Some Thoughts on Before Midnight

I have now seen Richard Linklater's Before Midnight in the context in which it was meant.  It is a film that I have seen before and reviewed, giving it the much coveted four stars.  This was without much knowledge of the history of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy).  It is just a good movie, and there is no way around that.  It is much different, and yet a lot of the same, as the first two movies.

One way in which it is different, is that it envelopes the directing style of the first two film's unique setup and mashes them together.  We get the long takes that we were treated with in the second film, along side the edited and condensed feeling of the first movie.  While music has been mostly absent, and yet crucial, to the series, we finally have a movie here with a score, courtesy of Graham Reynolds.  And, like the first two films, it has its themes set in love, but this time it takes it to a whole new level.

Love in a spontaneous instant, the thrill of the moment and surrendering to the magical escapism of 'what could have been' is what the first movie is all about.  It is seizing the moment, living in the day, and having the understanding that you did something that you could have very well regretted for every single day of your life afterwards.  It is beauty in youth.  It is the acceptance of the finite, and whether or not having what will be eventually lost was worth what life would have been like having never taken the chance.

That is the first film in a nutshell.  It is told with such boldness, naivety, and extremes.  It is the formation of the Hollywood Prince and Princess story, but with much more realistic and down to earth characters.  This is the version of passion and romance that is tried and true, and it is overly done in so many films.  The magic of love, the palpitations of it.  It is the bended knee and the magical night that will forever be remembered.

In the second movie, love is viewed differently.  It is overcast with regret of what could have been.  Even though these are characters that took a chance, they are characters who are paying for it.  They have been branded permanently by their decision to follow spontaneity and their hearts.  Their concepts of relationships are forever changed, as their formative years experienced a connection that would surely mould the future for anyone.  What they are left with, after the romance, is a view of relationships that are opposite each other.  No longer is it the dreamy visage of someone swooping in with flowers and charm.  It is something much different than that for each character.

And then we have the version of love that is found in Before Midnight.  It is the version of love that books are not written about.  It is the version of love that children are not warned of.  It is the version of love that destroys relationships and causes divorce.  It is the true version of a committed relationship, the hardships that come along with it, and the pain that it would take to see things through.

Linklater does not hold back at all in Before Midnight.  This is not a date movie.  It is not the fantasy that would carry a Sandra Bullock or a Julia Roberts.  There is no Prince Charming.  There is no magic kiss.  There are only two people who have been together for nine years, and the fact that they are comfortable with each other, the force that unleashes the bridles of the mouth and can cause instant pain and regret of words.

It is serious stuff.  We are with a couple on what could easily be the very last night of their once romantic relationship.  We learn that just as guns can be used for promoting either peace or war, so can the mouth.  When you have been with someone for a long period of time, there is a lot that can go unsaid.  It doesn't mean that those things vanish.  They remain, and they build up over time.  All it takes is a breaking of the seal to unleash all of those thoughts, fears, and regrets from the past.

The point of this movie is to show what happens when the romance is gone.  When what you are left with is the decayed sense of butterflies in the stomach, yearning for them to reappear and resigning yourself to the fact that they may be gone for good.  This is love.  It is not packaged in a heart-shaped box, nor is it delivered with roses.  It comes with the devastating knowledge that the honeymoon is over and what you are left with is being paired up with a fallible human being.  This is not what sells tickets on Valentine's Day, but it is what people all over the world truly live with.

This vision of love shows the pain, sacrifice, and work that need to go along with keeping it together and working.  One might ask, why bother making it work if it takes so much energy?  Well, the fact of the matter is that if you leave it behind, you are leaving behind all of the good things that come along with it.  Linklater is keen to show those elements as well, in scenes where Celine and Jesse talk back and forth about life as they walk from their host home to a hotel where they will be spending the night without the kids.  Linklater shows that those moments are the ones that make it worth while, and he points out that they are worth fighting over.

When it is easy to allow something to die, it is difficult to fight for its life.  That is what the main characters must do, or choose is worthwhile, in order for them to have love.  Once again, this isn't portrayed as the type of love that appears on romantic cards, but one that is rooted in knowledge of another person.  It sounds boring, but that is the essence of it.

It is impossible to believe that the feeling of butterflies will always exist.  That you will constantly be swept off of your feet by someone for the rest of your life.  That is the version of relationships that we are sold by mass media, and it is that version of love (and the endless pursuit of that love) that can cause people to fade apart and never be truly happy.  Love is support, but it is also pain.

That pain can hurt the most when you are staring down the barrel a doomed relationship, or at least what may seem that way.  The script, written by Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy, shows the reality of properly dealing with that hurt.  It is what has kept my marriage together, and it is what keeps many together.  That is not giving up.  Just when things seem like they are at their worst, one must let pride stand aside and make another effort.  It can feel the equivalent of conceding that you were wrong, but love shouldn't take score of who was right and who wasn't.  Love should take a second to take a deep breath, compose yourself, and do what you can to get through the maelstrom, even if it means more hurt.

That is the love that is on display in Before Midnight, and it is that love that should resinate with viewers more than Runaway Bride.

REVIEW: Before Sunset

Before Sunset is the follow up film to Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.  It follows the characters of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) nine years after their chance meeting on a train near Vienna.  Things have changed since then.  Time has come and gone, and they are different, more mature than they were their first time meeting.

This encounter happens in Paris, where Jesse is on a book signing tour of his best selling novel that was based off of his experience with Celine in Vienna.  Celine shows up at the signing and the two have just over an hour to kill before Jesse needs to be at the airport for his flight home.

Linklater delivers the film in real time, following every movement made by the two of them in their limited time together.  There are great shots of them walking the streets of Paris.  Not only have the characters matured, but Linklater has as well.  There is an abundance of long takes as the two walk and talk, a departure from the more edited and condensed feel of Before Sunrise.

Just like its predecessor, the movement and the dialogue between the two leads is fluid and realistic.  They talk at first like people who have not seen each other in years (which is good, because that's the case here), and from there it transitions to the types of open conversations about life that they had in the first film.  The intensity of the conversations grows to the point of both finally revealing to each other just how much their encounter has shaped their lives.

The dialogue, which was written by Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke, is the star of the show.  I literally felt as though I was listening in on the conversations of real people who are rediscovering each other as well as who they are themselves.  It was a near spiritual experience for me, as I fell back in love with Jesse and Celine, both very much transformed over the years, and yet still very much the same.

Why is it that we root for people in good movies?  Is it because we connect with them?  Is it because we are sheep and follow the leads and hope the best for them?  Or is it because they are living out something that we never will, resigned to our comfy chairs to witness from afar?  I believe that it can be a combination of all of those things, and, whatever the reason, I found myself yearning through the entire movie for the two of them to rekindle the affection that they once had.

This is difficult to do, however.  Jesse is married and has a child.  Celine is in a relationship as well.  They know from the beginning that this encounter is finite, just like their previous one, but they do everything that they can to make it last just one minute longer, and I am a sappy little man longing for the same thing.

In many ways, I think I like this more than the original.  It has a different charm, as it is two people who can only look to the past and contemplate over what could have been.  It wrestles with love and relationships.  It takes on happiness and contentment.  It is a quite different film, and yet, because of the dedicated acting from Hawke and Delpy, it is very much the same.

I can't help but say that Jesse and Celine are now my favourite romantic couple in cinematic history.  Sorry Clarke Gable and Claudette Colbert, you have been dethroned.  I am not suggesting that Before Sunset is a better movie than It Happened One Night, just that there for me a new king and queen of the romance genre, filmed gracefully in a movie that I will remember for years to come.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

REVIEW: Before Sunrise

Just because I am a guy it doesn't mean that I can't be wooed by a romantic movie.  Sure, I enjoy explosions and car chases, but I like to believe that I can appreciate a good story in any genre.  A movie doesn't need to be Mad Max: Fury Road to get my blood pumping.  That being said, there are a lot of romance movies that I find myself rolling my eyes at and getting overly frustrated by the use of tropes and predictability.

One of those tropes is the 'meet cute,' where two people come together with charm and an affection is almost instantaneously introduced.  It can be nauseating, to say the least.  However, in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, the meet cute is one for the ages.  Two people in their early twenties, Celine (played by Julie Delpy) and Jesse (played by Ethan Hawke) cross paths on a train in Europe and strike up a conversation.  Like most meet cutes, it is witty, but what separates this from others is that it is real and authentic.  They almost immediately begin sharing life openly like you can find yourself doing when you are talking to someone who you believe you will never meet again.  I have had many good conversations with strangers while waiting for a bus or standing in line at a grocery store.  You don't have to put up a front and can just be yourself.  This person will never know you, and that gives a freedom of open expression.

That freedom is exploited in this film as the two end up forming a connection and spending a night wandering Vienna as Jesse waits for his flight back home to America the next day.  It is a love letter to the spontaneous nature that lives in the beast of humanity, and one that is often ignored and hushed.  The two, living in the moment, embrace the nature of their meeting and instil a sensation in the audience member that perhaps they too could have lived this moment had they made different choices in their lives.

As the two interact and talk, they reveal bits of who they are.  One is a cynic, the other is open to different things.  These revelations of character are drawn out through their conversations.  This movie is almost all dialogue, and is a great credit to the writing power of Linklater and fellow scriptwriter Kim Krizan.  A human voice is a powerful thing, and when the words match the reality that they are facing, it can lead to very intriguing viewing material.

Aiding the script is the acting performances of Hawke and Delpy.  They are both young, full of energy, lacking experience yet believing that what they have gone through so far has taught them a lot about life.  It is all very believable, and I could see myself a great deal in the character of Jesse, pondering life and philosophy at such a young age and believing that I had it all sorted out.  The movement between Delpy and Hawke is like a dance, as they portray body language that furthers what they are saying.  It is extremely convincing, something that so many movies, not just romantic ones, miss out on.

Speaking of romantic movies, it is easy to not bind oneself to the love story that is being told.  It can take a great deal of imagination to put yourself in the shoes of those on screen and bite what is being fed.  That is not the case here.  Because of the dialogue and the performances, the attraction shared between the leads is real.  These are two people who have embraced what fate has delivered them, and they are living it to the fullest.  It is an accepted one night relationship that morphs into frenzied desperation for a continued relationship by the end.

I like movies that I can easily be lost in.  Ones that tell a tale that can transport me out of my living room with chip crumbs all about to the place that is being depicted on screen.  With Before Sunrise, I was not just watching it, but I was living it.  That is the power of a great tale.  Although I am perfectly happy with my life as it is, I was left wondering what would have been different if I had the courage of spontaneity.  For those who are too scared to live that way, Before Sunrise is a perfect substitute for the real thing.

Star Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

Boyhood

One genre of film that has always had a chance to hold a sacred place in my heart and soul is the ‘coming of age’ stories.  Goonies, The Sandlot, and Stand By Me are just a few of the golden oldies from my upbringing.  It is always interesting when a new spin or attempt is tried, and one of the most inventive modern films on this theme has been Attack The Block, which was a combination science fiction, comedy, and horror story about a boy needing to step up into becoming a man.  It is a wonderfully creative look at the format and has an outstanding performance from John Boyega.

Normally the maturation of the protagonist takes place around an event or adventure, something which pushes their capacities and forces upon them the speedy advancement of their development to get through.  It fits well with the cinematic presentation, allowing the story to culminate towards their growth being linked to the climax.  While it is an affectionate portrayal of what youth deal with, it is not honest to the reality that many face.

In the case of Boyhood, director Richard Linklater sets out a most ambitious approach to capture the evolution of life that a person goes through during their upbringing, as situations and influences around them inform their development and sculpt who they will become.  The narrative follows twelve years of Mason’s (Ellar Coltrane) life, from six to eighteen.  While that idea in of itself may not sound too spectacular or ground breaking, the fact that the film was shot with the same cast over eleven years to properly construct Mason’s advancement is ambition unchecked.  It is a courageous attempt that the rational mind would believe as folly.  The creative mind, however, is different, and from this a historical piece of cinematic art is born.

For those readers who really enjoy seeing a movie that encapsulates a story, pushes towards a climax, and offers near complete resolution at the end, this is not that sort of film.  However, before you hear those words and think it is not a film to see, please continue reading as I attempt to win you over to giving this film a chance.  What the movie does is show a true and organic nature to the voyage from childhood to adolescence, as Mason develops into a young man.

Never before have I seen such an authentic movie that shows life for what it is; a series of ups and downs with the emotions and lingering events that create a character.  We are given snap shots of life with Mason, his mother (Patricia Arquette), and his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) as they face existence together.  The dynamics of the family are not typical Hollywood, which seeks accentuate characteristics to fit within movie format, but more so resonate with the experiences of the audience through touching their own trials or the ones that friends had been through.

Mason and Samantha’s biological father (Ethan Hawke) maintains a close relationship with his children, acting as a mentor in scenes that are heartwarming and touching.  The chemistry between Hawke and his children is undeniable, and a true paternal bond oozes from the moments they are together.  Perhaps this is the strength of having to work together over a number of years, which allows for a natural bonding to present itself that is true to the passage of time that the movie depicts.  Patricia Arquette, who is the constant source of care and influence captures the everyday dynamic of a mother seeking her own life while passionately driven for the sake of her children.

The engaging snippets of Mason that we get are enhanced by the natural aging of the characters.  To see Ethan Hawke’s first appearance was the true realization of the strength of the movie.  We are used to seeing actors in their present state or covered with make up to make them look younger, and it took a bit of effort to really comprehend that this was Ethan Hawke in the time period depicted.  The natural life of the film becomes one of the purest forms of art as the days and years pass not only in the story, but in the faces of the actors and the physical environment around them.

 The narrative never feels composed, but an experience of life itself.  Linklater’s use of dialogue and extended shots weave the fabric of sincerity, resembling moments of Before Midnight as it uses scenes of passing time and setting suns.  The smallest of details heightened the true to life essence, such as a scene near the beginning of the film where Patricia Arquette is driving and a fly lands on her arm.  I really sense that most films would do a retake to eliminate the visually distracting bug, but here it is left in, something I interpret as a signal that no facades will be allowed to make entrance.

My words are insufficient to give the needed credit that Boyhood deserves.  Two thousand words could be used for analysis of this work and still not properly communicate all there is that could be said of Boyhood.  How can you properly communicate a profound experience that you have at the feet of a monumental achievement in art?  Is it possible to get a rein on all of your thoughts after being treated to the most magical theatre experience of one’s life?  I don’t think that it is something that I can achieve, but luckily the film exists so that you can witness it for yourself and need not rely on my inability to adequately pass on the passion represented by Boyhood.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

Before Midnight

You may have noticed that I was absent from the blog yesterday.  I was around and, for the most part have no excuse, but at the same time, I have a good excuse.  Now that I have made it as specifically vague as possible, it is time to get back in the writing groove and talk about a film that came out in limited release back in the end of May of this year called Before Midnight, directed by Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock).  It is the third movie in a trilogy, starting in 1995 with Before Sunrise, and was followed in 2004 by Before Sunset.  It follows the relationship of two characters, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Deply) through their first meeting, their re-acquainting, and in Before Midnight we meet up with them after they have been together for ten years and have young twin girls.  I should also mention, there will be a few spoilers around the flow and tension of the movie.

While so many romantic dramas (and almost every movie, in fact) follow tried and true formulas, with acts, protagonists, antagonists, and the like, this film really is simply a day in the life of this couple.  They have been together for a while, have children, and are on the last day of a summer spent in Greece.  That's it.  That's what the writers, Linklater, Hawke, and Deply, have set for us.  While it never seems to follow any rules of films, it creates an environment where the viewer feels like we are physically there with them.  This is thanks to one of the best written scripts I have seen in... well, I cannot remember when.  Everything feels so real, so authentic, and so natural that we are sitting on a bench listening to friends talk about books.  We feel like we are sitting at a dinner table hearing couples share about the concept of love, and we feel the warmth of the hospitality and comradery of the company.

The key focus of this film is on the concept of love, and what love is.  Right at the beginning of the film, we are shown that there could be possible rifts between Jesse and Celine, which we see them deal with in a eerily realistic way.  Towards the end, those rifts come to the surface, and, once again, it is just how real the interaction feels that could make this film a trigger to people who live in argumentative relationships.  As they battle through different surface issues, it comes down to the concept of love, and more so, the definition of love that each character lives by.  As comforted as the audience can feel during some of the very endearing scenes (and there are tons of those), we can feel very awkward during the argument.  If you have ever been at someone's house while they argue with their spouse, that is the feeling this movie is able to replicate... the desire for it just to end, or to think of a reason why we should leave.

Along with the great script, Linklater uses some very long shots, using very few cuts to give the conversations an elevated level of reality.  There is an amazing scene where Jesse and Celine are walking through the country side and a small village, a scene that lasts perhaps ten to fifteen minutes, and there is little evidence of editing through large sections of it.  As they are walking, the sun is setting, and we see it exposing less and less of them as they progress.  It is such a beautifully shot scene that, and I am going to sound like a repeating record here, it puts us in the country side with them.  Even the imagery of the sun setting on them, as they are walking towards what could be a relationship ending argument, gives us the idea that the sun could be setting on their time together as a couple.

For romantic dramas, this movie is outstanding.  However, I will say that it will probably not be enjoyed by everyone.  It is not only dialogue heavy, it is only dialogue.  From start to finish, that is what the film is, just in different settings with a few different people.  However, it is what the characters say and how they relate that holds the entertainment and the power of this film.  It is not all sunshine and smiles towards the end, but if one can endure the unpleasantness (and authenticity) of their argument, one can see that even after the sun sets on the worst of days we can have hope in the fact that it will rise again the very next.

Rating - 4 out of 4 stars

Initially I was sitting at a 3.5 rating for this movie, but the more I thought about it, the more I went over it in my mind, the more I realized just how well done this film is.  Not only is it technically superb, but it consistently achieves conveying emotion to the audience, not just on an intellectual level, but a personal level as well.