Ratings: 8.0/10
Film Class: C
Genre: Drama
Before Midnight is the sequel to Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004). Possibly the finale for this off-mainstream franchise which solely focuses on 2 main individuals, Jessie (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), whose chance encounter on a train to Europe (Before Sunrise) sparked a romance which spanned across 3 sequels. This trilogy is the rawest, one of the most novel, simple and direct forms of telling a love story - through the eyes of the lovebirds. It's like just tagging along with them for a day with a camera, allowing its viewers to experience a "live" viewing/unfolding of their love story.
It's full of raw dialogue; witty, interesting, enlightening, sad at times but romantic and sweet most of the time, and never once will you be bored of them. It's your seemingly everyday dialogue, yet it is through them that you get to understand the characters' ideologies, perceptions and family backgrounds better. Well, the latter is especially true for this installment.
Before Sunrise tells the story of their love blossoming in Vienna, yet due to circumstances, were parted. Before Sunset revisits this love story in Paris and sparks a new chapter. And Before Midnight follows them on their finale chapter of their love story in Greece.
*spoilers ahead* Before Midnight differs from its predecessors in that there's less focus on the 2 leads, well at least for the initial part. There were more characters involved this time round which didn't work for me because it took out the "essence" of the film. The characters were interesting nonetheless, and the pace really took up when fractures started worsening during the 2nd half of the movie. The highlight for this movie was the bedroom scene, when the couples started their most detrimental quarrel, though it was awkward (and distracting) at first with Julie Delpy showing her boobs while quarreling.
The highlight for Before Sunset was the most vivid for me, also a bedroom scene, but it was more romantic with Julie Delpy strumming a guitar and singing a song which she composed. I was trying hard to recall the highlight scene for the very first movie, Before Sunrise, did a quick youtube search and while I didn't quite find it (the park scene was the closest I got), I was surprised to find that the starting scene where Ethan Hawke tried to convince Julie Delpy to alight the train and spend the day with him, he talked about time travel.
This is particularly interesting because, *drumroll*, a slight trivia spoiler here, is that at the end of this movie, Ethan once again talks about time travel. I'll have to give props to the director for the ingenuinty of starting and ending his franchise with the same "topic", whether intentional, or not. But this subtle concidence not only reinforces Jessie's ideologies, but also the director's fine eye for details.
One of the other demerits I found with this movie is the way both of them were conversing with each other. They still felt kinda apart, which made more sense for the first two movies since they weren't together yet, but after being husband and wife, they somehow manage to engage in intellectual conversations without any physical closeness. I mean merely holding hands and having an intellectual conversation might have added a nice subtlety to it.
However, this is debatable because looking at the overall context of the movie, the lack of physical intimacy while strolling along the streets of Greek could be due to their degrading relationship. Still, I believe the love between the both of them was strong even at the end of the movie. *warning, major spoilers ahead* Especially true for Julie Delpy's case since she said she no longer loved Ethan anymore. I believe she said it in a moment of spite, I mean afterall, we all know that most of the time we regret the things we say during a heated argument. As for Ethan's case, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that his love for Julie Delpy was as solid as a rock.
Before Midnight presents a side of the harsh reality of marriage. It's not without its ups and downs, and warns signs of a broken marriage. However, it also sheds a positive light on the differing views of man and woman, and how to manage our expectations and tackle such problems in future (I'm newly wed). Ultimately, one must never lose sight of why we fall in love with another person in the first place. If we manage to convince ourselves otherwise, then we have only ourselves to blame for failed marriages.
