‘Before Midnight’: Why Linklater’s third film is just as essential to the trilogy
“You know what’s going on here? It’s simple. I don’t think I love you anymore.” Celine drops that line and walks out, slamming the door. Released nine years after our last check-in with the beloved couple in Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy, this moment feels like a gut punch. As the third in this decade-spanning love story between Celine and Jesse, a couple who meet by kismet and are painted out as soulmates, Before Midnight is often considered as the weak link or even a ruining blow. But as our perfect couple splinter despite the movies’ fans demanding something idyllic – is that the whole point?
Played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, Jesse and Celine are arguably two of the best-written and most beloved rom-com figures ever put on screen. The beauty of the Before Trilogy is the normal magic of it. Linklater writes little to no plot into these movies. At first, they meet, and then the run time is essentially just them walking around and talking about anything and everything, with nothing but their natural chemistry powering it. The second, coming years later as Linklater’s obsession with letting his actors naturally age shines through beautifully, is much of the same. After promising at the end of the first to reunite, refusing to swap any details as they trust in fate to bring them back, the second movie feels like that fate correcting course nine years down the line after failing the first time. As the couple find each other again, it’s much of the same: walking and talking.
Both make the gorgeous point that romance needs nothing more than that. Linklater doesn’t feel the need to throw antics their way or put these couples in any kind of situation beyond a series of cafes, bars, and parks. Their topics of conversation have no focus, too, as they meander through everything from spirituality, cynicism, their work, and their views on love. They’re littered with humour, but it all feels exactly like the kind of jokes and laughs that come on a perfect first date or a perfect reunion with someone you’ve always held a flame for. They’re beloved films for exactly that reason – the magic realism of them. After Linklater’s story sets up a fateful meeting, the rest is so deeply human and normal that it could happen to any of us.
The first two are characterised by the ease that chemistry and a good connection take on. Even as they have heavier conversations, especially in Before Sunset, when Celine unpacks her feelings towards their first meeting, they’re not necessarily dramatic. That’s likely because, under it all, those two movies are about infatuation, the early stages of fancying something and being enamoured by just hearing them talk. But then nine years after that, when we reunite with the couple again, now parents and firmly together – things cannot be the same; Linklater knows that and resolved to show it despite what his audience might want.
“The first film is about what could be, the second is about what should have been; Before Midnight is about what it is.”
Ethan Hawke
Letterboxd is littered with countless reviews of the third movie, all about how love is dead and how they’d like to pretend that they never saw this third instalment. It’s understandable,e though, especially if you watch the three in quick succession. While the first two have audiences kicking their feet and giggling, the third is a grinding halt as suddenly Celine and Jesse spend the movie arguing, bickering their way through actual big life decisions they need to make as a couple, having to talk about real topics rather than wandering through different more conceptual chats and end, in the movie’s climax, in an argument that feels like it could be the end. That’s when Celine drops that line, “I don’t think I love you anymore”, and it genuinely feels like this dream couple audiences are so invested in have just been shot dead.
But as articulated perfectly by Ethan Hawke, “The first film is about what could be, the second is about what should have been; Before Midnight is about what it is.” For a film series powered by normality and realism, the third film stays committed to that. No couple nine years into their relationship still looks like Jesse and Celine on that first night they met. Though Linklater puts glimpses of those two people in, and glimpses that both would still love to indulge in loving like their younger selves, the fact of the matter is that they’re busy, older and have responsibilities now. After finally coming together in a real way, having kids and sharing a day-to-day life, love looks different years into the journey, and Before Midnight shows that as an essential third act to complete their story.
While people often take that as a devastating blow, as if the love of their two favourite characters is ruined forever, that’s really not it at all. “I am giving you my whole life, okay? I’ve got nothing larger to give,” Jesse says in the middle of their argument as perhaps the crux of this whole film. With their love previously coloured by chance interactions and grabbing at fleeting moments, it is now steadfast and love; seemingly, both characters are almost struggling to adapt to that, too, just as the audience is. “I love you. And I am not in conflict about it,” he tells her, trying to brush away the blinding argument they’re in to get back to the core of it all – That’s surely what long-term love is.
I think it’s beautiful that Linklater allows his characters this third moment. He allows their story to be big but also real, lets them be this dreamy rom-com couple but also lets them be people with flaws and weaknesses and bad patches, once again reminding his audience that love like this can happen to them, it’s happening everywhere, but it also involves arguments and issues.
“If you want true love, then this is it. This is real life. It’s not perfect, but it’s real,” Jesse says as the line that calms it all down, ending the movie on a gorgeous scene where the two seem to return to their old selves, riffing on a joke about that night they first met, bouncing the bit back and forth as the chemistry that was always there remains amidst the trials of being a unit and a couple, rather than just two perfect strangers.
