Before Midnight

BEFORE MIDNIGHT             A-  

USA  (108 mi)  2013  d:  Richard Linklater                   Official site

While the roots of this film may be Roberto Rossellini’s divorce among the ruins film Journey to Italy (1954), it’s also beginning to resemble Michael Apted’s UP series, a British TV documentary that re-examines the lives of the same individuals every seven years, beginning at age 14 in 1970, currently up to age 56 in 2012, where American director Richard Linklater has envisioned a continuously evolving romantic theatrical piece for the same man and woman in what amounts to a modernistic two person chamber drama.  Beginning as two strangers that meet on a train in Before Sunrise (1995), their delightfully charming conversation has such a naturalistic flair, and though every word is written, it has such an improvisational feel, beautifully balanced by fluid, handheld camerawork that follows them as they talk while walking through a literal travelogue of Vienna.  In Before Sunset (2004), the couple returns a decade later where the camera follows them in real time walking through the streets of Paris in a succession of gorgeously choreographed tracking shots, where the mood of both films is defined by a sensed intimacy between the two characters, American novelist Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Parisian born Céline (Julie Delpy), playing out at 9-year intervals, with Jesse seen at ages 23, 32, and now 41, whose continuing saga is captured in this third film of what may be just another chapter of a neverending drama.  The question has always been whether this conversational style would veer into Éric Rohmer territory, where mundane issues of the middle class intelligentsia would inevitably crop up along with an undercurrent of romanticism and erotic yearning that remains deceptively hidden under the surface, where repressed surface clues, like facial reactions, might reveal more than what certain characters are loathe to admit.  In fact there is a dinner sequence of this film that could just as easily have been scenes from Rohmer’s AN AUTUMN TALE (1998), a film where the audience is privy to a pastoral wedding celebration of wine and endless dinner conversation taking place in the open air vineyards of the Rhône valley.  Here in the Peloponnese Peninsula of Southern Greece the conversation takes place among invited summer guests of an elderly writer named Patrick, Walter Lassally in his first acting role at age 85, who in real life is a cinematographer that won an Oscar for ZORBA THE GREEK (1964), though the house is actually set in Kardamyli and belonged to recently deceased British travel writer Patrick Leigh-Fermor.   

While not so much about falling in love as staying in love, this is another film defined by conversation, becoming a comic, yet agonizing and brutally honest exploration of interpersonal conflict that treads into darker territory, where instead of dreamily wondering about what could be, this film gets into the nuts and bolts of changing moods and expectations within a marriage, as lingering doubts set in, and the romance that was once all-consuming has become a tiresome afterthought of what’s now missing, where each must contend with the reality of broken dreams.  From the outset Linklater alters the rhythm through the setting, where Jesse is seen dropping off his somewhat reticent 14-year old son Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) at the small local airport and sending him back to his mother in America after spending part of his summer vacation with his Dad in Greece.  While driving back to Patrick’s home, we discover Jesse and Céline have been married for nearly a decade with twin 8-year old girls asleep in the backseat of the car, where Jesse is feeling the aftershock of the inevitable disadvantages of a trans-Atlantic divorce, where his son stays in America and only visits occasionally.  While he appears to be a normal American kid, this is of small consequence when you’re living in France.  While Céline shows some degree of concern, she’s more angry at the middle class apathy and malaise she is encountering through her job as an environmental social activist, growing more and more frustrated by continually ending up on the losing end, where she is seriously considering an opportunity to change jobs.  In what feels a bit like forced conversation in the car, each continues to dwell on their own state of affairs.  Actually this is more reminiscent of Maurice Pialat’s We Won't Grow Old Together (Nous ne vieillirons pa... (1972), where the claustrophobic confines of the car leave them both feeling a bit suffocated in their lives.  Gone is the adrenaline rush of love in the air from his earlier films that have an almost magical feel to them, among the most romantic films ever made, expressed through the continuing motion of the budding couple engulfed by the gorgeous architectural romanticism that surrounds them, and instead we hear aggressive sarcasm in the combative tone of their voices, as this mid-life crisis they are each experiencing is a continuing thorn in their side.  While they set aside their differences over dinner, the elaborate bourgeois setting with other invited guests never matches the interest or intimacy level of Jesse and Céline, though it strives for freely expressed views from various age groups on sex, technology, virtual reality, love, perception, memory, marital relationships, and a rather humorous reenactment by Céline of the kind of empty-headed bimbo that her husband and all members of the male species seem to lust after.  Despite the apparent Socratic openness, the Rohmeresque quality feels class based, where this is the nouveau riche, and one wonders how much significance to place in any of their views.

Linklater has done well to balance the interest in each character, where these films literally embody the lives of fictitiously created individuals, yet with a comic frivolity carrying the weight and complexity of reality throughout, befitting of any quality human life drama. What stands out in BEFORE MIDNIGHT is the righteous indignation of Céline, who expresses herself in a feminist fury in the latter stages of the film, a side of her that she’s hinted at, but we’ve never seen, while Jesse has apparently seen more than enough already running throughout his marriage.  While Delpy is nothing short of extraordinary in all three films, always smart, flirtatious, and deliciously sexy, she rises to new heights here, as her marital argument carries the weight of so many other feminist mothers who feel they carry the brunt of raising the children on their own while their potentially philandering husbands wander off and do whatever they want on so-called book tours, or any other excuse to absolve them of their family responsibilities, where after years of feeling taken advantage of, this male abandonment pattern begins to creep into newly developing cracks in their marriage.  While this resentment has been building up for years, the rage begins to boil in this film, putting Jesse on the defensive throughout, as he’s literally perceived as the ugly American.  Jesse doesn’t do himself any favors with some sexually demeaning comments that really sound crudely offensive, where he’s completely oblivious to the misogynist tone of his remarks which have an almost casual air of nonchalance about them.  While it’s impossible not to relate to the searing emotional intensity of their argument, where what starts out as a typical lover’s quarrel escalates into years of pent-up frustration, the aggressive nature really has a hurtful element that charts out new territory, as what it comes down to, at least in Céline’s eyes, is the male need to control women, pure and simple, but they would never admit to it, and instead rely upon bullshit rationalizations wrapped up under the guise of some self-serving rationale that helps guarantee they get their way, while women simply have to go along with the master plan.  This time around she is having nothing to do with it, much like the continuing frustration she’s felt from her old job, feeling she needs to embark upon a new path.  Delpy is a tour-de-force of raging female disappointment at both men and the creeping emptiness of her own life, as she’s sacrificed it all for her own children, spending her life taking care of others, having little feelings or energy left for herself, where her anguish is written all over Hawke’s face, revealing his own shortcomings.  What up until now is considered a Linklater romance trilogy is a major undertaking in progress, where what began as a film about falling in love is now raising relevant issues on mutual respect and sexual inequality that go well beyond class, race, religion, or marriage, and represents one of the major cultural challenges of our times.  To his credit, Linklater is staging a living theater piece that has one of the hot button cultural issues at the forefront.

On a personal note - - everything troubling about the film, the suffocating opening car sequence, the insufferable, Rohmeresque dinner conversation, and the constricted, claustrophobic confines of the supposedly “perfect” hotel room at the end, all of which lack the freedom of movement and utterly delightful use of space found in the opening two films, led to a reminder afterwards (thank you Eric) that this is precisely the point of the film.  Every hope and dream must face the fact that only through sacrifice and persistent effort does it ever stand a chance of becoming reality.

Before Sunset

BEFORE SUNSET                  A                    

USA  (80 mi)  2004  d:  Richard Linklater

Hollywood directors have largely become anonymous corporate entities, where aside from a few individualistic names like Martin Scorsese or the Coen Brothers, the names of the directors are interchangeable, as films today are actually made by corporate technicians that oversee stunts and special effects.   Within this group consortium, a few individuals from the mid 90’s stand out, like Todd Haynes’ SAFE (1995), Gregg Araki’s THE DOOM GENERATION (1995), and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995).  While these films were never commercial blockbusters, all three establish a personal vision, as they do set a tone for intelligence and stylistic novelty, becoming part of the new American independent movement.  Before Sunrise stands out even among the director’s own output, built upon long takes and an established trust between a constantly moving camera and the subtle nuances of slowly developing characters, establishing an exquisite sensibility defined by cultural refinement and grace, beautifully incorporating the music of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Bach’s Goldberg Variations that begin and end the film, all examples that couldn’t be farther from the Hollywood model.  Despite the overall originality of the film. which is like nothing else of its time, an intimate blend of writing, architectural romanticism, and the naturalistic feel of the performances involved, the film was barely recognized, winning Best Director at Berlin while receiving little other acclaim, where the film is not listed on the Top Ten list of a single notable critic (see Critic’s Top Ten:  Eric C. Johnson | Behold, the Mutants Shall Wither...).  Like Linklater’s two earlier films, SLACKER (1991) and DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993), all three take place in a 24-hour period, each represents a world of uncertainty, and while they all occur in a single geographical location, the films feature wandering characters far removed from any sense of the comforts of home.  This underlying sense of alienation from a constantly shifting world in flux, where the future is anything but certain, remains at the core of Linklater films, distinguished by a complex relationship to the characters.  Like his earlier film, BEFORE SUNSET spends much of its time walking through city streets, where the fluid movement of the camera matches the effortless flow of an unending conversation, given such a naturalistic, improvisational flair that it’s as if they are discovering their emotions for the very first time on camera, feeling at the same time overly exhilarated and quietly melancholy, beautifully capturing the blossoming of youth like no other film in recent memory. 

How does one describe this film, which may be even better than its predecessor?  One must definitively declare it’s a romantic film without the artifice of love, with a finale that is simply sublime and unforgettable.  Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who along with the director are credited with the screenplay, meet in Paris nine years after a rapturous one-night affair (brief images remind us), which was described in a previous film, Before Sunrise, made by the same director in 1995, featuring the same two actors spontaneously meeting on a train to Vienna where the thought that they would never see one another again permeated their every waking moment, never leaving their last names or addresses, as that would have been too conventional.  However, before they departed, they agreed to meet after six months.  The earlier film ends ambiguously, never revealing the outcome.  Now Hawke is in Paris at the end of a book tour, speaking to a small gathering at a bookstore about his novel, a fictionalized account of that affair.  He is asked about that very ambiguity, and answers vaguely, but sees out of the corner of his eye, the girl with whom he had the affair.  As he has about an hour before he must leave for the airport, flying back to New York, the two of them very carefully re-acquaint themselves, slowly feeling each other out and reconnecting their lives while walking through the back streets of Paris, sitting in parks, and at a café, even taking a boat ride on the River Seine before his limo driver meets them.  For about 70 minutes, the camera follows them in real time with a succession of tracking shots, where every gesture, every wince, every smile is captured.  The two are smart, attractive, funny, and real, and the time is spent with the two of them talking non-stop, rarely stopping to pause or reflect.  The only complaint perhaps is that they talk too much.  While what they say to one another is genuinely moving at times, the non-stop verbiage is also an onslaught to the viewers, reminding one of Woody Allen’s romantic best or Éric Rohmer, with flourishes of anxiety and self-deprecating wit, but more challenging and intense, continually searching to find the right thing to say, with gushes of honest, unpretentious realism.   Where it all leads to is a wonderment.  Very tasteful, nothing overdone, everything exactly in synch with these two characters who are brilliantly effortless, especially Delpy, who singlehandedly steers this film into one of the most beautiful endings captured on film, beginning with a song, A Waltz for a night (Before Sunset) Julie Delpy YouTube (4:01), leading to the rhythm and grace of Nina Simone singing “Just in Time” Before Sunset - YouTube (4:33).

Before Sunrise

BEFORE SUNRISE          A              

USA  Austria  Switzerland  (105 mi)  1995  d:  Richard Linklater

Interesting concept, as this movie is a choreography of connecting “small” moments between a young man and a woman, strangers who meet on a train, all pieced together by conversation, where the audience can’t really distinguish between what was written beforehand and what was improvised on the spot, which is what gives this film a feeling of genuine spontaneity throughout.  Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are French Sorbonne student Céline and American tourist Jessie, both of whom meet on a train not far from Vienna where Jessie is scheduled to catch a plane the next morning.  But their conversation together is so personally intense, he takes a chance and asks if she’ll join him for the lay-over, which is about 14 hours before his morning flight.  She, of course, agrees, and the film is nothing more than their few moments together before they go their own separate ways, Céline to Paris and Jessie back to the United States.  Something of a travelogue of Vienna, as the film beautifully captures some of the romanticism of the city, from the architecture, the bridges over the Danube river as well as the many boats, the bars, the street café’s, and even the churches.  As they amble down the street to carefully structured pans, Linklater blends their personalities with the ambience of the city.  Céline is still something of a dreamer, bright, articulate, and sensuous, yet she’s unafraid to expose her vulnerabilities to a strange guy she’ll likely never see again, as she describes her experiences with love over coffee or wine, or even playing a pinball game.  Somewhere on this adventure, she poetically mentions her belief that love is actually the spaces that exist between people.  Following that cue, Linklater accentuates the silences between them, beautifully expressed in a sequence when they go into a private booth to listen to an LP album in a record store, which plays Kath Blooms’s song “Come Here” Kath Bloom - Come Here (Before Sunrise ) - YouTube (2:02),  where the curious glances and anxious smiles are among the strongest images of the film, beautifully succinct and effortlessly true.   

There are many beautiful moments in the film, as they discuss their first kiss, having to say goodbye, their previous relationships, their views on love, and even whether or not they should sleep together, all compressed into a tightly written script that never for a moment feels long, as they are continually interested in one another, obviously attracted, where spending time together is a luxury they would never have experienced had they not agreed to this brief interlude, as otherwise they would forever look back at their lives plagued by a neverending doubt about what could have been.  As they walk or take busses or the train, they discover the beauty of one another as images of Vienna are etched in the viewer’s minds.  It’s a picture postcard of the city, again filled with small intimate moments, as they spend the night exploring one another’s lives, sometimes holding hands, occasionally kissing, but usually it’s the looks on their faces that define what this movie is all about.  One of the more memorable moments is in the morning as they walk down an empty street hand-in-hand, when they hear harpsichord music filling the air coming from a basement window, where they see a young man practicing, playing the music of Bach.  This is certainly one of the best uses of music, as it simply sounds so sublime, which perfectly matches the moment.  What really works in this film is the way nothing feels forced.  Perhaps Jessie is a bit anxious initially, wondering if Céline will simply disappear out of his life, but once they step off the train, their lives begin to take shape as the movie progresses, and we begin to know them better than we know some of our own friends.  Their intimacy is infectious, as are their romantic inclinations, as this is a truly imaginative film about falling in love expressed with intelligence and good taste, matching the audience’s impressions of Vienna as a city of culture, refinement, and exquisite charm.  What better place for this to happen?