If there’s one thing “Before Midnight,” Richard Linklater’s powerfully moving threequel to one of the best love sagas in movie history, has to teach us about middle age, it’s that life is no longer all about you.
Linklater’s most daring addition to “Midnight” could be having two completely different characters walking and talking in tandem, not solely Jesse and Celine. The opposite was once true, and the plotless, intimate focus on just these two young lovers was what made 1995’s “Before Sunrise” so effortlessly experimental. By adding a few characters who fall into familiar conventions, “Midnight” may be the least experimental of Linklater’s trilogy, but he continues to deepen these themes and lives in ways that couldn’t have been imagined if this trilogy was preconceived.
2004’s “Before Sunset” left Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) in a perfect moment of ambiguous romantic chemistry. The answer as to whether or not Jesse actually caught his plane didn’t matter, but Linklater, who pulled the same 4th wall breaking tricks in “Sunset,” knows we’re going to ask anyway. We see Jesse saying goodbye to his teenage son at the airport, only to walk back to his car alone, where Celine and two beautiful blonde daughters await him.
It’s their last night in Greece on a long vacation. In the morning, they drive past the ruins the kids wanted to see without waking them up. Jesse then takes a half-eaten apple from his youngest, and the couple jokingly laments how terrible of parents they are. Such is the conversation of the married 40-something. “Sunset” showed a graduation in the conversation to issues of politics and society beyond parents, school and ambitions, and now the conversation has reverted to people who still have lives to live.
This remains true when Jesse and Celine have dinner with three other couples, one that could be a younger version of themselves. These two had the foresight to Skype chat to keep their relationship alive over long distances, and they now have stories and possibilities to explore over dinner.
Jesse and Celine on the other hand point out the problems in the world and in each other. Delpy goes on a wonderful roll in this sequence, first telling an anecdote about how rats who discovered a way to easily orgasm wound up killing themselves, then donning a Marilyn Monroe accent and turning Hawke into putty in her hands. Aside from being Delpy’s best performance in the franchise, it’s a moment that triples as hilariously charming, a scathing critique of the male sensibility and a reason for why we fell in love with Celine in the first place.
This is casual jabbing at first, part of what appears to be a healthy relationship, but once confined to a private hotel room for the evening, “Midnight” makes us endure a devastatingly lengthy argument at the brink of the franchise’s most steamy, sexual moment.
Jesse trades passive aggressive barbs and Celine jumps to horrible conclusions for nearly a third of the movie’s duration, and it’s a painful sit. Unlike the marital drama to be found in “A Separation” and “Blue Valentine” where we sympathize with both parties and both appear to be right, Celine and Jesse may both be in the wrong, each using their wit and intellect to one-up the other until everything collapses.
With this, “Midnight” treads ground the franchise has never explored before. It’s heavy, free of philosophy and big on ad-hominem attacks.
But it’s also Linklater breaking out of his shell in his cinematography. “Sunrise” and “Sunset” were built on their backwards tracking shots, pairing the two of them together in an imperfect symmetry. Now seeing Jesse from afar lying on a bed and Celine sitting arms crossed on a couch has never felt so lonely.
In these shots, you can see the rift growing between them. And in another motionless shot resting on the hood of their car, Linklater shows us the tedium in their conversation. It’s a shot inspired by Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” (itself a movie borrowing from “Sunrise” and “Sunset”), but without Kiarostami’s hypnotic reflections on the windshield. Without those, we know Jesse and Celine’s conversation has evolved to the point they know each other well, but there’s little new to see.
“This is love,” Jesse dejectedly admits to Celine. “It’s not perfect, but it’s real, and if you can’t see it, then you’re blind.” A truth like this hits hard during Linklater’s depressing and painful third act. It will not be an easy sit for many, and not the touching romance they were hoping for. But like Jesse, I give up if you still need something different.
4 stars
Nice write up Brian. I loved Midnight, perhaps even more so than Sunrise and Sunset. It felt a lot less fairytale to me, a lot more grounded in the real world as we see that their relationship isn’t as perfect as we’ve been led to believe. That third act was a really difficult watch and so tense. I’m still unsure about the ending though. Part of me liked it’s ambiguity but part of me thinks it was just a little too abrupt. I mean, Celine seems to change her mind almost like a flick of a switch, which felt a little odd. Still, probably my favourite film so far this year.
Couldn’t agree with you more. Part of what I liked about “Sunrise” however, despite feeling very down to Earth and non-Hollywood in so many ways, is that it IS a fantasy in some ways. Midnight doesn’t try that, or maybe its fantasy is that after 9 years these two can still talk at all. But that close to last line that I close my review with, that’s what made it all hit home for me, that this isn’t a fantasy and even an indie movie shouldn’t be all “feel-good” but that this is reality. Maybe the ambiguous nature of it now means that if there’s a next movie, they won’t be together or something. It’s definitely up there as a favorite for me.
Good review Brian. Such a heartbreaking movie, if only because of the emotions we have invested into them throughout the years. Obviously, we don’t know if we’re going to get another one in 9 years, but if we do, I will have no problem with that whatsoever.