In an English class last semester, we talked about the idea of finding the “miraculous in the mundane.” This is what watching the Before trilogy of movies feels like to me, and this is what it feels like to watch them with someone else.
The mundane:
Watching Before Sunrise on my laptop freshman year, curled up in a ball in my NYU dorm, alone. On screen, a man and a woman start talking to each other on a train to Vienna. As simple as that.
Months later, my best friend pauses Before Sunset because my parents just got back from dinner, and they’re telling me to remember to take our dogs out before bed. Jesse keeps saying he’ll leave for the airport soon, but he doesn’t, because he just wants to talk to Celine for one more minute. So he does.
Last fall sitting on my brand new college apartment couch and pressing play on Before Midnight and hoping the person sitting next to me hasn’t come to the conclusion that I like these movies for the wrong reasons and must actually be an insufferable person.
But then, the miraculous:
I didn’t think about anything else for 105, 80, 109 minutes. Vienna looks so beautiful on screen that I want to frame every shot. My best friend gets it the way I get it. Jesse sees Celine in a bookstore in Paris, nine years later — how can you not get it? Right? When Before Midnight finished, I tried to ask the person sitting next to me what they thought, in the least dorky way imaginable. I know I failed, because when they then asked me in return why I like these movies so much, I involuntarily reached out and squeezed them. Not hugged — squeezed. They wanted to know what I thought about something I loved and that felt pretty miraculous to me.
You can watch a movie and feel as if it’s explaining a piece of your brain, and then you can watch it with someone else and want them to “get” it too, another piece of your brain internally cringing at how much you care.
But after letting go of the squeeze, why does the distance between us on this couch feel greater than the distance between me and two people wandering around in Vienna, 1994?
Celine forgives Jesse at the end of Before Midnight.
You can watch a movie and feel as if it’s explaining a piece of your brain, and then you can watch it with someone else and want them to “get” it too, another piece of your brain internally cringing at how much you care. You can watch your favorite movie with someone and feel as if it’s a really intimate act, and then maybe you’ll do the same thing with someone else a year later. It’s miraculous to me, but we’re really just two people sitting on my college apartment couch who can see the frat boys doing weird shit next door through the window. And what if you think I like these movies for the wrong reasons?
I’ve had a few random conversations about the Before trilogy where the person I’m talking to goes, “Yeah, I liked it, but it’s just a little….” I say, “Annoying?” and they say, “... to be honest, yeah.” I have to grit my teeth and restrain myself from going, “That’s the point!” It usually slips out anyway.
For the rest of the movie, and the two sequels , we basically watch these two people walk, and talk, and walk, and talk. So, it’s going to get a little dramatic and even stupid, because
that’s the pointthat’s what real life is like.
Celine and Jesse are a little pretentious a lot of the time. I think this is intentionally set up about two minutes into the first movie, Before Sunrise, when Celine shares a quirky fact about how couples lose their ability to hear each other as they get older, after she and Jesse strike up a conversation about a couple arguing on the train. It’s confirmed less than a minute after when they show each other the covers of the obscure novels they’re reading. For the rest of the movie, and the two sequels , we basically watch these two people walk, and talk, and walk, and talk. So, it’s going to get a little dramatic and even stupid, because that’s the point that’s what real life is like.
Richard Linklater, the director, also wrote these films, and the last two were co-written with Ethan Hawke (who plays Jesse) and Julie Delpy (who plays Celine). I have these facts swirling in my brain as we sit on the couch. In interviews (because I’ve seen and read everything I can about these movies), they talk about how natural and realistic the writing process was. The three would bounce ideas off of each other — what could a man realistically say in this situation? How would a woman actually respond?
They didn’t attempt to capture the stereotypical man or woman, a romantic archetype meant to make the film more palatable and marketable. Yes, Jesse and Celine can be a little annoying. But that’s not because the idea of a film where two people meet and fall in love over the course of a night wandering around Vienna is sappy and unrealistic — it’s because they’re two real, unique people falling in love and messing up and then messing up again. The only enemy here is time.
I have no idea what the person next to me is thinking. Maybe they have their own storm going on, too.
A mild tornado in my head as I try to chill out and just watch the story unfold. I have no idea what the person next to me is thinking. Maybe they have their own storm going on, too. Celine and Jesse walk past passersby in Austria, France and Greece who have no idea of the monumental thing unfolding between them. Maybe I can’t fold another person into my reality the way I thought I could.
Before Midnight takes place nine years after Before Sunset, which takes place nine years after Before Sunrise. What were Celine and Jesse doing in those in-between periods? Falling in love with other people, moving cities, changing jobs. In one of the most heart wrenching moments of Before Sunrise, Jesse tells Celine he thought he drove by her on a New York City street, the morning of his wedding — and Celine replies that she was living just one street over. Their just-missed connection is the amount of time it takes for Amazon Prime Video to load. Jesse almost brushes Celine’s hair off her face. I almost put my arm around the person sitting next to me. It is so mundane, all of it.
But maybe it’s not. Before my sister began a no-technology exchange semester, she texted me that she watched the whole trilogy on the plane, and she said, “Thank you for introducing this to me.” Something about that being one of our last conversations before she went on this life changing experience — it felt like a sign that she was going to be okay. My best friend studied abroad last fall and got to go to the record store featured in one of the most iconic Before Sunrise scenes. She sent me pictures, and I thought about how lucky I’ve been to know someone who remembers everything that matters to me, because it matters to her, too.
I haven’t rewatched any of the trilogy since that day in September because I don’t really speak to that person anymore. That feels like proof of something, but knowing me, it’ll take nine years to properly figure it out.
