Before Midnight (2013)

Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) depict two desperately short encounters between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). In the first, the two 23-year-olds meet on a train and end up alighting together for a night wandering around Vienna. 9 years later, they collide once more, this time in Paris where Jesse – now a successful author – is wrapping up a book tour.

In Before Midnight, the couple are finally a couple, Jesse having left his wife some years ago to set up life with Celine in France. The film covers about 12 hours – from midday to midnight – of their final day in Greece, where they have spent an idyllic summer staying with a small circle of friends and family as guests at a fellow writer’s retreat.

The film is stunning. As with its prequels, the characters are round and deep and their interaction effortlessly natural. The script, co-written by Linklater, Delpy and Hawke, is so good it’s almost unbearable. Linklater’s direction is beautifully simple; once again it shows off the charm of the film’s locations and his impeccably measured shots (some of them minutes long) cut between themselves only when absolutely necessary.

I have the feeling – though I’ve never heard it said – that the dialogue in the Before films is found irksome by some people. I’m projecting. I worry that I find it irksome… So often, scripts aiming for earnest interaction fall anodyne – die by the hand of sentimental writers. As such, the natural reaction to such honest conversation onscreen is “I wonder when in the next 30 seconds these characters will betray their author.” In Before Midnight, that never happens.

As a test, I try to insist to myself that no two people in the real world have such curiosity and philosophical insight into their own lives as Jesse and Celine. But I find myself so unable not to believe in them at every moment that I can’t keep this devil’s advocation up. The eb and flow of their conversation together with its awkward punctuations and intricate body language leaves no room to accuse the characters of being works of fiction, despite the fact that they actually are.

As the film climaxes with a passionate hotel room argument, we see each character clearly motivated by everything we have ever learned about them and experienced alongside them over the three films. The way they have grown, matured, deepened and, in certain aspects, actually remained the same over the last 18 years, culminates in a masterpiece of onscreen conflict, during which I was again bowled over by how much I care for Jesse and Celine. I’m in love with these characters (I think a lot of people must be) and I simply beam in their company. Delpy and Hawke have such omniscience about the lovers they have been portraying for nearly two decades that at every moment, they demonstrate complete awareness every thought and feeling expressed in the story of their relationship both on film and away from it. It is such a rich fiction.

After watching each of the first two films, I did not yearn for a sequel, finding myself more than happy taking what Linklater gave us of the saga, confident that the characters would go on existing boldly somewhere in the real world whether or not a new instalment came along. I feel the same about Before Midnight. I admit though that I am not old enough to have been anticipating a Before film for as long as 9 years (I watched all 3 for the first time within days of each other).

Perhaps, then, as the years roll by, my fingers will find themselves crossing for a Part Four in 2022. If it does happen, all I can say is that I’ve never had so much trust in a team of actors/writers and director so far into the future. However long Linklater, Delpy and Hawke stick with this project, I trust that it will go on being beautiful every step of the way.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)

There’s something alienating about the new Twilight film. The super sheen teen saga has been derided by the majority of critics ever since its first instalment but I went in for it; partial to the first, patient through the second and pleased with the third, something about the romance and updated vampire folklore struck a chord with me. However Breaking Dawn (part one) proved more than a let down. The glitz of its set pieces and the milking dry of any hint of love or death almost convinced me the critics were right all along.

They weren’t though, not to begin with. And it wasn’t simply because I was still a teen (just) when Twilight the First came out. In that film, the awkward unease with which Bella (Kristen Stewart) squeezes into a new school and peer group comes across effectively, probably owing as much to Stewart’s own discomfort at acting as to the actual acting itself. The obsessive calf love and ferocious desire to remain in it – and young – forever is also piercing and painful (in a good way) to watch.

What changed gradually from film to film is partly to do with the storyline. The second film in particular begins to challenge the notion that Bella and Edward’s relationship is pure, infallible and even reciprocal. Not because of the hyped introduction of werewolf Jake as a love interest but because Edward begins to treat Bella like dirt. Not only does she suffer it gladly, by the third film his behaviour has been incorporated into their relationship as if it were one of its natural ingredients. As somebody whom the books passed by, I can only hope the final film sees Bella realising her mistake sharpish and serving her blood-junkie-lover a divorce inclusive of supernatural restraining order… or else a sharpish stake to the heart.

Anyway, back to this film. I saw it in the tiny room of an inner-city multiplex, the likes of which I’d never experienced before and only seen in films like Taxi Driver. Little over thirty seats, wider than deep with audio speakers not up to much. The worst thing was the small screen/close proximity combination, like watching TV with your nose against it (except not really that bad). The aisle down the middle also meant that any hope of an optimum viewing angle were best left at the miniscule door, a porthole with less soundproofing than a greenhouse window (except not really that bad). Wow, on to the film.

A metaphor for the room it was presented in, Breaking Dawn is one of the most alienating pictures I’ve seen in a while. Things like the stretched wedding scene and all its attached glamour seem contrary to Bella’s original philosophy and create glossy barriers that prevent our engagement with her. Weren’t we supposed to identify with her as a shambling outsider, strong and honest if not a little lonely as a result? All this is forgone in favour of the sentimental romance card – painful to watch (in a bad way). This could be forgivable, or at least ignorable, if it wasn’t for the desperate argument the film seems to be having with itself. “Am I glorifying the notion of love as a slow-motion pinnacle of perfection,” it says. “Or is this character engaged in a struggle between desire, expectation and the pitfalls of loving a blood-sucking monster?” Sure you can have both at the same time, but look to the first film for an example of how delicately this needs to be handled. You can’t play both to the max and hope the audience swoons at the first then undermines the swoon with a nail-biting squirm. The swoons should come unexpected, from the depths of terror so as you’re unsure what it is about revulsion that turns so attractive. Or something.

I’m sure this thing about splitting the final instalment of a series of novels in two when adapted for the screen will become standard practice – when the previous films have been successful and the opportunity arises to eek double profit from a story’s climax, any fine capitalist would. When this decision benefitted Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was surprised. While the book certainly contains enough material for two films, I thought that the wealth of information left out of the previous films would make it hard to stretch Deathly Hallows out for four hours. Well, for whatever reason, it worked. The same cannot be said for Breaking Dawn. As I said, I haven’t read the Twilight books, so can’t have an opinion on how best to chop it up and spread it out, but the film I saw was thin and plot-starved. Simply not enough happened to merit its length. Yeah, yeah, I know some of history’s best films and plays delve into the intricacies of one single event (or less) but… Actually, that’s exactly what this film should have done. One thing happens, fine. But instead of details, instead of a raw study in the hopes and fears of each character, instead of a harrowing exploration of the possible outcomes, what fills in the gaps between A and B is more of Edward’s stern-faced platitudes and the surround sound cacophony of a gang of CG wolves arguing in human voices. I don’t know how the story ends, but I’m quite confident that the essential bits of this film could be tacked onto the beginning of the next without remotely extending its length.

Just boring really. The series has lost its life. It deserves 900 words merely to bear witness to its dullness in the hope that it might save someone else 117 minutes.