just self-applied. This isn't the marriage they signed up for. But this is the marriage they have. And like the sun they watch fade away in the distance, everything they once had planned with each other is gone. If "Before Midnight" has a happy ending (and it does), it's to Linklater's credit that nothing about it feels whitewashed. Never do these two people solve their problems. They just recognize they have them, that these problems aren't going away, and if their marriage will survive, they'll just have to accept that.

What a sad, but lovely and tender moment when it arrives.

"Before Midnight" (and really the whole series) is so many things, and the easiest label to slap is an exploration of love. Which it is. One of the best explorations of love in American movies, really. But at this point, it has evolved into something much higher. Jesse and Celine are no longer characters in an ongoing romance. They're cyphers. They're vessels in which we're encouraged to project our own desires and fears and regrets and hopes and wasted dreams. When they argue or moan for what once was, all we can do is look inward and empathize. When they're happy, it soars because we remember our best moments and realize we're still capable of them.

Ultimately what Linklater and Hawke and Delpy have done with this series (and what I hope they'll continue to do) is borderline noble, one of the noblest things art can do. They present characters who are singularly their own until we have no choice but to see ourselves, and maybe become slightly better people.

This is vital cinema.