Milkshake?

March 1, 2017 7:05 PM

The Before Trilogy: Time Regained - Film writer David Lim's essay on Richard Linklater’s "Before Sunrise", "Before Sunset" and "Before Midnight" - recently released as a Criterion Collection set.
posted by davebush (22 comments total)

in 1995, I was dating a winsome poet who I had put on a pedestal. That relationship was in the terminal stages of flaming out when we both went to go see Before Sunrise and she essentially dumped me right after the movie. I walked away from that evening believing that I'd never see her again.

a year later, we ran into each other again in the city, realized that we were over each other and could be friends, and that's what we became. She moved away two years later to go to grad school in the South, and again a part of me believed that our lives had separated again.

in 2003, I decided to go drive to New Orleans with a friend, and as part of planning that we chose to couch surf and crash with my poet friend, who was now pursuing a PhD in Alabama, on our last night before arriving in New Orleans. The road trip friend backed out at the last minute, but I did the trip anyway, shifting it so that instead of seeing New Orleans, I'd just visit all of these friends in the South. I saw her again, and I realized a small part of me would always have feelings for her. A year later was when Before Sunset came out. I watched it and a small part of me thought of her again.

in 2012, my immigration status in the States was potentially coming to an end, and I was in the midst of tieing up my loose ends, expecting that I'd have to leave the country and let all of these decades long friendships end in separation. I wrote her this long email thanking her for being a friend in letters, email, social media, and in person. I apologized about how we were when we were 19. She wrote back asking for forgiveness herself because she always regretted how she treated me when we were younger. She was living in Philadelphia now.

In 2013, a solution to my immigration quandry presented itself, and I was able to get myself back on a path to a Green Card. Before Midnight came out, but I never got around to watching it.

In 2014, I wrote to her again and said, "some days I wished we did not live so far apart." And she wrote back, "fwiw, I feel the same."

She moved in with me in 2015. We got married in 2016. We closed on a condo three months ago.

This morning, I noticed that the Criterion Collection was hawking the last hours of a 50% off sale on its entire back catalog, and my wife and I were looking over the offerings and I said, "oh, hey, check it out. They're releasing the entire Before trilogy do you wanna ...?"

"Fuck No."
posted by bl1nk at 7:34 PM on March 1, 2017 [77 favorites]

I remember watching Before Sunrise with my then girlfriend (now wife) in a mostly empty second-run theater. We watched it together in silence, holding hands, and then looked at each other as the credits rolled.

"What?" A voice erupted from the back of the theater.

"That's it?"
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:09 PM on March 1, 2017 [4 favorites]

These are wonderful. Good review
posted by Strange_Robinson at 8:51 PM on March 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Midnight was brutal (in a good way) to see in the theater. Walking out after it seemed like everyone was awkwardly trying to avoid eye contact. Only after reading this essay did I make the connection to the characters' first meeting on the train being subjected to the older couple's passionate argument.
posted by mannequito at 9:24 PM on March 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this.

I love these movies, mostly because I'm the same age as Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke and was experiencing the same sorts of things at the same time -- I was traveling and living abroad in my early twenties, was married with a kid and kind of in a dead end at the start of middle age in my early thirties, and married in my early forties... and well into middle age.
posted by My Dad at 9:35 PM on March 1, 2017

I have an unabashed love of Linklater's movies, since seeing Dazed & Confused possibly every night during the week it played at my local art theater. And then of course, Before Sunrise appeared a couple of years later.

I'd spent time in Europe as an exchange student in the later-80s, and had spent some time doing train travel around sort of wandering freely having those surreal intensely interpersonal encounters of the sort one only can have when you're under 25 but over 18 and are just sort of wide open both in attitude and schedule to engage with life on that level. Life-changing conversations, unexpected experiences, a series of moments like a slideshow that add up to something that is quite profound.

Man oh man, I love all three of these movies. Linklater's interest in manipulating time by using real passage of time is one of the most brilliant ambitions I've ever seen in a filmmaker. I truly hope that we get another Before movie in 2020.
posted by hippybear at 2:14 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

(In an entire aside that I feel is somehow related to Before Sunrise, one of my favorite novels ever is Samuel R Delany's Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand, which is the first book in a two book story, the second half of which has never been written. The book ends with the two main characters, who have been thrown together and have a very intense and very short encounter with each other, are separated by powers and circumstance. A separation that has never been resolved.)
posted by hippybear at 2:19 AM on March 2, 2017

I'm looking forward to the fourth "Before" movie roundabout 2021 (if the 9 year gap continues).
posted by fairmettle at 2:25 AM on March 2, 2017

I've been unfortunate to watch these films in three consecutive evenings, and I've never felt so robbed by circumstance - of 18 years of reflecting back on them, of rewatching, of pondering Celine and Jesse's future fates. But at least I saw them.
I must watch more films.
posted by hat_eater at 2:34 AM on March 2, 2017

I still wish Campbell Scott played Jesse. Ethan Hawke is every slimy English major who uses his acoustic guitar and his ability to pronounce the name "Kerouac" as a way of picking up women.
posted by pxe2000 at 3:29 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Me and my SO watched the first two films around the time the second one came out and enjoyed them both. I got round to buying the third one in the last year and decided to save it to watch on Valentine's day, after our fancy dinner. Not a great choice.
posted by biffa at 4:45 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Pxe: That's exactly why Hawke is great in the role IMO.

Both the characters have massive flaws of course; that's what gives the film's heft.
posted by pharm at 4:53 AM on March 2, 2017 [4 favorites]

Biffa: hah. Yeah, the Before... films are not happy ever after romantic fantasies are they?
posted by pharm at 4:55 AM on March 2, 2017

Eventually there will be a Before Noon about this same couple having breakfast.
posted by jonmc at 6:14 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

his ability to pronounce the name "Kerouac" as a way of picking up women

Putting aside the absurdity of this statement, surely a far better signal of a decent liberal arts education is the ability to correctly pronounce "Walter Benjamin".
posted by cobra libre at 6:16 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

is it pronounced Throat Warbler Mangrove?
posted by kokaku at 8:28 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

I had a VHS of Before Sunrise when I was ~17 and I loved it and rewatched multiple times. It fuelled a million fantasies about exploring the world and romantically backpacking through Europe and I specifically insisted on going to the Praterstern wheel when I visited Vienna a few years later. (Fantasies not entirely fulfilled, I did meet a very attractive Australian in Budapest but he probably would have struggled to pronounce Kerouc and we did not stay up all night or make any plans to meet at a later date).

By the time Before Sunset came out I both wanted to watch it but was afraid that either I might have been naive in loving Before Sunrise, that Before Sunset might turn out not to be as good or that it might be good but that the optimistic ending might turn sad/bad so I've never seen either of the follow ups. It sounds like the latter might be true so now I am even more conflicted as to whether to go back and watch...
posted by *becca* at 8:29 AM on March 2, 2017

Even in the first film it’s completely clear that both the leads have character flaws a mile wide; the subsequent films are about how they end up trying to make a life together anyway. They’re kind of life affirming in that way, perhaps precisely because they’re not happy ever afters: they wear that reality (that relationships are hard & require compromises that aren’t always easy) on their sleeves.

(My partner & I have watched all of them, and happily analysed them to pieces afterwards.)
posted by pharm at 9:24 AM on March 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

I never connected much with Linkletter (though I do like his Everybody Wants Some!! which is sort of a Crown International drive-in movie meets TLA Releasing gay buddy movie) and this trio of films have especially never been favorites...

However, saying that (not dump on this thread), I have different head canon for the ups and downs of the relationship of Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke that works better for me which I will share.

We first meet a young Julie Delpy as the girlfriend of a boxer who likes to jump on a hotel bed topless with a giant Toberlone. She dumps the boxer after his manager gets him mixed up with the mob and meets up with mopey American poseur Ethan Hawke. Long suffering she eventually dumps him after having 2 kids and meets Chris Rock and moves to Manhattan. Ethan Hawke's fate gets more complicated. Despondent, he falls in with a weird crowd and becomes a temporal agent and discovers his complicated parentage which really clarifies for him what the core problem was with his relationship with Julie Delpy and why he was so mopey.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:51 AM on March 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

The hotel argument scene in "Before Midnight" is a near-perfect merging of acting and writing.
posted by davebush at 1:15 PM on March 2, 2017

but he probably would have struggled to pronounce Kerouc

He wouldn't be the only one.
posted by biffa at 3:25 PM on March 2, 2017

I feel like, for my GenX cohort at least, these movies are like lenticular printing, so that each one captures a very specific point in time but holy shit does your perspective change as you move through time while specifically remembering what you thought/who you were when you saw them when you were younger.

We did a Sunrise/Sunset rewatch before Midnight came out and I actually thought "maybe I'll never watch any of these again" but now I think I might have to. It'll probably hurt, but in a weirdly pleasant way.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:05 PM on March 2, 2017 [2 favorites]