For Your Binge Consideration: The Before Trilogy

Many films before and after have tried, but few have captured the separate stages of human interaction blossoming into romance so vividly, so organically as Richard Linklater's Before trilogy. Each film carries on the same story of the same two individuals, Jesse (Ethan Hawke). and Céline (Julie Delpy) as they meet in Before Sunrise, reconnect in Before Sunset and go on holiday with them as a married couple in Before Midnight. Each film has its own distinct, unique tone, and each film builds upon the other so wonderfully well, creating a real sense of history across nine year intervals between the two.

Before Boyhood, Linklater's experimentation with gaps and building up narratives over real-time began in 1995 with Before Sunrise. Based on Linklater's own experience with walking around Philadelphia at night with a woman he'd met at a toy store, Linklater along with co-writer Kim Krizan transplanted his experiences into Before Sunrise where American backpacker Jesse and university student Céline, meeting on a train, get off at Vienna. 

This first meeting sets the stage for every interaction afterwards where everything is so organically handled. In terms of the dialogue, which is perfection in the right blend of being interesting and entertaining, but also realistically awkward and forced in parts to start off with as the strangers get to know each other; the performances, where Hawke's more earnest, youthful, somewhat pretentious yet utterly endearing energy playing off so well against Delpy's more measured, pragmatic yet also in her own way very playful approach; the direction where Linklater's light hand of touch just makes everything flow so smoothly and organically. 

The film is essentially just a set of conversations about a range of topics ranging from relationships, to religion reincarnation, to literature, to their pasts and future prospects, and features sequence after sequence of such memorable qualities. The way their first kiss is performed and directed, the 'fake phone conversation' scene, and really what it does is subvert the way characters in films 'get together' too quickly. It shows two very real, not always honest, flawed and very human characters come together and it doesn't hurt it's set against some gorgeous backdrops. 

Now I'll admit that the first film is my favourite, one of my favourite films it has to be said, but that's not too besmirch the other two films which are great in their own right, and most importantly for sequels do not compromise the first film but deliver a narrative which feels just like something that would happen, and has all the complicity of not just rehashing the same thing again and again, but as aforementioned building upon it. 

Before Sunset, is one where we essentially get the two characters reconnecting after losing contact (despite promising to do so at the end of Before Sunrise). 

What I really like about the sequel is it doesn't start off at square one. It builds off the goodwill and some of the insecurities and doubts that built off their interactions in the first film and the gap of nine years in between. It doesn't make their reconnection some joyous reunion, but something more casual, with of course the underlying tones of attraction pulsating through, but also a realistic depiction of their doubts about one another. Their time together in this one is one largely of recapturing nostalgia and expressing reservations and it's again done in such a realistic fashion, and how it all ends is again captured with the right amount of ambiguity.

Before Midnight is in many ways a bit of a different beast in that we have passed over a time span where Jesse and Céline have reconnected, married (with Jesse leaving an ex-wife and son in the wake), and there is a bit of a darker undertone to this one fittingly since it's not so much just a joyous one-off interaction now, it's a realistically depicted marriage with all the troubles and complications that could ensue as a result of it. We join the couple as they are on holiday in Greece and again everything that was great about the dynamic between the two persists on here, but what is particularly great is how Hawke and Delpy show how the characters have changed, reflected as well in the screenplay they helped to collaborate on with Linklater. 

Hawke showing how fatherhood has changed him in some ways into becoming more mature, yet how the boy underneath still comes out in trying to deflect from serious matters at hand. Delpy showing how she has grown to accommodate Jesse's tendencies in many ways but in the process how she might have also changed a bit from her more playful nature, but still so blunt and honest in her approach. The way this simple plot of them getting into disputes, reconnecting, dispute and a final ambiguous resolution here is fantastic. 

If you haven't seen any of these three films yet, the cumulative effect of watching them together is quite something in terms of getting to know Jesse and Céline in and out.