Review of Before Midnight (2013) by Pieceofmine — 13 Jun 2013

Before Midnight is, of course, the third (and not necessarily final) film in Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy's winsome, organic, intimate series that follows the stories of lovers Jesse and Celine. The film picks up nine years after the ambiguous ending of Before Sunset and well, you're not interested in the plot. Jesse and Celine are together, of course, because how could the film exist otherwise?

And what, really, can I say? Was there any doubt that I would gush about this film before I even set eyes on its beautiful opening shot: a throwaway close-up of Ethan Hawke's Jesse and his son, Hank's, shoes? Call me a biased reviewer. Maybe I'm doing it wrong by allowing this film to be the third act of a singular, indivisible story. The truth is, it was going to take a disaster of tremendous proportions for me to not love this film. I can say with absolute certainty that such was not the case. As far as judgment rendered goes, there's a pretty simple rubric. Have you seen the first two films? If not, go see them now. There is absolutely zero reason to watch Midnight out of context, even if it does stand strong as an independent entity. Now, did you love the first two films? If not, you should probably kill yourself with robotic haste, so bleak is the world you must inhabit. If you've seen both Sunrise and Sunset and are still breathing, you will see this film. You will almost assuredly love it. Few things in the world are so simple and so certain.

Instead, I'll waste everyone's time by drawing some fairly moot and humble and utterly small comparisons between the three films.

Sunrise is the most unapologetically romantic film of the series, as is to be expected. Midnight ranks a close second, however, due to a level of passion and tenacity that was understated in Sunset. Where Sunrise basks in the warm afterglow of the fading day and the comfortable fabric of young love, and where Sunset is more about two individuals coming to terms with their own lives in relation to each other, Midnight is about the sundering chaos of a binary star system, two supergiants pulling and pushing on each other, bound in an endless dance of growth, destruction, and renewal. Midnight is by far the most intense of the three films; Sunrise is warm, Sunset is cool, and Midnight spans the daring gamut from lukewarm comfort into a nuclear firestorm. Sunrise is all about possibility, where these two people might ever go. Sunset is about evaluation, the strange and complicated states they're suspended in. Midnight is about both the past and the future, looking to both with remorse and hopefulness, and not with the intellectual and emotional curiosity of Sunset but with pinned resignation and patience and pity and an entirely different kind of hope.

Before Midnight is a powerful film. In comparison (and by no means diminishing the potency of the other two films),Sunrise is a carefree frolic through the grass, Sunset is a careful dance of courtship between two experienced partners, and Midnight is a bare knuckle brawl of devastating emotional honesty that is only possible between two people who have known each other for so many years and therefore possess the arsenal to really hurt both their partners and themselves. It is the biggest film of the three in scope; it introduces what may almost amount to a supporting cast, and in the first act, I almost feared that the focus of the film had unraveled a bit. But by the halfway point, we have returned to the relationship at the core of this (so far) trilogy. But it also spans the largest portion of the emotional gamut; it doesn't deal as heavily in the ethereal idealism of the first film or the calculated sophistication of the second, but runs all the bases and spreads further outward and onward, exploring new emotions and histories and anything else that's ripe for the picking. Midnight is also the funniest of the three; with cruelty there is the merciful counterbalance of humor, made all the more wry and sharper by the irony and acridity that surrounds it.

There is little else to say about what Midnight accomplishes without ruining the film. This is by far the most plot-dependent of the three films (though still not very), and there are emotional surprises to be had along the way. It is the most beautiful of the three films, especially in its opening act, and especially in a scene filmed at a group dinner that uses light so expertly and beautifully that it is numbing in its sheer visual skill.

It is also the messiest of the films. Sunset remains the closest of the three to perfection. Sunrise had some of the unsteady hand of a young auteur, but Midnight sometimes strays by way of its own ambition, a quality that the first two, especially Sunrise were too cool to have.