Before Trilogy: All movements in one tale of romance

“When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. ”― Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli Mandolin

The literary movements come to life as a chain of reactions. Romanticists were the exact opposite of classicists, realists disgusted the rose-colored world of romanticists and craved for reality in every sense, naturalists thought that realists were too light... This went on and on until today's post-modernism which is currently giving birth to its sons and daughters. Now you tell me why am I talking about literary movements instead of movies. Because Richard Linklater's masterpiece trilogy can only be honored this way in my mind. What makes his movies special in a deeper yet more summarized way is the combination of the epic literary movements ,romanticism and realism, on different levels of story.

Romanticism vs Realism: The story we witness

The movies are romance movies, that is crystal clear but not every romance movie need to be romantic. Dazed and confused?(so sorry, i had to do this) Let me explain. Romanticists defend the idea of creating art that is solely based on human emotions, not events or outlooks but solely feelings and sensations. Linklater's trilogy is under the category of romance movies but they do not have the same share of romanticism in them, rephrasing: the characters do not have the same share of romanticism in them throughout the movies.

Sunrise: Almost purely romantic

An American 20 something (Jesse) meets a young French woman(Celine) on a train to Austria and they start a conversation that will cause an unbreakable bond between them which forces the duo to wander around the streets of Vienna until next morning. Now that is idealistically romantic. Key word: ideal. It is quite obvious that these two young people are both idealists in life, aiming to live to their principles and are not afraid to state their thoughts about friendships, work, love and family freely. They are ambitious, eager to live which makes the movie so damn romantic. The fact that they are idealists makes their speech, gestures and looks filled with free and unchained emotions that have not been abused by social norms yet. I mean they refuse to give each other their phone numbers because they know the people who do that never keep the bond going; that is the top point of idealistic love perception. Everything is so spontaneous, unique to the moment that you feel like you are always going to be alone because of this realistic looking but the way too ideal romance story.

Sunset: It got a lot more real

After our ideal young international couple separates melancholically on the train station to meet again in the same place at the decided time; in the second movie we find out that they never met and went totally separate ways in their lives with the bittersweet memory of the day spent together. However, they reunite at a bookstore in Paris where Jesse is doing the promotion of his new book; about the day he spent with Celine in Vienna. Now wait a minute. This is still full of heavy emotions, isn't it? The thing is the movie is still romantic but Jesse and Celine are way more realistic. Celine even expresses the situation this way:

In a way I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel all this again.

This is from the car scene dialogue that is centered on Celine's perception of love and reality which I find absolutely magical because it really makes the viewer understand why she was acting that way in Vienna vs why she is acting so differently now. And all of these are expressed by a woman who wants to be some version of herself for whom she feels a longing but never actually be able to compare herself to that imagined self due to sever heartbreaks and breakdowns in her past relationships. What really makes my heart ache in this scene is when she says that for her, love and reality are always contradictory; like she cannot live romance in real life's borders.

Jesse on the other hand is married to a woman he does not love and writes books for himself to relive the moment they shared with Celine in Vienna as an escape from reality. He also realizes that even though Celine never showing up in the station messed him up, Celine was messed up on a whole other level. This brings me to my next point about realism in this movie: they experienced selfish love in the first movie but now they understand the feelings of the other side through empathy.

Despite the fact that they mention how mesmerized they were by the bond they have created in Sunrise, they had separate feelings. In Sunset, however, we see how they have grown and started to express theirselves in more precise ways that makes the other side think "Wow, this was how s/he actually felt." which brings them even closer by the end of the movie. Their relationship becomes more stable and proves that romance is not the only thing that can keep a special bond going, forever.

Midnight: Trying to find the romantics trapped in realistic shells

The last film of the trilogy is even more cruel than the second one because after making us believe in their romance, Linklater shows us the conflicts in their ongoing relationship and one can not help but think "So is this one of those love stories that prove the dissatisfaction of human being from what he owns?"

We see Jesse trying to be there for his son yet cannot leave the woman (Celine) he loves, we see Celine who is so sick of being in this loop of daily routines and her perception of Jesse in her mind, we see them fight in a very real and scary way that reminds every kid of the times their parents were fighting. In summary, we see two romantics who have fallen in love with each other at a time and currently struggling to discover what is lying beneath that shell of reactions, anger, regrets, traumas and dissatisfaction.

There are two lines that made my heart skip a beat from the last film:

Natalia: Like a sunrise or sunset, anything so ephemeral. It's just like our life, we appear and we disappear. We are so important to some, but we are just passing through.

Jesse: But if you want true love, then this is it. This is real life. It's not perfect, but it's real. ,

The first quote is immaculate. It is a great foreshadowing device and summary of the love story audience have witnessed through the films. The way the sentence starts telling how temporary sunrise and sunset are, made me think "So what was temporary, the love they have developed over those movies or..." Or or or, or what I thought. And then it came to me as I kept on repeating the quote in my head: the moments, the accumulation of moments we put under the category of life are just temporary; they are given to us and taken away and all we as people are passengers of those moments. I realized how intelligently this quote was shaped: the moments we are always holding onto for deeper meanings, they do not matter and they should not matter for our fighting couple yet they do, we link them to ourselves and emotions. However, we still choose the way we pass by through life; are we holding onto those "big" moments or are we appreciating the real emotions of the people we care about, including ourselves? At this point, first quote slowly leads itself to Jesse's line.

Jesse says my favorite line when Celine and him have reached that point in a fight where you feel like "Screw everything, this is how I actually feel about it and I do not want to play with words anymore even if I might lose you." It is a beautiful saying because it combines the enemies to Celine's heart: romance and reality. It shows that even after they reunited in Paris 9 years ago, they still hadn't figured out the way their great romance could work in real life which is basically the core element of their long fight. And Jesse takes that bold step to either end or resolve the biggest dilemma in their lives.

The director and the actors: how their partnership made the movie magical

Since I got all I wanted to say about the story off my system, I can move onto the way movie was highlighted with the friendship of Linklater, Delpy and Hawke. I guess I need to mention that the story was quite personal to Linklater, based on a real day he spent with a woman he had met in a toy shop. He said that he wanted to tell the feelings of that night. He did not want to tell the story but the feelings which I think made the movies quite special. Of course, he did not plan to make this an 18 year long journey until they decided on the cast. He said in an interview "I was looking for two creative partners. I wasn’t looking for just two pretty faces." when they were casting and this led him to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

Apart from their talents as actors, these two are also quite intellectual. This is what they said about each other before working together:

Ethan Hawke: Meeting Julie was like meeting a character from a novel, like Anna Karenina or something. She’s a very deep person. I’d never felt so American and so dumb in my life.

Julie Delpy: He was like a puppy, so young and sweet. He hates that, but really he had a beautiful naïve quality about him. I mean naïve in a good way, naïve but very smart at the same time.

In spite of the difficulty of writing the story and living in the moment all the time, they also had a hard time filming the movie with real time trains, amusement park toys and restaurants. They had to revise everything and they later confessed that it exhausted them yet none of them never regret it later. Both actors mentioned that the movie was not the kind of movie you make to gain some money, it was a special kind of experience.

To wrap up, what I truly like about this trilogy is that not only did the actors and the director transformed a story into a unique movie but the movie also changed them for good. Looking at all the high budget money-bank films we are seeing, this cinematic experience shows me how versatile and beautiful cinema can be; almost like a temporary madness or love.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION: New York Times has an interview with the director, writers, casting director and actors about Before Sunrise. I used some quotes from there in this review, it is highly insightful. Here is the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/movies/before-sunrise-ethan-hawke-julie-delpy.html

If you fell in love with the idea of falling in love despite everything after seeing these movies, then here are our recommendations for you:

Roman Holiday, 1953

Blue Valentine,2010

If BealeStreet Could Talk,2018