Richard Linklater’s preoccupation with time
Fans of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy might be familiar with June 16th. It marks the day that the protagonists, Jesse and Celine, meet on a train and spontaneously decide to spend the night together, walking and talking through Vienna. After their successful date, they plan to meet exactly six months later in the same place.
Of course, this doesn’t happen. Fans had to wait nine years to see whether Jesse and Celine had reunited, culminating in the release of Before Sunset in 2004. The movie reintroduces us to the characters—Jesse is now an author who wrote a book inspired by that special night, and Celine is an environmental activist. They’re both in relationships, although it is instantly clear that neither has forgotten that remarkable connection they had back in 1995.
Time becomes a central theme, leaving us to consider how it affects us. Do our core values and beliefs change all that much? Jesse and Celine naturally develop over the course of the trilogy, which ends with Before Midnight. Here, we discover that after their reconnection in Before Sunset, the pair began a relationship that resulted in marriage and two children. Linklater captures the vital moments in time that inform relationships throughout these films – the anticipation of new love, bonding and arguing over various opinions, falling for someone and knowing that no one else will do, and the rockiness that threatens many relationships after a certain amount of time.
While time progresses, this doesn’t mean that the couple follows a linear pattern of growth. For example, Before Midnight shows the pair falling into infantile ways of communicating despite them being grown adults – and parents. Linklater uses time as a narrative device to explore the simultaneous beauty and messiness of being human. We don’t miraculously become ‘better’ humans as the years go on; sometimes, we fall into childish ways of thinking, and other times, we act wise beyond our years.
By choosing to film the movies over 18 years, we get a sense of the couple’s relationship, which is informed by the real-life experiences of Linklater and actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. As they experienced their own marriages and other life events, this naturally shaped how they approached each film in the series. The erosion of time imbues Before Midnight with a slightly different tone, with the characters partially weathered by time’s highs and lows.
Linklater followed a similar concept when he made Boyhood, a film that follows the main character, Mason, from childhood to the early stages of adulthood. The movie was filmed every few years as the actors got older—a bold choice that relied on the hope that none of the participants, especially Ellar Coltrane (who played Mason), wouldn’t back out midway through.
By allowing Mason to grow up over the course of 165 minutes, Linklater confronted audiences with the way that the passing of time shapes us. The director was willing to change his story to fit the actors, stating, “I am totally ready to adapt the story to whatever [Coltrane] is going through” via PA News. Boyhood truly dug into the experience of being human, focusing on those small moments that shape us throughout our lives and ultimately turn us into the person we become – although Linklater asserts that we are constantly evolving.
Elsewhere in his filmography, Linklater has also taken audiences back to different decades, most notably his coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused. Set in the ‘70s, Linklater created a truly authentic time capsule informed by his own experiences of adolescence. It placed us in a period when things looked drastically different, yet, at its core, the film explored the kinds of experiences that are timeless. Teenage pressures, social hierarchies, and creepy older men are all present: the film is pretty accurate in its exploration of being a high schooler, no matter the year.
Instead of taking us on a journey through decades, Dazed and Confused shows us how much can happen in a short space of time. In just one night, friendships and relationships form and crumble—a testament to the fragility and volatility of human connections. Similarly, Slacker, his first feature, takes place over the course of one day, and his 2001 movie Tape plays out in real-time.
Linklater is one of the most innovative filmmakers to use time as a narrative device, whether through decades-long projects or condensing all of the action into one day. By playing with the constraints of time, Linklater poignantly explores the ever-changing experiences of being human.
