ArtiFact #28: Richard Linklater’s BEFORE Trilogy | Jessica Schneider, Alex Sheremet

American filmmaker Richard Linklater occupies the space between Hollywood and the indie film scene, combining some of Hollywood’s refinements with unexpected inversions and sleights of hand. Perhaps best known for “Boyhood” (2014) and the Before Trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight), these latter films defined some of Richard Linklater’s chief concerns: the passage of time, the role of nostalgia in youth and adulthood, and the tension between fantasy and reality.

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Topics covered in the patron-only show: Alex shows off his wild Tortie cat; Bach’s role in Jessica’s new book; Jessica’s COVID experience; the possibility of long-term COVID damage on biological systems; Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”; the weirdos trying to prove via Natural Language Processing that Jane Austen is the greatest writer ever; the coming tyranny of the “artsy programmer”; Jessica diagnoses Alex’s psychology; why Dan Schneider (not Nickelodeon Dan) is “extremely giving”; poking fun of Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground”; Jessica reads a poem from her new collection, “Ekphrasm”; Alex describes plans for a book diving into 90s culture + politics from all angles; Jessica praises Quentin Tarantino’s, Spike Lee’s stylistics; on “Good Will Hunting”; serendipity among artists; Jessica explains how Emily Dickinson changed her life; Alex reads the first poem (a sonnet) he has written in many years, about a black woman, Connie Marie Hobbs, who was murdered in the 2000s only to be scrubbed from the Internet; how Ezekiel Yu has vastly improved as a writer; Jessica has her 3rd glass of wine; Alex describes an animal’s response to personal musk

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Jessica Schneider’s essay on “Before Sunrise”: https://www.automachination.com/wistful-dissolve-richard-linklater-before-sunrise-1995/

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:18 – introduction; Jessica Schneider’s three essays on the Before Trilogy; thanking a particularly generous Patreon subscriber for getting us closer to $500

2:17 – why Jessica Schneider has always been moved by these films, and “Before Sunrise” in particular

05:40 – Alex explains why coming to the films late doesn’t really take away their more intellectual appeal; how Jesse’s public access television idea turned into now-dead Internet fads

12:56 – digital vs. analog narratives; the thorny topic of dick pics; The Wonder Years connection; “young adult” artistry done well

18:36 – “Before Sunrise” plays with the idea of a ‘new dawn’ by making it undesirable & riddled with anxiety; “Before Sunset” is shorter, more manic in its energy, yet has a more poetic and definitive ending

26:00 – Richard Linklaker makes some intelligent choices with the German couple at the beginning of “Before Sunrise”; Jessica on fantasy vs. reality in the Before Trilogy; Alex on “Before Sunset” as a structural bridge between the films with a totalizing force, as opposed to functioning as a standalone work; how the “magic” disappears in “Before Midnight”

33:35 – Alex defends the Jesse of “Before Midnight”: both Jesse and Celine wanted the same thing, yet to reach it, Jesse had to sacrifice significantly more; how Richard Linklater establishes flaws for both characters

39:34 – Jessica on the Terminator 1 & 2 connection; the viewer’s waning or increasing attraction to Julie Delpy / Ethan Hawke as they mature; Alex explains why his romance and nostalgia have diverted into a richer appreciation of present-day reality (“an intellectual wall comes up”); Europe vs. boring-ass United States; Alex talks about the time Jessica “lost” him in the middle of a jog in Texas

45:27 – how the Before Trilogy slights Americans; connecting these films to the only good sequence in Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person In The World”; how “Before Sunrise” uses the gradual build-up of romantic tension vs. the give/take buildup of subtle (and not so subtle) resentments in “Before Midnight”

50:53 – Alex on the “pitter-patter” of little insights in “Before Sunrise”; the possibility of additional films; the co-willing, co-manipulation in “Before Sunset”; poet/beggar character interrupts the fantasy world in “Before Sunrise”

01:07:45 – the films are Ethan Hawke centric rather than following Julie Delpy’s character; why Jesse is always the one in a foreign setting; Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives” vs. "Before Midnight"

01:17:30 – getting lost in time’s instantiations

Tags: #RichardLinklater, #BeforeTrilogy, #BeforeSunrise, #BeforeSunset, #BeforeMidnight, #EthanHawke, #JulieDelpy