A Romantic Journey Through Time: The ‘Before’ Trilogy

For me, the best sequels will always be those that evolve over time, and the "Before" trilogy is such a film series.

Before Sunrise 1995：The start of a long journey

When "Before Sunrise" premiered in 1995, no one expected that this film would continue to have sequels a decade or two decades later. It’s a rare case for such a dialogue-driven film. But "Before Sunrise" was destined from the beginning to be a film intertwined with reality. It’s evolved over time along with people and stories in real life.

The idea for this film came from the director Richard Linklater's real experience. One night in 1989, he met a girl named Amy in Philadelphia. They chatted and roamed the city together. When they parted, they left each other their phone numbers. They kept in touch for a while but unexpectedly lost contact.

Of course, screenwriter Kim Krizan’s story also inspired the film. Krizan once met a Norwegian man traveling to Paris while she was touring Europe by train. They also strolled through the city all night, then separated. After that, they never contacted each other again.

These two encounters without an ending led to the creation of "Before Sunrise" in 1995. In the story, an American boy named Jesse meets a Parisian girl named Celine on a train during his trip in Europe. They hit it off and decide to disembark in Vienna. They must part ways after sunrise, so they chat, stroll, and finally kiss before dawn. It is an almost perfect start of a love story. When they are about to separate, they agree to meet at the same place in six months. But they are uncertain whether they would have the chance to see each other again, or whether the other person would be willing to keep the appointment.

The film ends amid a mix of emotions — the sadness of parting and the ambiguous anticipation— so does the story outside the film. Linklater hoped that Amy would hear about the film and appear at the premiere of the film. But she didn't. They eventually lost in touch with each other.

This film, in a way, shaped my imagination of romance . After my first viewing of "Before Sunrise", I looked forward to a romantic encounter during a journey, hitting it off with a stranger foreign boy and having a great time together. We could wander in a picturesque city, converse with street poets, listen to tapes in a music store, and tacitly agree to hold hands, hug, and kiss. A crush became the stolen glances and avoidance when listening to the same song, expressing love with gestures and gaze, but never mentioning it directly.

In addition to romance, "Before Sunrise" also offers a memorable sense of restraint. Even at their sweetest moments, they are pessimist and worried about the future of love. They both agree that there are no truly happy marriages in the world, and if there are, they are sustained by lies. They can’t help getting close and kissing each other, and they retreat at the thought of separation. They agree not to leave contact information after separating. Rather than experiencing the coldness after passion fades, it's better to let everything stop at this night, which makes it all the more memorable.

Perhaps stories without endings leave more room for recalling and revisiting. As a result, this film has become one of the most popular movies on major film review websites, ranking in the Top 200. "Before Sunrise" closes with Jesse and Celine each embarking on their journey after separating. They repeatedly reminisce about the night they spent together, wondering if they will meet again. As a viewer, whenever I rewatch this film, I feel excited and curious about whether the two will meet again in the parallel universe built by the film.

Before Sunset 2004 | When the story meets reality

Perhaps it is this constant rewatching by viewers that created a good opportunity for making the film "Before Sunset", which was released in 2004. Interestingly, this time, in addition to Linklater, the scriptwriters included Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy, who reprised their roles as Jesse and Celine. It feels like the two lead actors/actress brought part of their real life to the story, their second collaboration 9 years later forming a perfect part of the sequel script.

In the second film, Jesse and Celine fate are interconnected in three ingenious dimensions：

• The first dimension is the space-time created by the novel written by Jesse in the movie. The protagonist of the novel represents his younger self, who meets a beautiful girl and never forgets about her, and the story ends when they part.

• The second dimension is the movie's own space-time, where Jesse and Celine meet again in Paris nine years after their first encounter. Jesse wrote that novel because of Celine, to remember the day and the person he can’t forget and to find Celine again. Celine never forgets either, she sings in the song she wrote to Jesse: one single night with you, little Jesse, is worth a thousand with anybody. The two of them, just like before, under the clear circumstances of a forthcoming separation, walk and talk all afternoon, and the movie ends at the moment of their ambiguous dialogue.

• The third dimension is real space-time outside the movie, where Linklater turned his life experience into a movie, hoping to reunite with Amy but never made it.

In the stories of the three dimensions, neither the male nor female protagonists have a clear "ending". But that’s what lends this movie a rare sense of realness. It mirrors real life, where there are few dramas. What the two leads have been doing is talking, constantly talking. Jesse's gaze towards Celine always becomes deeper when Celine talks about her life and values. It is this kind of conversation and gaze that touch and resonate with the audience. Not everyone gets to experience this. To touch the soul through conversation is the most difficult and rarest thing.

When I finished watching this one, there were still a few years before the third installment “Before Midnight” came out. But I instinctively knew that the two leads would definitely end up together.

People in their 30s probably hold such values: when we were young, we always thought that we would meet many people, but then we realized that there were actually very few people we could really meet and connect with. Time always passes faster than we think. Suddenly, our youth is over. We have become middle-aged people, starting to miss the past, and regret those feelings that did not continue. We might give up the whole idea of romantic love. But we can't help but imagine another more romantic possibility of life. We will feel dazed about everything that happened in the past and keep thinking about them as if they were happening before eyes. Just like Jesse said the moment he saw Celine, inside every moment there is another moment. If we can muster the courage, not only the courage to give up worldly life, but also the courage to face a relationship that might eventually fail, maybe we can catch the "person we really want to love", and make life that has fallen into mediocrity and meaninglessness become meaningful again.

Just like a handful of firewood that is about to be extinguished, it is ignited by romance once again.

Fortunately, when I saw “Before Sunset”, there were only a few years left before the third installment was released.

Before Midnight | Getting old with the story

In 2013, 18 years after the first part of "Before Sunrise" was released, "Before Midnight" premiered.

Finally, Jesse and Celine chose to be together after their encounter 9 years ago, and they now have twin daughters.

Their love comes true, but life is not as good as they hoped. Celine has put a lot of energy into childbirth and raising children, and these sacrifices are not all seen and understood by Jesse, causing her anxiety and pain. Jesse feels guilty for missing key stages of his child's growth after the divorce. When they recall their past encounters in front of people, they begin to trivialize their past romance. They start to tease and joke with each other, and even argue.

Has love eventually disappeared? Have they become what they didn't like before? Yes, and no.

The movie has faded the warm light and rose-colored tone that enveloped the previous two parts, replaced by blue and white. Just like their love, it is no longer the warm and romantic warm color, but full of realistic sharpness and calm. It's still beautiful. Although they dodn't fully understand each other's feelings, they know love still exists. So, at midnight, after a big quarrel, they are still willing to play the dialogue game they did 18 years ago to resolve conflicts.

Will this be the end of their relationship? Not necessarily. After all, memories never end, as long as you are alive.

When I look back on this part, I see not only the fading of love with the passing of time, but also the changes in the societal values.

The cinema of the 1990s believed in true love. Just like Jesse and Celine at the beginning, they were so innocent and romantic. By the early 2000s, whether in Hollywood or Europe, the values of marriage began to be questioned and challenged in the movies. By the 2010s, feminism's challenge and questioning of marriage were also presented in films. And myself, when writing this article, I am a woman in her thirties who is already married. I found that what I care most about is no longer "what their love is like", which mattered much for me before, but whether Celine is really happy in her marriage and whether she has been exploited in terms of housework and emotions. Love may still be beautiful, but having true love does not mean having a perfect life. This change in values, I believe, is also a change in the inner thoughts of all those who have matured or aged a bit with these three films.

Let me go back to three dimensions.

The first dimension is the world of Jesse's novels. In the second part of the novel, the male protagonist reunites with the female protagonist in Paris, and finally does not take the plane back to the United States. They choose to be together from then on. After that, they live a complicated life that can’t be summed up with a simple title. This is also the characteristic of Jesse's third novel, which has a long name.

The second dimension is the world of Jesse and Celine. They choose to be together. But in the nine years of getting along, they have accumulated countless resentments and dissatisfactions with each other. Lucily, in the end, they still love each other.

The third dimension is the story of the director Linklater, which also came to an end. In 2010, when Linklater began to make the sequel "Before Midnight", a friend of Amy who knew their story contacted Linklater and told him that Amy died in a motorcycle accident on May 9, 1994, when she was 24, just a few weeks before he started shooting "Before Sunrise".

Amy would never know that the boy she spent the night with shot three films for her that have influenced countless people's views on love and are considered the greatest love film trilogy in the world.

This is another touching aspect of the "Before" trilogy. Movies can open up new time and space different from reality. If it does well, it will not only make the audience in reality believe that this time and space really exist, but also make a difference in their real life. To make such a film, it needs to achieve a perfect blend of reality and romance: not be too dramatic to make the audience feel far away from them, nor too realistic to the point of no romantic appeal. To achieve this, the best way is to let the characters in the film grow in real time. The passage of time in the movie world and the passage of our years as audiences in reality can be all witnessed in this trilogy.

This is what I think is the best way to adapt sequels.

The real and romantic blend that this trilogy achieves also inspired me to become a writer who records my own life and emotions. When I treat life with the idea of seeing my own life as a movie, I find everything becomes especially precious. All scenes, all dialogues, all joys and tears, are worth remembering and treating with care. In this way, I assign my own meaning to my ordinary, perhaps meaningless life.

Fortunately, movies may have endings, but reality often doesn’t. Time never stops, everyone's end is death. Before death comes, there is no ending. There are only goodbyes and expectations to meet again.

When another decade has passed, will we welcome the fourth part? I hope so. A movie story that has been told for forty years. Isn’t it worth expecting? Let's meet again in the new film.