There’s no movie trilogy out there quite like Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy. From 1995 to 2013, Linklater and his collaborators Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy traced the relationship between Jesse and Celine from puppy love to a weathered marriage. The three films are amazing to rewatch for two reasons: its magnificent craftsmanship reveals itself further through repeat viewings and it evolves and changes shape as you get older. Indeed, I watched the Before Trilogy as a whole for the first time since entering a multi-year committed relationship and found it a rewarding and somewhat unsettling experience.
That’s especially true because I watched the Before Trilogy in reverse. I started with Before Midnight (2013), then traveled back in time for Before Sunrise (2004), and ended at the beginning with Before Sunrise (1995). I did that as an experiment. And now I firmly believe that these movies could and should be watched in any order to appreciate just how much they call back and call forward to each other. The next time I queue these movies up, I will for sure mix up the viewing order.
The Before Trilogy in reverse led to a few revelations and insights about the movies themselves and about what it means to be in love.
Perhaps my most shocking realization was how the trilogy becomes less “city as a character” movies as they go along. Before Midnight (the Peloponnese peninsula) starts in a car, then moves to a pretty but rather nondescript villa, then to a walk with little attention paid to the surrounding village, and ultimately settles in at a cookie cutter resort. Even in Before Sunset (Paris), there are bookshops, cafes, and gardens, but the Sales Day festival is skipped and the main interactions are with waiters, drivers, and other service workers. The movie ends at an apartment, hidden away from the central sights. Contrast that with Before Sunrise (Vienna), with its aimless walking, sightseeing, and kooky scenes with fortune tellers, drunk poets, amateur actors. Attention is paid to the smaller, surreal experiences of being in a city in the middle of the night. For instance, sleeping on the grass instead of having a home or hotel room to return to. Or bartering with bartenders for free wine, instead of having a driver wait for you outside or a couples massage gifted to you.
Some of that is Jesse and Celine’s age and elevated financial status. Perhaps in their 40s, they would not want to have nowhere and everywhere to go. It’s something else, though. The sense of discovery is missing between Celine and Jesse, not just between themselves, but in their surroundings. In Before Midnight, that makes sense. They are tired parents on a rare vacation, with almost a decade of life behind them. In Before Sunset, they are elated to be reunited. So much of their conversation is catching up, and there’s so much left unspoken between them. Throughout Before Sunrise, they are strangers to one another and to Vienna, with so much possibility about what the city can offer them in this magical night and what they can mean to each other.
This stark change in how the cities are depicted jumped out at me during this reversal experiment. When you watch in release order, you are so present with the characters that the past feels like the past. It made me sad, not because I ever had any experience like Celine and Jesse’s in Vienna. I wondered if my own sense of discovery was slipping away from me and if I’d even be open enough to hop off a train on a moment’s notice. Knowing me, I’d be like “well, I was looking forward to getting home and going grocery shopping for this new recipe so maybe next time?”
I once heard advice columnist Dan Savage talk on his podcast how there’s no perfect person for you. We’re all human beings with our imperfections and no one is ever going to be 100% compatible with you, but it’s up to you how much you can live with. Sometimes a person’s flaws are just what Savage calls the “price of admission.” If you want to be with someone, then you have to be with all of them without expecting them to change or resenting them for not being what you want them to be at all times.
This idea came to mind for me when watching the Before Trilogy in reverse. As Jesse and Celine rehash their relationship in Before Midnight, much of their struggle comes from reality living up to the fantasy created by both Before Sunrise and the in-universe novel it inspired. And the fantasy was extended in Before Sunset. Jesse says, “I f***ed up my whole life because of the way you sing” in Before Midnight. But even that is a reductive romanticization of their day in Paris. Jesse feels ready to run away with Celine almost immediately upon seeing her again, and, I think, spends the day with her justifying doing so to himself. Their chemistry is palpable, and their conversations flow naturally but not always smoothly. Through Before Sunset, you can see the negotiations both spoken and unspoken in prolonging their time together. Barriers are crossed between sentences, until they cross the ultimate barrier.
You watch Before Sunrise, and the movie lives up to how Celine and Jesse remember it. Before Sunrise is so romantic, it practically glows. Whether they’re coming across a musician practicing in the wee hours of the morning or stealing glances at each other in a music shop, Before Sunrise is perhaps the most conventionally romantic of the three films. Jesse and Celine fall in love by discovering each other through shy lies that morph into bold truths. They posture perhaps, but the night is long and their shields fade away. Even in the moments where they might start to notice each other’s price of admission, Vienna distracts them just enough to uphold their Cinderella romance.
While in Greece, Jesse and Celine wrestle with the stark reality that there are some tough prices of admission for their relationship. And when you watch the Before Trilogy in its order, as you get further from Before Sunrise, the more you wonder if they did just ruin their lives. But watching in reverse, you can see how this globe-trotting, years-spanning whirlwind romance could sustain such an imperfect reality. And yet Before Midnight doesn’t end with some dramatic declaration or even any concrete resolution for their issues. Rather, the final film ends with ambiguity with two people uncertain of their future, both convinced and unconvinced. The previous two films ended on an ellipsis too, and it feels right that there’s no finite conclusion.
Like many of Richard Linklater’s movies, the Before Trilogy is a time travel movie. Watching Before Midnight first and then going backwards through Before Sunset and then ending with Before Sunrise felt like being able to see yourself in the past with the insights from the future. Time traveling is built into the movie, with Jesse pretending to be a time traveler at various points. It makes you wonder, what you could tell your past self or what you would see in your future self. Would Celine still get off the train in Vienna if she saw herself in Paris or in Greece? Would Jesse still miss his plane if he knew what the future held? Would their resentments and frustrations go down smoother if they could go back to Vienna? The Before Trilogy might not have a definitive answer, But maybe watching these movies in reverse or any mixed order provides new meaning to these uncertainties..
