#19: Before Midnight

In the history of storytelling, there has perhaps never been a topic more discussed and less understood than that of love. Hundreds of films each year attempt to capture the experience, and hundreds of films fail, falling prey to sentimentality, obvious emotional manipulation, poor character writing, and obvious tropes that are laughably predictable. Such oversaturation makes the Before series (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight) all the more impressive.

Written and directed by the great Richard Linklater, the trilogy begins in Vienna, where a young and adventurous American writer named Jesse (Ethan Hawke) has a chemistry-filled conversation with the French Celine (Julie Delpy) on a train from Paris. In many ways, this is exactly the stereotypical setup one might expect from any other romantic film, but Linklater’s screenplay and story subvert that expectation at every turn. Since his flight to the U.S. departs the next morning and he has no money for lodging, Jesse invites Celine to wander the city with him and depart the next morning. She decides to join, and the proceeding 80 or so minutes are filled with…talking. That’s the brilliance of Linklater’s work: he takes a classically romantic setting, but rather than filling it with sweeping music and overly staged eye contact and forced plot device drama, he simply follows these two as they get to know each other and dispense their reflections on the world, on life, on global politics and food and music and so much more. The observations are piercing and real; they have genuine disagreements and remarkable insights that are once perfectly relatable and yet remarkably profound. Some quotes from the three films to illustrate:

“I always feel this pressure of being a strong and indepedent icon on womanhood, and not making it look like my whole life is revolving around some guy. But loving someone and being loved means so much to me. I always make fun of it and stuff, but isn’t everything we do a way to be loved a little more?…I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.” -Celine, Before Sunrise (1995)

“No one really knows anyone. That’s the thing about relationships - people are always saying, “I want to know you, I want to know who you are.” But it is so hard for anyone to even know themselves. Who I am is always changing, so how can anyone else share in that?” -Jesse, Before Sunrise (1995)

“You know what drives me crazy? It's all these people talking about how great technology is, and how it saves all this time. But, what good is saved time, if nobody uses it? If it just turns into more busy work. You never hear somebody say, "With the time I've saved by using my word processor, I'm gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out". I mean, you never hear that.” -Jesse, Before Sunrise (1995)

“I guess when you are young, you believe that you will meet many people with whom you'll connect with, but later in life you realize it only happens a few times.” -Celine, Before Sunset (2004)

“Life's hard. It's supposed to be. If we didn't suffer, we'd never learn anything.” -Jesse, Before Sunset (2004)

“The concept is absurd. The idea that we can only be complete with another person is evil! Right?” -Celine, Before Sunset (2004)

"If you want love, then this is it. This is real life. It's not perfect but it's real." -Jesse, Before Midnight (2013)

“Like a sunrise or sunset, anything so ephemeral. Just like our life - we appear and we disappear
and we are so important to some, but, we are just passing through.” -Natalia, Before Midnight (2013)

This is poetic prose at its finest: at once believable, words that feel like they come from real humans, and yet deeply insightful, bringing to light the beauty of those deep inner narratives and reflections that often only get shared with the most intimate people in our lives. Contrary to many films in the genre, this one feels lived-in: Hawke and Delpy feel like real people you're traveling with, not idealized versions of humanity falling in love in a fairy-tale setting.

The last two films in the trilogy each follow nine years after the previous one, checking in on Jesse and Celine at different points in their lives. In both of the sequels, Linklater manages to perfectly capture the same dynamics (these two compelling characters musing on life from their unique age and social locations) while updating their concerns, their capacities, and their passions. Before Midnight is perhaps the most sobering of the three, a potent examination and critique of the “falling in love and living happily ever after” storyline that so plagues the genre and our culture at large. It serves as the perfect culmination of what Linklater sought to accomplish in his first two films, and the series is undoubtedly incomplete without it; hence, it makes the cut for the Top 25, though Before Sunset could certainly be slotted in here just as easily. To write much more (there is, indeed, much to write about in these thematically and cinematically dense films) would be to spoil what I believe to be not just the greatest films ever made on the topic of love, but some of the greatest films of the last half-century period. So while my pick is Before Midnight, it’s a bit of a cheat: you need to go and watch all three films as soon as you can, and we can find a time to connect in Paris or Vienna or Greece over coffee to chat about them.

Other Recommendations: Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, About Time, We Live In Time