MJ's View: Long After "Before." Thoughts on Richard Linklaker's Brilliant Trilogy.

Spoilers abound in this retrospective so, if you've not seen the Before Trilogy, keep that in mind.

Celine and Jesse.

College students. Reunited lovers. Forever soulmates?

Deep breath.

It's been over thirty years since Before Sunrise's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival (January 1995) and twenty-two years (February 2004) since its "sequel," Before Sunset brought audiences back for a second chapter about the very romantic, but often elusive relationship between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). As I write this, we're just passed the thirteenth anniversary of our last cinematic encounter with this iconic film couple in Before Midnight (January 2013).

I've seen all three movies multiple times, but not for awhile, and so - thanks to our local Classic Cinemas Theater where classic and cult movies are regularly shown - I was able to see the last two "Before's" in the theater again. As cinephiles know, director Richard Linklater is fascinated with time: how we experience it, how it passes, and how it impacts our lives. Filming Before's three installments nine years apart allows us to witness not just the natural aging of the actors involved, but to feel their physical and emotional changes via their characters. No prosthetics or make-up necessary: we can relate to the changes, challenges and issues that face Jesse and Celine - from first love through long-term partners - more naturally through the actors personal maturation.

Seeing the movies now, this time with more distance from the originals, the arc of Celine and Jesse's bittersweet romance resonated on many levels, from connections to my own experiences to the trilogy's authentic expression of life, love, and the challenges inherent in keeping passionate, once-in-a-lifetime love alive.

College students Celine (French) and Jesse (American) meet in 1994 on a train bound for Vienna. They flirt, banter, get off the train together and spend one romantic night wandering around the Austrian capital. Their conversation ranges from thoughts about life, death, time, and love.

An individual, fully-formed story, Before Sunrise captures the excitement, uncertainty, the randomness and promise of meeting your soulmate, the one who will complement, challenge and sustain your hopes and dreams. Not coincidentally, Before Sunrise takes place on June 16, which is observed in Dublin as Bloomsday, a celebration of the life of James Joyce. Named after Leopold Bloom, the protagonist in Joyce's Ulysses, the novel takes place on June 16 and is said to be the date of Joyce's first sexual encounter with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle. Coincidence?

At movie's end, Celine and Jesse promise to re-connect in Vienna in six months. No phone numbers, addresses, other contact information is exchanged (this is the pre-cell phone era, remember), and we're left to wonder - to hope? - what happens next. Will they re-unite as planned? Director Linklater has said that "neither he nor the two actors ever doubted that the date would be kept."* Still, Celine and Jesse's fate remained up-in-the-air for almost a decade after the film's release, and served as the focus of countless conversations with my film students over the years.

I've been left to conclude that, whether you believe in finding a soulmate, how you envision a life partner, and what your own romantic experiences have been like, are all determing factors in whether you see a reunion for the couple. More than a simplistic optimistic or pessimistic view of love and romance, how an individual envisions what happens in six months is based on a variety of life stories, including - but not limited to - love and romance. Before Sunrise was recently selected for inclusion by the Library of Congress's National Film Registry (2025), which identifies select movies for historical preservation.

The movie's focus on finding self-fullfillment through a life partner is revisited through Celine and Jesse's seemingly random conversation, making it a kind of cinematic prototype for post-modern romance. Like Annie Hall, which suggests that a soulmate may not end up being your life partner, or, like Out of Africa, where the concept of a soulmate is elusive, and real love means letting go of possessiveness: emotional, physical, spiritual.

Nine years later, Before Sunset saw the now thirty-something lovers reunite in Paris, but this time, not by accident. Jesse has written a best-selling book about his enounter with Celine, and she intentionally shows up at a Paris book store where he is appearing to promote the novel. We learn that Jesse keep their date in Vienna six months later, as promised, but Celine's beloved grandmother had died, and she never made it, leaving Jesse to fill in the blanks about why she never showed up. As the two wander through the streets of Paris, they flirt and tease, this time about life experiences, dashed hopes, sexual longing, the importance of that night in Vienna. Jesse is (unhappily) married with a five-year-old son. Celine, ever the fierce feminist, is financially successful, but emotionally adrift.

Their conversation is one of the most riveting since My Dinner With Andre, even more charged by the erotic undertones of their banter. As the movie fades to black, Jesse appears likely to miss his return flight to New York, and we are left yet again to figure out what happened after this latest encounter between what now appear to be star-crossed lovers.

Nine more years pass, and then the release of Before Midnight, which finds Jesse and Celine vacationing with their twin daughters in the southern Pelaponnese. The weight of their eighteen year relationship shows in both the depth of their connection and the breadth of its fragility. Old regrets, insecurities, slights, and offenses bubble up, from Jesse's guilt being thousands of miles away from his now adolescent son to Celine's fear that she is losing her sense of self amidst the challenges of work and motherhood.

The depth of dialogue here is astonishing. Hawke and Delpy co-wrote the screenplay w/Linklater, as they did for Before Sunset. Both screenplays were nominated for Oscars in the Adapted Screenplay category. I've heard both actors asked if the script was improvised - it was not - so genuine is the conversation, authentic in its ability to capture two lovers wrestling with the challenges inherent in sustaining lifelong passion, curiosity and discovery. In what could have been an easy digression into bickering instead becomes a soulful examination of each, with neither character absorbing blame, instead with each learning more about the other and themselves.

Nothing especially dramatic happens in Before Midnight. It is the fitting next chapter in Celine and Jesse's story, which is characterized by two very high verbal individuals exploring their emotions through conversation. The more the two talk, the deeper their attraction becomes, and the combination of a love-at-first-sight encounter (Sunrise), followed by years of longing deepens their reunion (Sunset) and, ultimately, sparks the questioning of their love in Midnight. When Celine finally declares, "I don't think I love you anymore," the line hits us as hard and deeply as it does Jesse. And Linklater's use of time in each of the titles, symbolizing youth, early adulthood, and middle-age, provides a kind of protective blanket around a love story that challenges the idea of finding a soulmate, and celebrates Celine and Jesse's determination to preserve their unique, once-in-a-lifetime connection.

At any rate, as I left the theater unsuccessfully holding back tears, I got to thinking about different kinds of relationships: the one that "got away," the one that should have lasted, but didn't. The one that returns from time to time in our memory: sometimes haunting, sometimes disheartening, forever suspended in a time long past, its passion always alive in the heart. In my case, the first two don't really apply, but the third - the life-changing experience that wasn't meant to be forever, but that lingers on in my memory, is the one I kept coming back to.

It was the first time I'd had conversations with someone the way Celine and Jesse did and, when those tête-à-tête's ended - not by anger or a break-up - I missed them. Fearing that kind of connection doesn't come along every day, I compared every new encounter to the ones that had so deeply touched my heart and soul. No surprise that Celine and Jesse's reunion in Before Sunset was something I'd hoped I would experience, though I will say that time, experience, and finding a life partner have made me understand the significance of those brief moments so many years ago. In many ways, they've enriched my life, raised my relationship expectations, and helped me navigate my personal journey in ways that have been healthy and even joyous. Not without frustration and disappointments but, overall, unconventional and fulfilling.

Linklater continued his real-time tradition in 2014's Boyhood, thoughtfully shot over twelve years to show the actual growth and development of its main character, Mason (Ellar Coltrane), as he navigates the transition from child to adult in the midst of family challenges (divorcing parents played by Patricia Arquette in an Oscar-winning role, and perennial Linklater collaborator, Ethan Hawke, who received his fourth Academy Award nomination for his performance as Mason's father.). Boyhood received numerous accolades, including six Academy Award and five BAFTA nominations, with Linklater taking best film and director awards at the BAFTA's and Arquette winning the Supporting Actress BAFTA and Oscar. He is currently filming Merrily We Roll Along, a film adaptation of the 1981 Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical, which was based on the 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Shooting on the movie began pre-pandemic in 2019 and is scheduled to continue until 2040, to capture the characters' aging similar to that in Boyhood. If the schedule holds, Linklater will be 80 years old when the film is completed.

As I await the theatrical release of the latest iteration of Wuthering Heights, I couldn't helpl but wonder about how time and generations have altered our perception of what real love is, at least through a movie lens. One of the new Wuthering Heights's movie taglines is "Drive Me Mad," which likely seems over-the-top in terms of romance for Gen Z. In some ways, our notion of finding a life partner is now grounded as much in compatibility and companionship as in passionate sexual fulfillment. There is almost a calculated equation by which one can select a soulmate, which seems kind of sad, given that many of life's greatest joys happen unexpectedly, spontaneously, and without much rhyme or reason, which is okay. Not everything that happens needs to make sense.

The Before Trilogy is available on various streaming platforms. You can watch all three on Netflix.

I highly recommend this thoughtful, provocative and intelligent love story, originally made to unfold in real time. Viewing all three together is definitely elevated binge-watching.

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*Robin Wood, Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond. Columbia University Press, 1998), 324.