Before - Trilogy (Before Sunrise - Before Sunset - Before Midnight): Time Anchors in Romance

Twenty-six years ago, in 1995, a Parisian girl met an American boy on an Eurail. They spontaneously got off together at Vienna and spent a mesmerizing night probing each other’s psyches. They promised to meet after six months, but not until nine years later was it materialized. An unusual afternoon in her apartment in Paris, the girl sat on her bed with a guitar in her hands, singing a waltz to the boy who knew he would miss his plane back to the tedious life he had without her. A life happened, another nine-year passed by, they are now in her 40s, struggling over their marriage, love, themselves, and longing ideals of youth. This sophisticated romance is told in three installments, almost-five-hour screen time, eighteen-year story scope, 3 times in a day and a life-time relationship. The Before trilogy – Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), Before Midnight (2013)– is a conquest of love in time, and time in love. Starting as an “IndieWood” low-budget movie, directed by an “indie” filmmaker, starred the up-and-coming Hawke and the European art-film ingénue Delpy (San Fillipo 54), through time, they all grow old together – Jesse (Ethan Hawke), Celine (Julie Delpy), Richard Linklater (the director), and their story of love and being lovers. Time is an enormous theme permeated and reflected in almost every formal element in these movies, associated with geographical settings, autobiography and documentary’s features combined. In this paper, the two primary anchors maneuvering through the trilogy’s aesthetical decisions are physical time - led by the use of time-space manipulation, plot duration and temporality; and mental time - cascaded through co-written performances.

It is clearly not new to state that Linklater’s use of real time has been one of his remarks in cinematic experiment. Preceding the significant twelve-year process of following a child’s development in the recent movie Boyhood (2014), the trilogy’s plot order captures the real growth of the couple in their 20s, 30s and 40s respectively with the real aging process of the two main roles – Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. In Sunrise, when Jesse invited Celine to accompany him before his flight departure, he mentions a time-travel many years ahead when Celine is with another guy, and what could have been if she did or did not get off the train with him. The original screenplay by Kim Krizan suggests that Jesse is so absorbed in the idea of time-travelling. Not only does this invitation signify the couple’s perplexity of nostalgic ideals and “what-ifs” in the two sequels, but it also foretells Linklater’s decisions with time. With the fact that Before Sunrise is partly based on a true incident of Linklater in Philadelphia, Fall 1989, as he confessed (Cutler, 24), if Jesse had to wait 9 years to reunite with the love of his life, Linklater would reasonably drag his audience along with this longing feeling. The second 9-year wait turns out to be a real “time-travel” when the story is fast-forwarded to the peaked tension of their marriage – an unexpected but pivotal timestamp. Before’s unusual plot duration and sequel-pickup choices apparently do not show the audience what they want to see but what they need to see, and question themselves about the cost of a love-in-time. It contributes largely to the naturalistic register of the movie.

May or may not intentionally for the immediacy, this real-time use blurs the line between fiction and documentary. All three installments adopt the similar “Linklater’s signature “single day” (San Filippo 53) plot duration – as the couple’s walks - an evening in Vienna, an afternoon in Paris, and an approaching-dark in Messinia. Perhaps because “the passing of time has long been among Linklater's artistic concern” (Cutler 24), the easiest way to utilize it is to make it as much transparent, plausible, and realistic as possible. The movie eliminates the fictional fragmentation of time but still be able to condense it. In other words, following the couple’s footsteps and conversation, the time seems to be led by them, neither navigating nor urging them – as Celine says in Before Sunrise, “Time is our own creation.” Without the symptomatic of classical romantic melodrama, the movies do not entail much dramatic fluctuations of climax and events but focus mainly on the narrative schema. Long takes with two-shot become a consistent visual style throughout the three movies, however, when put in different settings and constraint with time, implies subtle change in each stage of the relationship:

In Before Sunrise, the long take journey begins when they get off the train. Vienna is neither Jesse’s nor Celine’s pre-determined destination, thus both first explore with voyeuristic eyes. Tracking, wide two-shot subtly reveals the captivating, romantic Vienna sunset in background, though does not forcefully over-romanticizes its aesthetics, which is reluctantly used in many romances of this same genre. In the question-and-answer game scene on the tram, an expected conversational shot-reverse shot is omitted and replaced by only one long, continuous, and static shot from start to end. With the deprivation of formal, narrational essentialism, this manoeuvre exhibits the realism in every single gesture, eye-contact and seductive timidity (Zachary). In Before Sunset, they stroll through Paris’s street after meeting again in Jesse’s book tour. The time is ticking to urge Jesse to go to the airport, but the audience may also be caught in their conversation that they never recognize the change of time. With extended real-time, dialogic shots, mostly from the front and less changes in the background, the walk from the bookstore to her apartment seems to be fast, but static, simultaneously. Each time Celine reminds Jesse of his flight and he refuses, the setting changes to a new scene, but still closely connecting their route. Paris is Celine’s familiar place; thus, she is not considered tourist at first and takes the lead in the walk. However, the true latent journey they are going through is the tour of memories to which none of them knows where they are heading. Once Jesse makes her hop on the tourist boat with him, looking at the Norte Dame, she explores a new look to the place she has long been acquainted with, and they explore a tunnel of missed moments and nostalgia, excavating those feeling they have long buried but could not move on. Their final stop is Celine’s apartment, her home, and Jesse’s missed flight is going to be the last thing they miss (out)[1] from now on. This plot order diffuses the anxiety of this ambiguous relationship by navigating it through spontaneity, which makes the open ending more of a relief than an unsolved tangle.

---

[1] Miss out: to not mistake with miss, in missing, since they are not going to stop missing things from the past.

---

Fast-forward to Before Midnight, the only movie with back story of the couple’s having kids and settling down together, the use of time and space is does not grant the same effect. Long take remains as the signature tracking of their conversation. However, the scope of the setting changes: For a huge amount of screen duration, they are framed in some kinds of confinements: the airtight enclosure of the car, with seatbelts, and a hotel room, with forceful sexual “retreat.” (Zachary) The usual open space only appears once when they are on their way to the hotel. The walk is their rare break from the constrained, stressful life of co-parenting and adulthood, as if they are, once again, “time-travelling” back to their youth of Summer 1994 or on Paris’ street. Echoed the train scene in Before Sunrise, they talk about the future what-ifs, and reminisce “what could have been”. Nevertheless, the fighting scene in the hotel room returns to the shot-reverse shot structure, breaking the chemistry of the accustomed two-shot effect in the previous two movies. Characters in the Before trilogy are built in a very tight construct with the time and space they are within, and their relationship’s progress as well. In Sunrise, they are totally strangers to each other, thus the opportunity to explore the wide scope of the city is enlarged as big as their own opportunity to probe the others’ psyches. Vienna is illustrated in various diverse, free aspects. They wander around to kill time, while savoring its fleetness. In Sunset, their deadline is even more restricted as they are more aware of it. They are trapped in the frustration of their missed moments, thus the view of Paris is narrowed to the tight frame of small alleys and gardens. In Midnight, as they are now together, the time constraint is not imposed on their meeting duration but the fragility of their relationship. Palpably, the little snapshots of Greece are the ruins and the dusk. As the tension increasingly unfolds through the two later features, two of their three big fights occur in the medium two-shot in a car. All the ups and downs in their arguments in the hotel display the common texture of an adventure; however, when squeezed in a closed space, they agitate claustrophobia and anxiety, pushing the characters to the boundaries of time, space and themselves. This tension among a seemingly free-flowing visual style, a tightly inflicted timeframe and a determinant restriction on space creates a “comforting sense of depth with an existential context that develops intertextually between his films” (Stone 4). Appropriately, this coherence of realism in physical time fortifies the couple's absorption in immediate experience (Zachary) in both the stability and instability of the relationship. It sets the trilogy different from the Hollywood classical rom-com for concentrating more on the moments, progress, and “walking in the spaces in between and wondering just who and why” (Stone 6) than the results. This cinematic demarcation of settings frankly displays the beauty of endurance.

In The Cinema of Richard Linklater (2013), Rob Stone states, “Linklater’s characters often inhabit unique time-frames, where their experiences of the here-and-now struggle to match hand-me-down nostalgia for the been-and-gone.” If it was not for the acting performances of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, the utilization of physical time mentioned earlier could never be materialized. Their chemistry-performing streamlines a flow of mental time that permeates through each transformation of the relationship. Calling it mental time is because, as regarded above, the characters themselves actively maneuver the plotline – how they act makes the watchers aware or unaware of the movie’s motions (time, space, changes, etc.) The two incentives needed to constitute this thematic system are the initiative and intentionality in performances.

Although the true event on which Before Sunrise was partly based is Richard’s, there are representatives of both Ethan and Julie in the movie, and in both later installments. Layers of autobiographical characteristic start multiplying from the casting choices. The movie hired a U.S actor Hawke of “action-adventure mainstream films” and a French actress Delpy with a “star persona in French film” (Deleyto 26) to represent a national stereotypical character of a “crude, dumb, vulgar American” boy and a romantic European “bimbo”, as the pair even turns this obviousness to humor in the first and last features. Their differences in languages, sociological views, national identities, and comic banter are fully illustrated in the characters’ fictional personas whereas the geopolitical borders do not pose a threat to their connection, both onscreen and offscreen. This intertextuality efficiently initiates the film’s “thick veneer of naturalism” (27). Yet as if their sheer presences are not enough for the Linklater’s intended immediacy, both Julie and Ethan also co-wrote for the trilogy. In podcast Episode 1267 with Marc Maron (2021), Julie Delpy shared about the collaboration. By the time they wrote Before Sunrise, the pair were in their twenties, thus “more in tune with the idea of romance than Richard (Linklater) was.” Its original screenplay was said to be quite talky, not very romantic, and above all, ends strictly with their parting. However, the “young, romantic” Julie disagreed with the idea of “sleep(ing) with a guy without a possibility of seeing him again”, which results in the open endings and the production of the two sequels. Their performances entail not only their appearances but also their verisimilitude and agency, as an effort to diminish the disparity between themselves and their onscreen counterparts. Additionally, with the integration of Jesse in Celine’s song and Celine in Jesse’s book, this involvement generates a reflexivity in film. Mostly “just” by being themselves, the two convincingly persuade the audience on the real “existence” of Jesse and Celine, as they are “thinly fictionalized versions of the actors” (28). This rationale-driven approach deliberates the characters from the public’s logical determinism, thus offering them the lead in time – mental time, as their “own creation.”

Nevertheless, to avoid the wrong assumption of typecasting, it is essential to remember that every “natural behavior” in film is, indeed, crafted performance (Baron and Carnicke 32, as cited in Deleyto 27). Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke’s acting excellence is predicated on its performative aesthetics and, further on, the intention behind its realistic effect. Particularly, it is their natural(istic) [2] chemistry that makes the barrier between “being” and “acting” be erased (Wood 321, as cited in Deleyto 28). To begin with, a significant illustration for this statement is the pair’s consistent choreography of the gaze (Deleyto 29). It starts in Celine’s eyes when she attentively listens to Jesse talking on the train, then becomes more apparent when switched turn to Jesse’ fixed stare on Celine in the tram in Vienna. The listening booth scene at the record shop is one of the peaked moments where their gazes play even more vitally important role than their words. Their “take-turns” towards the other and exposedly look-away before meeting forms a “romantic dance” (29).

This dance remains as a pattern throughout the movies, with the assist of gestures: In Before Sunrise tram scene, Jesse tries to move Celine’s hair with a smitten look but backs away when she turns to him – in Before Sunset, Celine repeats the same move on Jesse while longingly staring at him. Later, shyness transforms to intimacy, their gazes are more static,

more serenely and “in unison” - present in the way they concentrate to each other’s stories while walking down the streets. In the church scene when Jesse talks about the wedding of the Quakers, however, Celine reveals a slight evasiveness when she turns away while Jesse tries to imply commitment (also by gazing). It is not until in the next morning, when they do not have much time left that Celine’s seem to be more, if not fully, devoted to Jesse.

Following in the next two features, as layers of attachment and understanding proliferating with time, intimacy gives way to familiarity. The development of this choreography bolsters the audience’s impression of an unbreakable soulmateship openness between the two. From being madly-in-love to the climax of crisis in the relationship, their communication never misses a beat. The “different passports or even geographical distance” celebrates their “common humanity”, without creating any borderland. Even when their fight triggers Celine to terminate the relationship, an “impeccable symmetry in their responses to one another” is still caught in sight. At some point, rather than reconsidering their connection, the audience may catch a glimpse of manipulative argument because they know each other’s weakness too well. In Before Midnight, Jesse tells Celine “I know you better than I know anybody else in the planet”, which, perhaps, is the core characteristic of their relationship – the origin, the problem, and the solution. As Celine says at the end of Before Sunrise, “I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone”, the naturalism in Delpy and Hawke’s performances succeeds when it can convince others that their orchestration is real (28).

Begins with “time-travel” as an invitation, ends with “time-travel” as a reconciliation, the Time theme Before trilogy – Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight – navigates the audience through an endless adventure of growth – growth in the movie’s plot, in romance, in the definition of “everlasting” love, and on themselves (based on the relatability delivered through characters’ naturalistic performances). While the couple in the movies keep wondering about the hypothetical “what-ifs”, the trilogy’s realistic application with time, in both narrative and mise-en-scene elements, displays the sincere “so-what” and “what’s next” of a relationship. As time passes by, changes happen and loss may occur. It is the genuineness (as portrayed in naturalism) when they all started that really matters. Time conquers the movie’s plot, but love conquers time.

---

[2] It is unsure to determine whether their connection is “natural” or “naturalistic” since in Marc Maron podcast, Delpy admitted that she and Ethan Hawke were on a good term together, but never really close friends.

---

References and Annotated Bibliography:

Xavier, Zachary. “The Kierkegaardian Existentialism of Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy.” Film-Philosophy, vol. 25, no. 2, June 2021, pp. 110–129. EBSCOhost, discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=a56eda29-9330-3390-902f-dc47b53ac13e.

Cutler, Aaron. “Love in Time: Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, and Richard Linklater’s ‘Before’ Films.” Cinéaste, vol. 38, no. 4, Oct. 2013, pp. 24–28. EBSCOhost, discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=183daaba-5967-3678-b349-6de22da5dd0e.

Stone, Rob. The Cinema of Richard Linklater : Walk, Don’t Run. WallFlower Press, 2013. EBSCOhost, discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=54f13dda-8cb6-3062-b653-5b2e8e5e2137.

Deleyto, Celestino. “Performing Cosmopolitanism: Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in Richard Linklater’s ‘Before’ Trilogy.” Transnational Screens, vol. 10, no. 1, Apr. 2019, pp. 23–33. EBSCOhost, discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=d7d3b2a7-e7ee-3cae-9782-88775d59e9b8.

San Filippo, Maria. “Growing Old Together: Linklater’s <em>Before</Em> Trilogy in the Twilight Years of Art House Distribution.” Film Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 3, University of California Press, 2015, pp. 53–59, https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2015.68.3.53.

Maron, Marc, host. “Episode 1267 – Julie Delpy.” WTF with Marc Maron, 4 Oct. 2021, http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-1267-julie-delpy.