I was going to apologize for this post because it’s mostly Introduction to Film Studies-level movie criticism, and I don’t think that’s what you read this newsletter for, but then I realized that I have no idea what do you read this newsletter for, and like many things these days that made me feel both better and worse. But I’m glad you do read it and many of you want to talk to me about it. Thank you.
I watched Dazed and Confused on Monday, Before Sunrise on Tuesday, Before Sunset on Thursday, and Before Midnight on Friday. I watched a bunch of the DVD extras on Saturday and re-watched Before Sunset on Sunday. This has consumed my whole week. I have hit that level of obsession where I look for signs of the movies in the grocery store and other unlikely places; where I’m wondering what the characters would think of this or that minor occurrence in my life. I feel like I should read or watch something else but I’m reluctant to break the spell. I was thinking of watching Boyhood next, but I might make a more significant lateral move to Kieslowski’s Three Colors.
Oh, and there are lots of spoilers below for three old movies that don’t really have plots. You have been warned.
I woke up Sunday thinking about Before Sunrise and how Céline shows Jesse the grave of the unknown girl who died at thirteen years old.
“It meant something to me, you know. I was that age when I first saw this. Hmm…Now I’m ten years older and she’s still thirteen I guess. That’s funny.”
And there we have the tragic side of Wooderson’s famous line in Dazed and Confused: Céline gets older, the dead girl stays the same age.
I think I almost got here in the previous post about Before Sunrise: that Julie Delpy’s beauty in the movie makes me cry not (just) because I’m a dirty old man, but because we get older—I get older, you get older, Julie Delpy gets older, even Céline gets older in Before Sunset and Before Midnight—but Julie/Céline in Vienna in the cemetery, in the Ferris wheel, in the listening booth; she stays the same age. But having this thought in full Sunday morning led me to crying while walking Rickert the dog around the park. And not the little sentimental tears like when I was watching the film, but full on ugly-crying.
I remember when my sons were younger, I would catch myself having the germ of thoughts that, if I fully articulated them would be, “the next time Luke is in high school we’ll do this differently” or “next time I’ll insist Nick gets a summer job.” I have always said that I never wanted my kids to stay children, but that I would love to be able to go back in time and visit them. But of course there is no “next time,” there are no “visits” because time doesn’t work that way. And that’s really obvious and banal, but the full weight of that truth kind of hit me hard this week.
Before Sunset was released in 2004, nine years after the first movie. Jesse has written a a best-selling novel based (quite closely, it would seem) on his experience with Céline and she comes to his book signing in Paris. He has 90 minutes before he has to catch his flight back to the States, and they walk around Paris and get caught up. Like the first movie, the “action” is simply the two characters talking to one another at great length about their lives, their thoughts, and their feelings. In interviews, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have talked about the challenge of shooting long takes with so much dialogue. Both Sunrise and Sunset feel like a Gen X My Dinner with Andre where you wonder if the principals are gonna bang. (Cheers if you were wondering that during My Dinner With Andre.)
(Now kiss.)
Like Sunrise, Sunset has an ambiguous ending; they reunited, but what will they do now? Jesse is married and has a son, Céline has a boyfriend and a career. The conversations in this film often concern the compromises and trade-offs the characters have had to make as people in their thirties. We may want them to run off together, but they aren’t twenty-four any more, and things are complicated. How would they navigate that?
Before Midnight inevitably answers those questions. They have stayed together and built a life that involves Jesse’s son from the failed marriage, and the twin daughters Jesse and Céline have had together. This film is set in Greece (I’m pretty sure Linklater chose the locations based on where he wanted to vacation that year) and there’s an obvious contrast between the beautiful setting and the resentment and pain that has crept into Céline and Jesse’s relationship. You can tell that Before Sunset was intended to get away from any idea that the series would be overly sentimental about love and romance, and Before Midnight can be almost shocking in the anger and cruelty the characters express toward one another.
It’s fun the way that each sequel plays in a winking metafictional way with the films’ reception and the audience’s questions about the Before movies. At the start of Sunset, the journalists at Jesse’s Paris book signing have the same questions the film audience has about Sunrise: did either of the characters show up at the train station six months later? Is the story true? (I guess Linklater got that question a lot because it was, in fact, based on an actual experience he had with a woman in Philadelphia). In Midnight, Jesse’s friend can’t keep his book titles straight, because, like Sunset/Sunrise, Jesse gave his books parallel titles, This Time and That Time. (In fact, I suspect that Jesse lifted his book’s title from the lyrics to “Come Here,” the song that they listen to in the record store in Sunrise: “Well I'm in no hurry / Don't have to run away this time / I know you're timid / But it's gonna be all right this time.”)
The first two films play with some ambiguity about Jesse and Céline’s sexual activity together. Each of the subsequent films takes some glee in undoing the previous film’s fade-to-black. Did Jesse and Céline have sex in the park in 1994? In Sunset Jesse and Céline first disagree (he says they did, she says they didn’t) and then agree (they both say they did, she says twice, avec condoms).
In Midnight, the same friend who can’t keep the book titles straight completely wrecks the “fade to black” ending of Sunset by asking Jesse how Céline feels about the ending of That Time: “in the second one when he misses the plane and they black out the windows and have they have sex for days and days and days like there’s no tomorrow, I mean woah.”
Midnight plays with the lack of on-screen sex even more as Jesse and Céline get as far as foreplay before deciding they’d rather fight than fuck. An aside: what would the character Céline say if she were watching Before Midnight about the fact that it’s Delpy who is topless while Hawke stays dressed?
Midnight is more frank about sex than the other films leading to many of the funniest and cruelest lines. Jesse is pretty sure that Céline fucked Lech Walesa (or did she blow Gorbachev? Details are hazy). Céline insults Jesse’s sexual technique, describing it as “kissy kissy, titty titty, PUSSY, *snore*,” which is one of the funniest lines I have heard in a while, mostly because Delpy’s delivery (as throughout the films) is impeccable.
My college friend Daniel Nash commented (do y’all see the comments on the newsletter? I get good comments from y’all!) on the last newsletter post, “Very interested in hearing your reactions to Before Sunset and Before Midnight. When the third one first came out, I did them three nights in a row and found it to be ... a lot. Maybe leave some breathing room.” I respect that advice but did not really take it.
I completely agree with Daniel that it’s “a lot” to watch them all one after another, but I think it might have felt like a lot just to watch Before Midnight. It’s hard to watch how much the characters have hurt each other and to see how it could all fall apart.
Daniel, I don’t know if you had the same reaction, but very shortly after the last scene of Before Midnight, as the camera pans out and Céline gives the wonderful line, “It must have been one hell of a night we’re about to have,” the only thing I could think to do was immediately watch Before Sunrise again. Art can do what life can’t. We can go back. We get older, they stay the same age.
Bonus Before links
Jesse and Celine Shall Bring Us the Horns of Wilmington’s Cow is funny if it’s a parody or satire, and hilarious if it is serious. I was wishing the cow actor guys had a post-credits scene with the cow guy in costume smoking a cigarette while sitting on the edge of the stage with his friend saying “I guess that tourist couple isn’t coming.”
Watch my imaginary friends be funny together.
I also rewatched Before Sunset on Friday and am about halfway through Before Midnight right now (some benefits to being sick, I guess). I was just going to message you with the mostly non-spoiler "Julie Delpy stays beautiful throughout and Ethan Hawke looks worse and worse (though it's possible that's just my ongoing attachment to '90s floppy hair on dudes)."
But now that I don't have to risk spoilers (insofar as there are spoilers to these), I'll say that I'm not sure if I'm going to make it through Midnight this time. It is so hard and so fighty, and now that my kid is closer in age to Jesse's son, their relationship is far more wrenching than it was when I first saw the film six or seven years ago (or somewhere in there--I forget). He loves him so much and still says all the wrong things, and it breaks my heart. I think I also like it less because of what feels like the intrusion of other characters. It makes sense for there to be more people in their lives when they're older and have kids and are purposefully in the same place as a family rather than on their own, but I miss the intensity of their earlier conversations (and of course the much less intense fights).
I think ultimately Sunrise is my favorite because of the time when I saw it and the time it takes place and the age that I was; Sunset is the best film; and Midnight is the most true to life and thus hardest to take. But yeah, you can't go back to Sunrise at the end anymore than you can go back to the beginning of a novel that's consumed you when you finish it (finishing The Once and Future King when I was thirteen or so gave me just that feeling).
(Also yes, I can see other people's comments, to answer your question!)