Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight: A Philosophical Exploration 9780367204389, 9780367204396, 9780429261473

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“No matter how in love you were at 20, no matter how beautiful it was at 30, no matter how conficted you were at 40: you are going to die. This is the sad reality for all of us. It is revolting, it is upsetting, it is wrong, it is unfair. But it is the human condition.” Julie Delpy, actor and screenwriter of the Before trilogy

Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight Richard Linklater’s celebrated Before trilogy chronicles the love of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) who frst meet up in Before Sunrise, later reconnect in Before Sunset and fnally experience a fall-out in Before Midnight. Not only do these flms present storylines and dilemmas that invite philosophical discussion, but philosophical discussion itself is at the very heart of the trilogy. This book, containing specially commissioned chapters by a roster of international contributors, explores the many philosophical themes that feature so vividly in the interactions between Céline and Jesse, including: • • • • • • •

the nature of love, romanticism and marriage the passage and experience of time the meaning of life the art of conversation the narrative self gender death

Including an interview with Julie Delpy in which she discusses her involvement in the flms and the importance of studying philosophy, Before Sunrise. Before Sunset. Before Midnight:A Philosophical Exploration is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, aesthetics, gender studies, and flm studies. Hans Maes is Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent, UK, and the author of Conversations on Art and Aesthetics (2017). Katrien Schaubroeck is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and the author of The Normativity of What We Care About (2013).

Philosophers on Film

In recent years, the use of flm in teaching and doing philosophy has moved to centre stage. Film is increasingly used to introduce key topics and problems in philosophy, from ethics and aesthetics to epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of mind. It is also acknowledged that some flms raise important philosophical questions of their own.Yet until now, dependable resources for teachers and students of philosophy using flm have remained very limited. Philosophers on Film answers this growing need and is the frst series of its kind. Each volume assembles a team of international contributors to explore a single flm in depth, making the series ideal for classroom use. Beginning with an introduction by the editor, each specially-commissioned chapter will discuss a key aspect of the flm in question. Philosophers on Film is an ideal series for students studying philosophy and flm, aesthetics, and ethics and anyone interested in the philosophical dimensions of cinema. Also available: Talk to Her Edited by A.W. Eaton Thin Red Line Edited by David Davies Memento Edited by Andrew Kania Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Edited by Christopher Grau Fight Club Edited by Thomas E.Wartenberg Vertigo Edited by Katalin Makkai Mulholland Drive Edited by Zina Giannopoulou Blade Runner Edited by Amy Coplan Blade Runner 2049 A Philosophical Exploration Edited by Timothy Shanahan and Paul Smart Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight A Philosophical Exploration Edited by Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Philosophers-on-Film/book-series/PHILFILM

Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight A Philosophical Exploration

Edited by

Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-20438-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-20439-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-26147-3 (ebk) Typeset in Joanna MT Std by codeMantra

To Ida and Ingmar ‘Later.’

“What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?” — Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood “You think all existence lapses in as quiet a fow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffed ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the food, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you—and you may mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current—as I am now.” — Charlotte Brönte, Jane Eyre “It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don’t need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.” — Nick Hornby, How to Be Good

Contents

Notes on contributors Note on the director Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck

xiii xvi 1

INTRODUCTION

1

Michael Smith

6

THE POETRY OF DAY-TO-DAY LIFE

2

Marya Schechtman

24

TIME AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE BEFORE TRILOGY

3

Hans Maes

41

A TRILOGY OF MELANCHOLY: ON THE BITTERSWEET IN

BEFORE SUNRISE , BEFORE SUNSET AND BEFORE MIDNIGHT

4

Christopher Cowley

65

‘RELATIONAL VERTIGO’ IN BEFORE MIDNIGHT

5

Murray Smith EPIC INTIMACY

83

xii CONTENTS

6

Diane Jeske

102

‘ROMANTIC OR CYNIC’: ROMANTIC ATTRACTION AS JUSTIFICATION

7

Kalle Puolakka

119

THE MANY FACES OF CONVERSATION IN THE BEFORE TRILOGY

8

Anna Christina Ribeiro

138

LOVE, DEATH AND LIFE’S SUMMUM BONUM : THE BEFORE TRILOGY AS MEMENTO MORI

9

Katrien Schaubroeck and Hans Maes

157

FALLING IN LOVE WITH A FILM (SERIES)

10

James MacDowell

174

ROMANCE, NARRATIVE, AND THE SENSE OF A HAPPY ENDING IN THE BEFORE SERIES

Julie Delpy, interviewed by Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck

194

“WE ARE EVERYTHING AND WE ARE NOTHING”

Index

205

Notes on contributors

Christopher Cowley works at the School of Philosophy in University College Dublin. He works primarily on the nature and experience of value in the ordinary world, and eschews theoretical contrivance. Diane Jeske is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, where she has taught since 1992. Her research has focused on the nature and rational and moral signifcance of intimate relationships. She is the author of Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons (Routledge 2008), The Evil Within: Why We Need Moral Philosophy (Oxford 2018), and Friendship and Social Media:A Philosophical Exploration (Routledge 2019). James MacDowell is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of the monographs Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema (2013) and Irony in Film (2016). He is currently researching the role of intention in flm theory as well as the aesthetics of YouTube. Hans Maes is Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent. He has authored and edited a number of books, including Portraits and Philosophy (Routledge, 2020), Conversations on Art and Aesthetics (Oxford University Press, 2017), Pornographic Art and The Aesthetics of Pornography (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), and Art and Pornography (Oxford University Press, 2012).

xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Kalle Puolakka, PhD, is university researcher of aesthetics at the Department of Philosophy, History, and Art Studies, University of Helsinki. Along with the book Relativism and Intentionalism in Interpretation: Davidson, Hermeneutics, and Pragmatism (Lexington Books, 2011), he has published papers on a variety of topics in aesthetics and philosophy of art in such journals as the British Journal of Aesthetics, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Contemporary Aesthetics, and the International Journal of Philosophical Studies. Anna Christina Ribeiro is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas Tech University. She is writing a monograph on the philosophy of poetry for Oxford University Press and a textbook on the philosophy of poetry and literature for the Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy series. She edited The Bloomsbury Companion to Aesthetics (2012, 2015). She serves on the editorial board of The British Journal of Aesthetics and recently served as a trustee of the American Society for Aesthetics. Katrien Schaubroeck is Senior Lecturer at the Philosophy Department of the University of Antwerp. She works on the philosophy of love, and co-edited the volume Love, Reason, and Morality (Routledge, 2017, with Esther Kroeker). Marya Schechtman is LAS Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her work focuses on philosophical problems of personal identity and their relation to questions of personal identity raised in other disciplines and in everyday life. She is the author of The Constitution of Selves (Cornell, 1996) and Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life (Oxford, 2014), as well as numerous articles on personal identity and related subjects. Michael Smith is McCosh Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He is the author of The Moral Problem (1994) and Ethics and the A Priori: Selected Essays on Moral Psychology and Meta-Ethics (2004), and the co-author with Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit of Mind, Morality, and Explanation: Selected Collaborations (2004). He delivered the John Locke Lectures at Oxford University in 2017, and these lectures will soon appear with Oxford University Press under the title A Standard of Judgement.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

xv

Murray Smith is Professor of Film at the University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom, director of the Aesthetics Research Centre at Kent, and past president of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image. He has published widely on flm, art, and aesthetics. His publications include Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema; Trainspotting; Film Theory and Philosophy (co-edited with Richard Allen); Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (co-edited with Steve Neale); Thinking through Cinema (co-edited with Tom Wartenberg); and most recently, Film,Art, and the Third Culture.

Note on the director

Richard Linklater (1960) is an American flm director and screenwriter who lives and works in Austin, Texas. His break-out flms were Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993). They already showcase Linklater’s predilection for witty and philosophical dialogue as well as his distinctive cinematic play on the passage of time. This is carried through in subsequent flms such as Waking Life (2001), Tape (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Boyhood (2014), Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) and, of course, the Before trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013). Other notable flms by Linklater include the historical crime flm The Newton Boys (1998), the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003), the sports flm Bad News Bears (2005), the period drama Me and Orson Welles, the dark comedy Bernie (2011) and the American drama Last Flag Flying (2017).

Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck INTRODUCTION

I think there are two kinds of flmmakers – ones that had their little 8mm cameras and their trains and were setting fres and blowing them up and crashing them into each other, and then there’re the ones who read a lot and were going to the theatre and maybe reading philosophy. – Richard Linklater

T

H E F I L M S B E F O R E S U N R I S E ( 1 9 9 5 ) , Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), created by Richard Linklater in collaboration with the actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, may be considered philosophical to the core. Not only do the individual flms present storylines and dilemmas that invite philosophical discussion, but philosophical discussion itself is at the very heart of the flms.The aim of this book, put simply, is to extend the philosophical conversation instigated by the Before trilogy and to further explore some of the themes that feature so vividly in the interactions between Céline and Jesse. Early on in Before Sunrise, Jesse tells Céline that he would like to make a series of documentaries about ordinary people as they go about their daily lives over a 24-hour period. Though Céline thinks this sounds boring, Jesse insists that on the contrary it would reveal the “poetry of day-to-day life”. The frst chapter, by Michael Smith, argues that the

2 INTRODUCTION

Before trilogy can itself be understood as a realisation of that same artistic ambition. The aspects of day-to-day life that it reveals the poetry of include the course of a romantic relationship over time; the impact that a romantic relationship can have on other relationships; and, more subtly, the effect of romantic relationships on the creation and consumption of art. It is a common bit of folk wisdom that one is asking for trouble if one expects a real-life relationship to play out like a love story in a movie. This idea is expressed, more than once, in the Before trilogy. It is illustrated in the narrative arc, and warnings against expecting relationships to be story-like are voiced explicitly by several characters. However, as Marya Schechtman points out, it would be a vast oversimplifcation to suggest that either the trilogy or the characters within it straightforwardly endorse this piece of common advice. She argues that they instead offer more general refection on the relation between real-life relationships and love stories, the upshot of which is the more nuanced position that it is not only legitimate but (in certain respects) necessary to experience real-life romances as (in some respects) story-like. Schechtman works out the details of this position and its connection to the complex exploration of temporality which is central in the flms. In “A Trilogy of Melancholy”, Hans Maes focuses on melancholy as a central expressive property of the Before flms. Melancholy is understood here as the profound and bittersweet emotional experience that occurs when we vividly grasp a harsh truth about human existence in such a way that we come to appreciate certain aspects of life more deeply.There are many intense as well as more subtle moments of melancholy in the various encounters between Céline and Jesse. Moreover, melancholy is not just present in the characters’ dialogue but is also expressed through various cinematic means. In the fnal section of the chapter, Maes turns to the reception of the Before trilogy and suggests that the flms may have resonated deeply with some viewers precisely because they are so expressive of melancholy. In the fourth chapter, Christopher Cowley coins the term ‘relational vertigo’ to refer to the moment when one partner (or both partners) in an intimate relationship becomes aware that the relationship is over or at least doomed. ‘Vertigo’ is used to capture the heart-wrenching feeling associated with the cognitive understanding. Insofar as the relationship is a genuinely identity-conferring commitment, such vertiginous

INTRODUCTION

3

understanding comes very close to an existential dread. Cowley contends that Linklater’s Before Midnight involves a fascinating representation of such vertigo unfolding between the protagonists. We learn enough about their relationship to see the fault lines, and we watch as these open into crevices. To make his point, Cowley draws on the philosophical literature concerning relational autonomy, moral luck and interpersonal understanding. In “Epic Intimacy”, Murray Smith explores Richard Linklater’s distinctive treatment of some of the key preoccupations manifest in his work: the nature and passage of time, the effect of that passage on people and places and the special role of flm in representing and exploring these preoccupations. While focussing primarily on Linklater’s Before trilogy, Smith sets the scene by looking at the work of other artists with kindred interests in extended temporality, including flmmaker James Benning, and examines the role of the many allusions to other artists and flmmakers woven into the trilogy. Looking at these matters leads to some refections on whether there is any worthwhile sense in which we might consider Linklater to be a particularly ‘philosophical’ flmmaker. While many claims for the philosophical status of flm are rather hyperbolic, Smith thinks that in Linklater’s case there is much to be said in favour of the idea. Central to it is the highly self-conscious nature of Linklater’s flmmaking, a quality achieved in part through the allusive texture of his flms. Is the pull of romantic attraction and/or love to be seen as in opposition to reason? Does romantic attraction and/or love have signifcant justifcatory force? These are questions that are addressed in the Before trilogy and taken up in Diane Jeske’s contribution “‘Romantic or cynic’: romantic attraction as justifcation”. Linklater’s flms set up a familiar contrast between romantic love/attraction and rationality, with a clear message that when romance is in opposition to rationality, rationality ought to be set aside in favour of romantic love or attraction. Here, however, we have something of a paradox: if rationality ought to be set aside, is that just to say that factors other than romantic attraction are rationally trumped by that attraction? In other words, is what is being suggested really that romantic attraction and the potential for romantic love ground or constitute such strong reasons for action that other factors are inevitably sidelined? Examining the Before flms, Jeske argues, can help us to clarify and answer these questions.

4 INTRODUCTION

Kalle Puolakka takes a look at the conversations in the Before trilogy and argues that many of them carry important aesthetic value. A specifc view of conversational interaction, drawn from John Dewey’s aesthetics and Donald Davidson’s philosophy of language, is at the heart of the developed account. In light of this analysis, the three flms of the trilogy turn out very different: Before Sunrise presents a series of episodic conversations, Before Sunset one more or less seamless conversation between two people, while Before Midnight adds to these conversational forms a group conversation, which gives insight into further possible aesthetic features of conversations. Puolakka’s chapter ends by considering how some important elements of the medium of cinema, such as camera movement, editing and framing, contribute to the overall artistic content of the flms, as well as to the point of view they inspire on conversations. In “Love, Death and Life’s Summum Bonum”, Anna Christina Ribeiro argues that the flm series is best seen as an example of memento mori art. Memento mori, the admonition to remember death, can take many forms, but the idea remains the same, namely that an awareness of our inevitable end should bear on how we live. Ribeiro shows how Linklater’s warning works in each of the movies and argues that with the Before trilogy, he makes the case that romantic love is life’s summum bonum – that is, ‘the ultimate ground of practical rationality’. Like many other fans, Katrien Schaubroeck and Hans Maes have fallen in love with the Before trilogy. But what does it mean to love a flm? What’s the difference between liking a flm, loving a flm and being a flm lover? How rational or irrational is it to fall in love with a flm? What are the constitutive elements of such a love? These are the questions they seek to address in “Falling in Love with a Film (Series)”. Love, they propose, is a source of meaning that comes about through interaction. Both the love depicted in the Before trilogy and the love felt for the trilogy itself provide support for such an interaction-based view of love. Viewed as cinematic romances, the Before flms have established a highly unconventional relationship with narrative closure. Appended by sequels every nine years, two of their conclusions have come to be recast as ongoing ‘middles’ – thereby also placing in signifcant doubt the fnality of the third. Given common theoretical assumptions about the ‘happy endings’ typical of romance fction, this irresolution might be seen as confrming the trilogy’s realist aspirations. Yet, as James

INTRODUCTION

5

MacDowell argues, the Before flms also seem to strike a more conficted attitude than this towards what Frank Kermode memorably called ‘the sense of an ending’ – that is, the psychological desire for a narrative closure that might confer order upon human affairs, however illusory. In both art and life, a romance (etymologically: ‘story’) is among the commonest narrative forms into which human experience is organised. Addressing each of their endings in turn, MacDowell explores some ways in which the Before flms both dramatise and express ambivalent meditations on this fact. We end this volume by giving the fnal word to one of the makers of the Before trilogy, Julie Delpy. Not only is she one of the lead actors, but she also co-wrote the Before series and was twice nominated for an Academy Award (best adapted screenplay) for Before Sunset and Before Midnight. Delpy agreed to be interviewed for the book because, as she explains, she has a soft spot for philosophy. She thinks everyone should have the opportunity to study philosophy at school, as it did have a profound effect on her own education. Other themes she discusses are death and romanticism in the Before trilogy, the importance of story-telling, the art of conversation and social justice when it comes to the making and appreciation of flms. When fnally asked about her views on the meaning of life, her reply is very much in tune with the spirit of the Before series: We are everything and we are nothing. It is just the big paradox of being alive. We’re tiny details, yet we are details. Each life, you know? In the realm of the universe, we are absolutely nothing. Yet we are so meaningful to some people.

Chapter 1

Michael Smith THE POETRY OF DAY-TO-DAY LIFE

poem (noun): a composition in stanza, especially one that is characterized by a highly developed artistic form and by the use of heightened language and rhythm to express an intensely imaginative interpretation of the subject.

S

O O N A F T E R J E S S E A N D C É L I N E meet on a train at the beginning of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), Jesse tells her about an idea he has for a cable-TV program that would run for a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. His idea is to enlist 365 documentarymakers around the world to flm local people going about their daily lives. The program would be the sum of these documentaries, one shown each day for a year. Amused but sceptical, Céline suggests that the program would amount to a mere record of the “mundane boring things everyone has to do every day of their fucking life”. Jesse disagrees. He thinks it would reveal “the poetry of day-to-day life”. The scene is important because it establishes from the outset Jesse’s ambition to make art of the kind he goes on to make in his novels, art that explores aspects of day-to-day life we often take for granted. But it also serves an important meta-narrative purpose, as it prompts the realisation that Before Sunrise could itself be one of those documentaries. Shot in a fy-on-the-wall style, Linklater—or, better, the implied author of the Before trilogy (more on this presently)—himself explores aspects of

THE POETRY OF DAY-TO-DAY LIFE

7

day-to-day life that we often take for granted. Immediately after Jesse convinces Céline to leave the train with him in Vienna and keep him company until the next morning when he fies back to the United States, they encounter two young actors who tell them that, since the museums are about to close, there is nothing for them to do. They therefore just wander around and talk, and, as a result of all that talking, a romance develops. One thing we take for granted explored by the implied author of the Before trilogy is thus the genesis and growth of a romantic relationship. This feeds back into the narrative at the very beginning of Before Sunset (2004), as in the intervening nine years, Jesse becomes a novelist whose frst novel is the story of Before Sunrise, and in Before Midnight (2013), we learn that his second novel is the story of Before Sunset. The implied author/character distinction is thus blurred within the trilogy, with Jesse seeming to represent the trilogy’s implied author. This blurring also occurs elsewhere. For example, in Before Sunset, Jesse tells Céline that he has a recurring dream in which he wakes to fnd himself in bed with her. In Waking Life (2001), made between Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, Linklater included a dreamy scene of Jesse and Céline in bed together, a scene unlike any that fgure in the trilogy. These initial observations highlight two quite different aspects of day-to-day life we often take for granted explored by the Before trilogy’s implied author. The frst is the genesis and growth of a romantic relationship. The second is the creation and consumption of art, something that is explored within the narrative in part by having aspects of the narrative prompt meta-narrative thoughts about the implied author’s intentions.The simultaneous exploration of these two aspects of day-today life in a work of art will come as no surprise to those familiar with contemporary philosophical accounts of what it is to be in a romantic relationship and what it is to be a consumer of art, as there are illuminating philosophical accounts of these relationships according to which each bears a striking similarity to the other. Let’s therefore begin by considering these accounts on their own terms.

Being in a romantic relationship and being a consumer of art What is a romantic relationship? According to the account just alluded to, a romantic relationship is a form of friendship, where a friendship

8 MICHAEL SMITH

is in turn a dynamic relationship in which the well-being of each of the friends is bound up with that of the other, and where what constitutes the well-being of each changes over time in response to the other’s direction and interpretation (Baltzly and Kennett, 2016; Nehamas, 2016). To be friends is to be mutually disposed to acquire new desires in response to the desires of the other (this is the other’s direction), and it is to be mutually disposed to come to interpret events in the world and in one’s own life in response to the interpretations one is offered by the other (this is the other’s interpretation). Though these are descriptive claims about what it is to be friends, to the extent that we have reasons to satisfy our desires, friendship so understood turns out to be a signifcant source of reasons for action. In the ideal case of friendship—that is, in a friendship in which the disposition for direction and interpretation is maximally manifested— the possibility of acquiring new desires and novel interpretations is inexhaustible. There is always something new, or perhaps deeper, to enjoy and learn. Friends in the ideal case are thus made for each other by each other, and they continually make each other anew in ways that are open-ended. Conversely, friendships that are less than ideal are those in which the parties aren’t suited to each other. They don’t constantly fnd new things to enjoy or learn. At the limit, they are mere acquaintances. The distinctive feature of friendships that are romantic, according to this account, is that the well-being of each with which the well-being of the other is bound up includes aspects of the well-being of each sourced in their sexuality. Nothing is off the table when it comes to mutual direction and interpretation within a romance.This is why people’s romantic relationships are so often central to who they are and their take on the world. As already mentioned, one striking feature of this account of a romantic relationship as a kind of friendship is that it provides a model for what it is to engage with an artwork (Booth, 1988; Nehamas, 2007). Though this might initially seem surprising, it is less so once we remember that to regard something as an artwork is to think of it as created by an author who intends it to have certain effects on us, and that to consume an artwork is to set yourself the task of discovering what those intentions are. We do this by coming up with an interpretation— that is, an account of the author’s intentions for which we fnd evidence in the artwork itself—and these interpretations are successful to

THE POETRY OF DAY-TO-DAY LIFE

9

the extent that they encourage us to engage with the artwork again and come up with further hypotheses about the author’s intentions. These further interpretations might be more nuanced versions of the original interpretation, or completely novel interpretations; the possibilities are again open-ended, limited only by what engaging with the artwork prompts within us. Importantly, these interpretations need not be constrained by the actual author’s intentions. Actual authors often produce artworks that invite interpretations that transcend the intentions they had when they created them, so in giving such interpretations, we imagine the artwork having been created by an author with the required intentions. This is why I earlier talked about the implied author of the Before trilogy. An actual author’s ability to create artworks that transcend their intentions in this way, it is plausible to suppose, is one mark of a truly great author; plausible to suppose that the very best artworks are those for which the possibility of coming up with interpretations that prompt novel experiences that prompt further interpretations, all of which go beyond the actual author’s intentions—these are the analogues of direction and interpretation in the case of romantic relationships—is literally inexhaustible. There is always something new to enjoy and learn by engaging with them. Conversely, artworks that are less good are those that exhaust the possibility of such transcendent engagement and interpretation. At the limit, they merely provide an opportunity to pass the time. With these accounts of what it is to be in a romantic relationship and what it is to be a consumer of art in mind, let’s return to the Before trilogy. As we will see, the trilogy encourages us to have thoughts about each by making us aware of ourselves as an instance of the latter.

Céline and Jesse’s romance as a case study of mutual direction and interpretation The trajectory of Céline and Jesse’s relationship is in many ways a case study of what it is to be in a romantic relationship, understood as a form of friendship in the way just described. One obvious question we fnd ourselves asking throughout the trilogy is thus how close their relationship is to the ideal. Soon after they learn that the museums are closed in Before Sunrise, Céline and Jesse head off to a record store, and as they listen to a

10 MICHAEL SMITH

romantic song huddled together in a listening booth, they steal secret glances at each other, glances that suggest a romance will blossom. From the record store, they stroll through the museum district, catch a tram to the Cemetery of the Nameless, and head to Prater Park. On the way, their conversation is wide-ranging, covering their frst sexual feelings, the very idea of each person having a soul, and death. On the Ferris wheel, with the view of the Danube and the sunset, Céline initiates their frst kiss. Afterwards, they wander through the amusement park and talk about their relationships with their parents and their parents’ relationships with each other. Jesse’s parents argued often and eventually divorced, but not before Jesse learned that his father hadn’t wanted him, something that made him think of “the world as this place where I really wasn’t meant to be”. By contrast, Céline felt and still feels secure in the knowledge that her parents love her, and she has a strong sense of commitment to use the freedom they afforded her to make the world a better place. Still together, her parents were part of the May 1968 student uprisings in France, “revolting against everything”. After eating a meal together in a square, Céline has her palm read. PALM READER:

You are an adventurer, a seeker. An adventurer in your mind.You are interested in the power of the woman, in a woman’s deep strength, and creativity.You are becoming this woman. You need to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life.

She then turns her attention to Jesse and asks Céline whether he is a stranger to her. Céline confrms that he is, the palm reader looks perfunctorily at his palm and tells her, “You’ll be alright. He is learning”. Unhappy at being dismissed, Jesse scoffs at Céline’s interest in the palm reader who he thinks is clearly a fake. They visit an old church, and as they wander towards the Danube, Céline gently tells him that the thing she likes least about him so far is his “whining” reaction to not being the centre of attention when the palm reader read her palm: “You were like a little boy walking by an ice cream store, crying because his mother wouldn’t buy him a milkshake or something”. They walk past a street poet who offers to write a poem

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for them using a word of their choice. Céline offers “milkshake”. She is impressed with the result and invites Jesse to agree. Though he thinks she’s been taken in again, and initially suggests that the poems are prewritten ready for the insertion of the provided word, he reconsiders and tells her that he loves it. They go to a bar, listen to live music, and play pinball. While doing so, they each confess that they have recently been left by a partner with whom they thought they had a future. Céline’s breakup was especially traumatic. Her lover accused her of “blocking his artistic expression”, and that led her to have an obsession with him for which she sought help from a therapist. Jesse’s breakup happened in the weeks immediately prior to his being on the train, so the experience is still raw. They watch a street performance of a birth dance and then have a heart-toheart conversation about whether they ever want to fall in love with someone again.They are both ambivalent, but Jesse more so. He worries that falling in love would prevent him from excelling at something, whereas Céline, though determined to be independent, can’t help but think that “if there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something”. They go to another bar and each pretends to be the other’s best friend who they ring and tell about the person they’ve just met on a train and with whom they have spent the day in Vienna. By this stage, it is clear that they have deep affection for each other. They sit on the steps of the Albertina Museum, overlooking the Vienna Opera House, and muse about how dreamlike their time together has been. They go to a restaurant and resolve that instead of pledging to be together forever, this will be their one and only night in each other’s company.They wind up in yet another bar where Jesse convinces the bartender to give him a bottle of red wine, on the promise of being paid after he returns to the USA, so that he can have a farewell drink with his female companion. They walk to a park and lie together on the grass. Céline tells Jesse that she doesn’t want to have sex with him, as she doesn’t want to be remembered as part of “a great story”. They kiss, their kisses become more passionate, Céline rolls onto her back, Jesse rolls on top of her, and, as we discover later in Before Sunset, make love twice. The next morning, they walk through deserted streets back to the train station. There they admit that they desperately want to see each other again. They embrace and kiss, but they resolve not to exchange addresses. Instead, they will

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meet on that same platform on 16 December, exactly six months from the day they frst met, and then they go their separate ways. To repeat, the evolution of Céline and Jesse’s relationship is in many ways a case study of mutual direction and interpretation. Their commitment to having a romantic relationship at the end, the kind they had been ambivalent about having just a few hours earlier, is the result of the many smaller ways in which they have changed as they walked and talked about the nature of each other’s relationships with their families, friends, and lovers; their ambitions; their thoughts about the passage of time, death, and religion; their attitudes towards sex, love, and marriage; and their coming to know about, accept, and even be moved by each other’s faws and vulnerabilities. But not only do they fall in love, we fall in love with them. We want them to meet again in six months, and we hope that if and when they do, they still feel the same way about each other.

Thinking about the trilogy as a case study of consuming art I suggested earlier that the implied author of the Before trilogy’s aim is to reveal the poetry of day-to-day life. He manages to do that not just by telling Céline and Jesse’s story, but by elevating it. It is, for example, striking that the structure of the trilogy resembles that of a poem. There are three stanzas, and, as the titles suggest, these stanzas depict the stages of a loving relationship which are themselves likened to the three stages of a day. The frst stanza, Before Sunrise, depicts the dawning of a loving relationship; the second, Before Sunset, depicts what it is like when people who had a past experience of love that didn’t work out, and who have reconciled themselves to never loving again, are given another chance; and the third stanza, Before Midnight, depicts the pressures to which loving relationships become vulnerable as they evolve over time, and their fragility when they are subjected to those pressures. As befts their subject matter, these depictions get more complex as the trilogy proceeds, but much like the stanzas of a poem, each depiction has the same internal structure, and hence, the same rhythm. A question is posed near the beginning of each flm which gets answered towards the end, and at the very end of each flm, a further question is posed that gets answered at the beginning of the next flm.This rhythmic pattern of

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questions and answers both drives the narrative and constitutes the connective tissue between the three flms. That in turn adds to the drama, a drama dictated by the drama of a romance over time. When we think of the Before trilogy in this way, we think of the implied author as having self-consciously crafted it to be an example of what it is about. The trilogy reveals the poetry of a romance via its poetic form. Consider Before Sunrise. When we frst meet Jesse and Céline, they are strangers on a train who begin talking to each other after a middleaged couple in their carriage have a heated argument that leads one to storm out and the other to follow. Céline and Jesse’s initial conversation is easy and firtatious. We therefore fnd ourselves wondering: Will they fall in love? After Jesse persuades Céline to leave the train with him in Vienna and continue their conversation while wandering around—if she doesn’t, he tells her, her future-self will never forgive her not fnding out what might have been—this question is answered within the flm, and the answer is:Yes. But when they decide not to exchange addresses or telephone numbers at the end, and instead to go their separate ways, assuming they still feel the same way, the question we fnd ourselves asking is: Will Jesse and Céline meet again in six months? Before Sunset begins by answering that question: No, Jesse and Céline did not meet again in six months. Though Jesse went to Vienna, Céline couldn’t because her grandmother died and she had to attend the funeral. Jesse, who in the intervening nine years has turned his experience with Céline into a novel, is in Paris as part of a book tour.Towards the end of an interview and book-signing at the bookshop Shakespeare and Company, he sees Céline standing off to the side. We immediately ask ourselves: Do they still feel the same way about each other? This question is answered within the flm. After spending an hour or so together, catching each other up on what happened that fateful day when they were supposed to meet, and what they have done with themselves since, we learn that they do still feel the same way about each other. Each is happy and successful in their work, Jesse as a novelist and Céline in environmental reform, and each is currently in a relationship. However, in neither case have they found a connection with someone of the kind they had with each other nine years ago. This poses a further and more complicated question. Though Jesse is in an unhappy marriage, he has a four-year-old son, Henry, to whom he is devoted.The more complicated question we are left with is therefore: Will Jesse leave his wife for Céline?

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Before Midnight is set nine years later and begins with Jesse dropping Henry off at the Kalamata Airport in the Peloponnese after he has spent the summer at a writers’ retreat with Jesse and Céline and their six-yearold twin girls, Ella and Nina.The answer to the question posed at the end of Before Sunset is therefore:Yes, Jesse did leave his wife. But the issue with Henry has remained unresolved. Henry must return home to his mother in Chicago, and the next day, Jesse and Céline will return with their girls to Paris. Feeling that his opportunity to spend time with Henry during his formative years is slipping away, on the drive back to the villa they’ve been staying at, Jesse asks Céline whether she would consider a move to Chicago. Céline tells him that he always feels sad when Henry goes back to his mother, suggesting that he will get over it as he always does. Besides that, Henry’s mother hates Jesse, so if they moved to Chicago, she would only allow him to see him once a month anyway. Moreover, to make matters even more complicated, Céline has just decided to accept a new job in Paris working for the government as an environmental regulator, a job that will allow her to be much more effective in achieving the environmental reforms she cares so deeply about. When Jesse continues to push the idea, in Céline’s view unreasonably, she screams that this is the kind of issue that people break up over.The question posed near the beginning of Before Midnight is therefore: Will we witness Jesse and Céline break up? This question is answered negatively within the flm, but the answer also proves to be much more complicated than we initially thought it would be. For much of Before Midnight, we think that if Jesse and Céline were to break up, they would break up over Jesse’s desire to spend more time with Henry. However, towards the end of the flm, when they are in a hotel room their friends have given them for a night so that they can have romantic evening together, we discover that Céline has not been happy for some time. In her view, Jesse has crafted their marriage to enable his freedom at the expense of hers.When he is unresponsive to her complaints, she confronts him with her suspicion that he slept with a woman when he was on a book tour after the twins were born. Jesse fres back that he knows that she comforted her ex-boyfriend by fellating him when she attended his mother’s funeral, but that he doesn’t care because he accepts that she is a “complicated human being” and doesn’t want to live “a boring life where two people…are institutionalized in a box that others created”.The flm ends with Céline storming off, telling Jesse she doesn’t love him anymore, Jesse following her, and eventually

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getting her to agree to return to the hotel room with him by reading a letter from her future-self telling her that she had the best sex she’d ever had in the Peloponnese. The question posed at the end of Before Midnight is therefore: Will Jesse and Céline’s marriage survive their mutual acknowledgement of their infdelity and Céline’s perception that their relationship works to Jesse’s advantage but not to hers? What we have here is thus the story of a mostly unremarkable romantic relationship elevated by being told in the form of lyric poetry. The implied author of the trilogy elevates Céline and Jesse’s romance in other ways as well. For example, at the very beginning of Before Sunrise, as the initial title sequence appears on the screen, we hear Purcell’s overture to Dido and Aeneas, an opera about Dido’s love for Aeneas, and her despair when he abandons her. Those who refect on this soundtrack choice immediately after watching Before Sunrise are led to expect that Jesse will decide not to meet Céline in six months and that Céline will be devastated. But when we learn what actually happened at the beginning of Before Sunset—that it was Céline who wasn’t able to meet Jesse, and Jesse who was devastated—the choice of the Dido and Aeneas overture seems to be misleading. It isn’t until we get to the end of Before Midnight, 18 years later, that we realise how appropriate it was. In Céline’s eyes, Jesse has indeed abandoned her, but the abandonment is psychological rather than physical. Other poetic features of the trilogy are anticipated in the title sequence to Before Sunset as well. The frst image we see as we listen to the Dido and Aeneas overture is a black screen; there is an edit and we see moving images of train tracks at the rear of the train shot from above; there is another edit and we see moving images from the rear of the train as it speeds through the countryside.There are more edits as the train crosses rivers and goes past rural villages; eventually, we see a passenger inside the train walking down the corridor and entering a carriage; and at that point, the title sequence comes to an end. The title sequence anticipates the fact that we are on a journey, and indeed journeys—to Vienna, around Vienna, and from Vienna to Paris and the USA; to, around, and from Paris; and to, around, and from the Peloponnese—fgure literally in all three flms. But a journey fgures in the trilogy in a more metaphorical sense as well, as it depicts how Céline and Jesse’s relationship evolves over an 18-year period, and it does so by allowing us to get inside their heads at three crucial moments in their journey together.

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The literary use of a journey both literally and metaphorically to get inside the head of someone is familiar, and the Before trilogy draws our attention to parallels with a striking example. Céline and Jesse’s initial meeting occurs on 16 June, Bloomsday, so-named after Leopold Bloom, the main character in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Joyce’s novel consists of three books, just as the Before trilogy consists of three flms. Ulysses depicts one day in the life of Leopold Bloom, 16 June 1904, as he goes from place to place keeping various appointments around Dublin. Before Sunrise begins on 16 June, and it also takes place over the course of one day, and as we have already seen, the trilogy similarly depicts the stages of a romantic relationship as being like the stages of a single day from before sunrise to sunset to just before midnight. Before Sunset begins with Jesse attending a book-signing in Paris at Shakespeare and Company, and a bookshop by that name that existed in Paris in the 1920s was frequented by many literary fgures, including James Joyce. Ulysses is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, revealing the multitude of thoughts and feelings that run through the mind of the narrator. The journeys in the Before trilogy similarly provide an opportunity to get inside the heads of Céline and Jesse through their revealing and free-fowing conversations with each other. Ulysses depicts both men and women as intensely sexual. The Before trilogy similarly depicts Céline and Jesse as intensely sexual. Indeed, when they frst meet on the train to Vienna in Before Sunrise, Jesse asks Céline what she’s reading. Rather than tell him, she holds up the book: a collection of stories by Georges Bataille, considered by many to be pornographic, that explore the idea that the self is a fusion of the spiritual and the sexual. At Céline’s request, Jesse shows her what he is reading: Klaus Kinski’s All I Need is Love, a sexually explicit account of the actor’s lifelong obsession with girls and women. These books anticipate the infdelity each goes in for.

Being in love, creating art, and the perfect vs the real Before Sunrise concludes with a montage of the different places in Vienna Céline and Jesse had been, but without them being present. Before Sunset begins with a montage of the various places in Paris Céline and Jesse will be, again without them being present. These montages provide visual continuity between the two flms, but they also help elevate Céline and Jesse’s relationship by causing us to experience their absence. It is as if the universe demands that they be together in these spaces.

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As we watch the montage in Before Sunset, we hear Julie Delpy sing her composition “An Ocean Apart”, a song about a woman separated from her lover who wonders whether he will still love her when they’re reunited. We therefore know from the beginning of Before Sunset that Céline and Jesse didn’t meet six months later, and we are also primed to think about the fact that Julie Delpy is a singer/songwriter, a metanarrative blurring of the actor/character distinction that comes to have narrative signifcance later in the flm. After Céline and Jesse are reunited in Before Sunset, we learn that Céline worries that she will die without achieving everything she wants to achieve. She wants to “paint more, I want to play my guitar every day, I want to learn Chinese, I want to write more songs”. This exchange sets up the ending of Before Sunset when Céline sings a song she wrote for Jesse to Jesse, and then, to his great delight, dances alone while doing an alluring impression of Nina Simone talking to audience members at a concert. The fact that we hear Delpy sing her composition at the beginning of Before Sunset, that Céline’s statement tells us what she wants to achieve but is afraid she won’t, and that we hear her so winningly sing her song for Jesse to Jesse at the end establishes something important about Céline. Though it is Jesse who is portrayed as having artistic ambitions in Before Sunrise, and whose being a novelist is crucial to the storylines of Before Sunset and Before Midnight, in Before Sunset, we learn that Céline has both the talent and creative impulse to be an artist herself, something that was anticipated in Before Sunrise when the palm reader told her: “You are interested in the power of the woman, in a woman’s deep strength, and creativity. You are becoming this woman”. This in turn suggests that Céline and Jesse’s relationship is more complicated than we have managed to convey so far, and that a further theme is also being explored within the trilogy, namely, the creation of art. After the montage at the beginning of Before Sunset, we see Jesse in Paris being interviewed about his best-selling novel This Time, a novel based on the events of Before Sunrise. He explains the novel’s provenance this way. JESSE: When I look at my life, I have to admit that I’ve never been around a bunch of guns or violence, a helicopter crash, political intrigue. But my life, from my point of view, has been full of drama. And one of the most exciting things that’s ever happened to me is actually connecting

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with another person, and I thought if I could write a book that could capture that, make that connection valuable, that possibility…Anyway, that was the attempt. Here, Jesse paraphrases Céline in Before Sunrise talking about why she still yearns to fall in love with someone: “…if there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something”. Jesse found that connection with Céline, and his experience of that connection inspired his novel.Whereas Céline’s former lover had left her because he thought she stifed his creativity, Céline appears to be Jesse’s muse. She spurred his creativity, and at the end of Before Sunset when she performs the song she wrote about Jesse for Jesse, it seems that he could be her muse too. Towards the end of the interview, Jesse sees Céline standing off to the side in the bookstore. Before she knows about the state of his marriage, he asks whether she has read This Time. She tells him that she read it twice, and that though she doesn’t usually like that kind of thing, she thought that it was “very romantic”. CÉLINE: You know, reading something knowing that the character in the story is based on you…it’s both fattering and disturbing at the same time. JESSE: How is it disturbing? CÉLINE: I don’t know, just…being part of someone else’s memory. Seeing myself through your eyes. Céline later suggests that Jesse may have idealised that night in hindsight, and she offers the fact that they’re portrayed as having made love as an example. Jesse is incredulous that she doesn’t remember their having made love, and Céline later admits that she does remember, but says that she had tried to forget about it when they were unable to meet because thinking about their lost opportunity to be together made remembering it too painful. But what is really remarkable about this exchange is that neither of them bring up the fact that Céline had wanted not to make love that night because she didn’t want to be part of a “great story”.This suggests that part of what’s so disturbing for Céline about his portrayal of her in his novel is the fact that she is literally part of a great story, and that this is something about which Jesse appears to be oblivious.

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The fact that authors plunder their lives for material and the impact of this on those who they live with—the real-world implications of the fact one person is another’s muse—is one of the complicating factors about Céline and Jesse’s romance, and it is also something else we take for granted explored by the Before trilogy’s implied author. For example, though Jesse doesn’t talk explicitly about writing This Time, we know that it took him between three and four years, and that that means he began writing it before Henry was born. This provides crucial context for understanding the story he tells Céline about his marriage, a story that otherwise sounds like an all-too-familiar story of new parents and their non-existent sex life. JESSE:

I feel like I’m running a small nursery with somebody I used to date, you know. I mean, I’m like a monk, you know. I mean, I’ve had sex less than ten times in the last four years.

Céline placates with him the fact that a friend of hers counsels many young couples with the same experience, and her friend tells them that the heady passion they yearn for that they enjoyed pre-children is simply impossible for anyone to retain. CÉLINE:

JESSE: CÉLINE:

I mean, God, otherwise we would end up with an aneurysm if we were in that constant state of excitement, right? We would end up doing nothing at all with our lives. Do you think you would have fnished your book if you were fucking somebody every fve minutes? I might have welcomed the challenge. But you know it’s not true, for your wife after the birth of your son…she has to give all her love to the little one!

Jesse admits she’s right, but there is dramatic irony in this conversation. Jesse’s wife has presumably known the story of his night with Céline since before Henry was born, and she has had to deal with the story’s being in the public arena since his novel was published. It would be diffcult enough to be the spouse of someone whose past experience of

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love lost is the defning experience of their life. But when your spouse is an artist who draws inspiration from that past experience for a novel that becomes a best-seller, it must border on the humiliating. Nine years later, in Before Midnight, we learn at the writers’ retreat that Jesse has written two more books since getting together with Céline: That Time, another semi-autobiographical novel based on the events of Before Sunset, and the longer, and we’re told even better, Temporary Cast Members of a Long Running But Little Seen Production of a Play Called Fleeting. Early on in Before Midnight, we hear one person react to the “sexy” That Time in this way: STEFANOS: When he misses the plane and they black out the windows and they have sex for days and days and days like there’s no tomorrow. I mean wow, did you guys actually do that? Jesse answers this question with a knowing shrug of his shoulders. At the farewell lunch, when Céline and Jesse are asked how they met, and one of the lunch party says that you have to read Jesse’s books for the answer, Céline replies: “Yeah, especially if you want to know exactly what it’s like to have sex with me, read away”. Her tone makes it clear that this is not something she likes other people knowing about. Later that night in the hotel, after they have begun arguing again about Jesse’s desire to move to Chicago to be nearer Harry, Céline returns to the issue of his mining their relationship for material. CÉLINE: And by the way, you may never, ever, use me or anything I say or do in one of your fucking books again! And that goes for the girls, too. JESSE: Well, A) You shouldn’t have hooked up with a writer. B) You weren’t in the last book or the one I’m writing now. C) I’m going to write about whatever the fuck I want. CÉLINE: As always, our life works for you. JESSE: No, no, no. Don’t give me this put-upon housewife bullshit. Okay this is not the 50’s. I’m sorry to ruin your perfect little narrative of oppression with the truth but I am the one who’s at home every day dealing with the bullshit because you’re at work until 6:30.

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CÉLINE: 6 o’clock. JESSE: You take the girls to school, and I pick them up.That’s fair, that’s our deal. We live in Paris, France for Christ’s sake. A little later, when Céline tries again to explain the source of her unhappiness, we are reminded again that in Before Sunset, she had told Jesse she wants to “paint more, I want to play my guitar every day, I want to learn Chinese, I want to write more songs”. CÉLINE: JESSE: CÉLINE:

JESSE:

When you get inspired, you keep on writing. I get inspired too sometimes, you know that? You wanna write? Write. No, but you remember…I used to sing and play guitar and write songs? I’d still like to do it, but I don’t get to. There isn’t time. Okay. Well, frst off, my writing isn’t a hobby. All right? Secondly, I wish you would fnd the time.You somehow fnd time to complain about eight hours a day. I mean, I love the way you sing. Okay? I fucked up my whole life because of the way you sing. All right? If you took one-eighth of the energy that you spend… on bitching, whining and worrying… If you put that energy into playing scales, you’d be like fucking Django Reinhardt.

This is a poignant moment that quickly turns very sour. Céline fnally admits something it seems she has been loath to admit even to herself— how much she has missed engaging in her own creative pursuits since the twins were born—but in the heat of the moment, Jesse’s response is to diminish her creative pursuits as a mere “hobby” and to admonish her for the amount of time she spends “bitching, whining and worrying” rather than pursuing them. The emotional arc of Céline and Jesse’s argument in the hotel room is to my mind hyper-realistic, veering as it does between moments of tender understanding and others of almost cruel accusation. Though Céline calms down after Jesse admonishes her, she soon fres back in a way clearly intended to hurt.

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CÉLINE: You know something? The way you write in your book, people come up to me and think I make love to some wildcat Henry Miller type… HA! You like to have sex the exact same way every time. JESSE: When you got it, you got it. CÉLINE: Kissy, kissy. Titty, titty. PUSSY. (snoring) JESSE: I’m a man of simple pleasures. CÉLINE: Yeah, very simple, and I’ve been meaning to tell you that lately.You’re no Henry Miller, on any level. Note that “on any level”: not in bed and not on the page either. Before Midnight ends with Céline storming off after telling Jesse that she doesn’t love him anymore, Jesse following her, and eventually fnding her sitting at a table overlooking the harbor. This scene recalls the scene at the beginning of Before Sunrise when a middle-aged couple on the train have a heated argument that leads one of them to storm out of the carriage and the other to follow. Céline and Jesse have become that couple. In an attempt to win her over, Jesse pretends to have travelled from the future in a time machine to read a letter written to her by her future-self.The letter is long, but he skips to the part telling her that she had the best sex she’d ever had one night in the Peloponnese. Though calmer, Céline is unmoved and asks him whether he heard what she had said. JESSE: Yes, I heard you—that you don’t love me anymore. I fgured you didn’t mean it but if you did, then fuck it…I tell you I love you unconditionally, I tell you that you’re beautiful, I tell you that your ass looks great when you’re 80. I’m trying to make you laugh. I put up with plenty of your shit, and if you think I’m just some dog who’s going to keep coming back then, you’re wrong. But if you want true love—this is it.This is real life. It’s not perfect, but it’s real. And if you can’t see it, then you’re blind, alright? I give up. Céline’s attitude softens. CÉLINE: So what about this time machine? JESSE: What do you mean?

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CÉLINE: How does it work? JESSE: Well… it’s complicated. CÉLINE: Am I going to have to get naked to operate it? The camera pulls back and we leave them talking. This fnal scene is an echo of the scene early on in Before Sunrise when Jesse persuades Céline to leave the train with him by telling her that her future-self would otherwise wonder what her life might have been like. It is an optimistic note on which to end the Before trilogy, as it suggests that their relationship will continue, albeit on a more candid basis. To quote the palm reader, Jesse will keep on learning, and Céline will keep on needing to resign herself to the awkwardness of life. In the real world, it seems, this might be as close to the ideal as a romantic relationship can get.

References Baltzly, D. and Kennett, J. (2016) Intimate Relations: Friends and Lovers. In E. Kroeker and K. Schaubroeck, eds. Love, Reason, and Morality. London and New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis, pp. 145–162. Booth, W. (1988) The Company We Keep:An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Linklater, R. (director) (1995) Before Sunrise. Castle Rock Entertainment, Detour Film Production, Filmhaus Wien Universa Filmproduktions, Sunrise Production, Columbia Pictures. ——— (2001) Waking Life. Fox Searchlight Pictures, Independent Film Channel, Thousand Words, Flat Black Films, Detour Filmproduction, Line Research. ——— (2004) Before Sunset. Warner Independent Pictures, Castlerock Entertainment, Detour Film Production. ——— (2013) Before Midnight. Faliro House Productions, Venture Forth, Castle Rock Entertainment, Detour Filmproduction. Nehamas, A. (2007) Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ——— (2016) On Friendship. New York: Basic Books.

Chapter 2

Marya Schechtman TIME AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE BEFORE TRILOGY

I

T I S A C O M M O N B I T of folk wisdom that you are asking for trouble if you expect a real-life relationship to play out like a love story in a movie. This idea is expressed in countless advice columns, magazines, and parent/child conversations. It is also expressed, more than once, in the Before trilogy. It can be seen in the narrative arc, which moves from the breathless excitement of the night in Vienna to the time after ‘happily-ever-after’ when the messiness of real life with its custody arrangements, career conficts, and repetitive daily grind complicates Jesse and Céline’s happy ending. Warnings against expecting relationships to be story-like are, moreover, voiced explicitly by characters in the flms. Céline speaks more than once of the dangers of romantic projections and the inevitable disappointments they bring (‘reality and love are almost contradictory for me now’, she says in Before Sunset), and at the end of Before Midnight, Jesse accuses Céline of wanting to live in a fairy tale like their little girls and of being incapable of accepting love as it occurs in the real world. It is a vast oversimplifcation, however, to suggest that either the trilogy or the characters within it straightforwardly endorse this piece of common advice. Instead, they offer more general refection on the relation between real-life relationships and love stories. The upshot of this refection is the more nuanced position that it is not only legitimate but (in certain respects) necessary to experience real-life romances as (in some respects) story-like.1 The aim of this chapter is to unpack this claim,

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describing particular ways in which such romances are experienced as story-like and the role this experience plays in their constitution as the peculiar kinds of relationships they are. I begin with some general considerations indicating that storytelling is a critical part of Jesse and Céline’s relationship, and that the experience of temporality is central in this storytelling. I then explore the nature of this experience of temporality which is, I argue, characteristic of both constructed narratives and real-life relationships, and explain the sense in which it is constitutive of the latter.

Beginning thoughts A way into the complicated set of questions about the connection between love stories and real-life romantic relationships is to note that there is a good deal of explicit storytelling about Jesse and Céline’s relationship in the Before flms, and that it plays a crucial role in establishing and maintaining that relationship. Examples can be found in three central stories Jesse tells, one in each flm. The frst is the time travel story he uses to lure Céline off the train in Vienna. This is a story about a time 20 years in the future when her relationship with her husband (a husband who turns out to be Jesse himself, but is fgured as someone else in the story) is growing stale. Jesse explains that her future self needs to travel back in time to explore the romantic possibilities she left untried (in this case, the one involving Jesse) to see that in fact they would not have turned out any better than her marriage (which, tautologically, this one does not).The second story is found at the beginning of Before Sunset, where we learn that Jesse has written a novel based on the night he spent in Vienna with Céline. Here, the characters are not presented as the actual Jesse and Céline, but is it obvious that they are meant to be (although exactly what this means is a complication that arises many times in what follows).2 This work of fction has the very real effect of allowing Jesse and Céline to fnd one another again after their initial separation. Finally, there is the time travel story toward the end of Before Midnight, bookending the one that occurs toward the beginning of Before Sunrise, with which Jesse hopes to undo Céline’s claim that she no longer loves him.3 There are three important elements that can be seen in these stories. First, they blur the line between fctional and real-life romance insofar

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as each is offered, offcially, as fction yet each, in one way or another, contains the actual Jesse and Céline as characters, and is about their actual relationship. One level up, the story of the ‘actual’ Jesse and Céline is of course itself a fctional love story, described by Rolling Stone as ‘the defning movie love story of a generation’, but is not, presumably, the kind of love story we are being warned about. Second, each story plays an important role in constituting or maintaining their relationship. The frst story gets Céline off the train; the second reunites them after their failure to meet in Vienna; and the third is aimed at keeping them from splitting up. Finally, in one way or another, each of these stories makes reference to the temporal nature of relationships. The frst and third do this in the straightforward sense of being stories about time travel.They ask Céline to think about their relationship as something temporally extended and to refect on the interaction between its different temporal parts. The novel considers the temporality of their relationship frst by being a memoir, and so invoking a past stage of their connection, but also by doing so in a way that Jesse ultimately admits is aimed at changing the future. The references to time in these stories are part of a more general preoccupation with themes of temporality and the nature and reality of time that recurs throughout the Before trilogy. It is a constant and explicit element in the ongoing dialogue between Céline and Jesse, and it is emphasized in the titles of the flms, each one framed by a deadline before which the action of the flm takes place. It is also seen in the structure of the trilogy itself which, like one of Jesse’s imagined novels, unfolds at a pace close to real time, with the actors aging at about the same rate as the characters. This all suggests that the story-like character of Jesse and Céline’s relationship is connected to the experience of its temporality, and this is the suggestion I will be exploring here. Before undertaking this exploration, I should acknowledge that there is no clear consensus on exactly what a narrative or story is. In what follows, I will largely ignore complicated and important trends and debates in literary theory, employing a rough conception of narrative that takes as its paradigm something like a conventional novel or mainstream flm. While debates about the nature of narrative are incredibly interesting and of great importance, there are two reasons it will not be a problem to put them to one side for present purposes. First, the caution not to expect real-life romances to be like love stories is almost certainly

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presupposing this conventional understanding. Second, my aim here is not to argue for a categorical claim that romantic relationships should be seen as narrative in form, but only for the claim that there are salient and signifcant ways in which the temporal experience of narratives and romantic relationships overlaps.The relevant understanding of ‘narrative’ will be defned as I go.

Some elements of temporal structure It is not simple to characterize the kind of temporal experience I have in mind, but to begin, I will point to some central features as they appear in constructed narrative and in romantic relationships (as depicted in the trilogy). As I do this, it will be helpful occasionally to make reference to a roughly parallel dispute that arises in the philosophy of personal identity. In that context, several philosophers, myself included (see, for instance, (1997)), have defended narrative accounts, while critics have argued that it is a mistake to think of our lives as akin to constructed narratives in any meaningful way. Moves from that debate can be imported to this discussion, both to illuminate the claims I will be making about the story-like nature of relationships and to highlight some of the similarities and differences between a narrative view of a life and a narrative view of a romantic relationship. The current goal is thus to provide impressions of various related features that are part of the experience of narratives and relationships (and lives) before saying a few words about how they work together to form a peculiar kind of experience of time. The frst feature I want to emphasize is that we bring to our experience of either a story or a romantic relationship a recognition that we are dealing with a limited whole with a diachronic shape rather than a succession of moments that could go on indefnitely. This has important phenomenological implications. In the case of constructed narratives, this characteristic manifests roughly as the view that stories have a beginning, middle, and end in a broadly Aristotelean sense. When we engage a narrative – pick up a novel or sit down to view a flm – we are aware of this fact and automatically bring that awareness to our experience of the events within it. Each is seen as occupying a place in a limited whole. We possess also a background sense of roughly where we are in this whole, and this affects the way we experience what is depicted. An event that

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occurs at the beginning of a narrative may be experienced quite differently, for instance, from one that occurs toward the end, even if they are superfcially similar. To see how this form of experience manifests in romantic relationships, it will be useful to look frst at similar issues within the personal identity debate. One important objection to narrative views of personal identity has been that human lives do not have beginnings, middles, and ends in the way constructed narratives do, and so that thinking of our lives as if they have such a shape is a mistake (see, e.g., Mink, 1970: 557–558). Of course, there is some number of days that any life lasts, critics argue, and an arithmetical midpoint, but this is a superfcial sense of beginning, middle, and end. I have always found it diffcult to understand this objection. Human lives are embodied lives, which follow a broadly predictable trajectory from infancy, through maturity, to (if we are lucky) old age, with broadly predictable gains and losses of capacities along the way. We know about how long people usually live; it makes sense to talk about a life that has ended too early (or gone on too long); and a ‘midlife crisis’ is connected not just to an arithmetical midpoint, but to the middle of a life in a thicker sense. There are many examples of the way in which we experience our lives as limited wholes in the Before trilogy.There is, for instance, Céline’s claim that she feels like an old lady on her death bed remembering the unfolding of her life, as well as Jesse’s claim that he feels like a perpetual 13-year-old waiting for his life to begin.These extremes reveal an ongoing sense of our lives as something about which it will ultimately be possible to tell a story. Moreover, Céline and Jesse know that they are not really aged or teenaged, so their overall experience is that of someone feeling in a way that does not ft with what would be expected at their life stage, further revealing the existence of expectations about how a particular life stage should feel.There is another perpetual 13-year old in the story, the girl whose grave Céline discovered on her school trip. Showing the grave to Jesse, she observes that she is now ten years older, while the girl in the grave is ‘still…thirteen, I guess’. The feeling of anomaly connected to a life that does not progress past 13 years is, again, recognition of the fact that there is a way lives are supposed to progress. All of this is, moreover, part of a recurring theme of memento mori, and the sense that moments must be treasured because there are only so many.

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The way in which relationships are experienced as limited wholes is somewhat different from the way in which individual lives are. A romance is, after all, something that takes place within a life. The beginnings and endings of relationships are often harder to pinpoint than the beginnings and endings of human lives, and the expected trajectory of a relationship is overall more diffuse. Nonetheless, the Before trilogy shows Jesse and Céline viewing their relationship as a limited whole in a variety of ways that are familiar from everyday life. They wonder aloud, for instance, whether their night in Vienna is the beginning of a relationship, and whether a disagreement they have is their ‘frst fght’.They also wonder at various points how and when their relationship will end. As it happens, they get this wrong several times. Still, there is a clear sense that they approach their relationship, and romantic relationships in general, as the kind of thing that ultimately has a beginning, middle, and end, with different phases that have different broad characteristics. (As Céline points out in Before Sunset, if we remained always in the frst fush of romantic excitement, we would all have aneurysms all the time.) A relationship, like a life, is the kind of thing about which a full story can eventually be told – whether it is told by one of the participants (as Jesse and Céline tell stories of their past relationships while playing pinball) or by someone else (as, in Before Midnight, Jesse tells the story of his grandparents whose ending involves their ashes being intermingled forever). This description of how romances are seen as wholes with diachronic shape, however, may seem to suggest more differences from than similarities to constructed narratives. My examples are of people telling stories of relationships after they are over. It may well be that people turn what happened into a story after the fact, editing and sometimes fctionalizing their memories to make them ft the structure of a narrative, but relationships are not like this in vivo. While they are occurring, the future and shape of relationships are not only unknown but undetermined.The original caution was not against remembering a relationship as story-like; it was against expecting an existing relationship to unfold like a story. The fact that we can tell a story about a relationship when it’s over does not mean it is accurate or healthy to see a relationship as a story while we are in it. This challenge provides an opportunity to clarify my claims. It is worth noting, to begin, that the difference may not be as pronounced

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as it is made out to be. For instance, viewers of the Before flms (and some involved in its production) may have wrongly thought that the narrative was complete when Jesse and Céline parted in Vienna, and many followers of the flm express uncertainty about whether the story is yet complete (e.g., Entertainment, 2017). Not all constructed narratives, then, are determinate in their endings either. Still, I do not wish to deny that constructed narratives and real-life relationships do differ in this respect. The picture I seek to defend, however, and the one I see emerging from the flms, is that when we engage a narrative or participate in an ongoing relationship we do so with a background understanding that we are interacting with something that will ultimately be a whole with a shape that can be ascertained. Saying that we anticipate a ‘shape’ in this context does not mean that we expect a relationship (or most constructed narratives, for that matter) to follow a determinate formula. It is rather that we approach each with the expectation that it has intelligibility as a developmental process, even if the trajectory or duration may not be known to us in the moment. A central aspect of this claim is that the phenomenological impact of the expectation of wholeness is considerable. Experiencing something as part of a limited whole is different from experiencing something as part of a shapeless, indefnite series of events. Events experienced as part of such a whole point to their history and future in ways that go beyond explicit instances of remembering or anticipating.To understand this phenomenon better, and to see how it is a peculiar form of temporal experience, it will be useful to move from the very abstract, formal way in which we experience narratives and relationships as wholes to consideration of some more concrete ways in which the past and future impact experience of the present in these contexts. Both forms of experience are characterized by a diachronic holism in which each element takes its character and signifcance not just from the fact that it is part of a whole, but from the specifc details of that whole. Events in relationships and narratives cannot be understood fully apart from the wholes in which they inhere.That this is so in constructed narratives is a familiar thought. It is part of the work of literary critics to alert us to the ways in which particular details and events in a narrative are connected to one another and to the themes of the whole. This feature of narrative, too, is often taken to show a difference between constructed narratives and real life. To return to the personal

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identity debate, critics there point out that in a constructed narrative, each detail is chosen to serve an aesthetic purpose and to refect and refect upon the whole. Human lives, however, are not constructed artifacts but natural events, subject to all kinds of contingencies. There are two key differences between lives and constructed narratives that are often invoked to support this objection. First is the fact that many things we do in life are repetitive and functional, like tooth brushing, grocery shopping, or taking out the trash. These kinds of activities, it is argued, do not have any meaning or signifcant connection to the themes of the whole and would not be included in a constructed narrative. Second, many events that befall us are simply random. In a constructed narrative, a gathering storm, or traffc accident may foreshadow what comes next or refect the chaotic state of the universe. In life, however, such events are the result of natural forces.They are not ‘put in’ for any purpose and to read them as such is misguided. These two concerns are obviously connected, and together, they suggest that in real life, it is to be expected that sometimes the rife on the wall is just for decoration and never goes off. Similar objections would presumably be raised to viewing a romance as narrative in form, since real-life relationships also contain much that is trivial or repetitive or accidental. These kinds of elements are, in fact, among those said to constitute the difference between a real relationship and the storybook romance we might have hoped for. In response to these worries, it is crucial to acknowledge once again the existence of real and important differences between lives and relationships on the one hand and constructed fctions on the other. Again, however, this does not mean that there are not also relevant similarities.The repetitive functional events of real life may not have the kind of symbolic import that events in a novel might, but they can and often do have signifcance that comes from the whole and cannot be understood apart from it. Buying peanut butter in Chicago might seem like the kind of trivial action that lives but not narratives include. As it happens, however, peanut butter shopping can be fraught with meaning if it is the realization of one’s fear that one will give up on one’s own ambitions to move close to one’s husband’s vindictive ex-wife. In real-life romances, moreover, small details can be extremely signifcant insofar as they are the very stuff of intimacy. Céline insists more than once on the signifcance of small details, like the red in a beard, or knowing how someone is ‘going to part his hair, or what shirt he’s going to wear that day,

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knowing the exact story he would tell in a given situation’.This, she says in Before Sunrise, is how she would know she is in love. As for random events, they may not occur in order to advance plot or express a theme, but they certainly can do so. A meeting like Jesse and Céline’s encounter on the train might be pure accident if it happened in real life, but it could still be a turning point. The fact that at the outset they end up sitting together in part because Céline is trying to avoid a bickering couple of about the age they will be in Before Midnight might also be happenstance for a real-life couple, but it can rightly come to be seen as having foreshadowed their future. My central claim is that the infuence of past and (anticipated) future events has a profound effect on the phenomenology, and ultimately unfolding, of real-life relationships and thus contributes to constituting them as the kind of thing they are. Since these relationships are ongoing and unfnished, this form of experience involves giving events a provisional signifcance in light of what has occurred so far and is anticipated about the future. In this sense, the experience of the present is subject to revision. There is a lovely and explicit example of this phenomenon in the Before trilogy. When Jesse and Céline reunite in Before Sunset, she points out that Jesse’s book, by bringing them back together, has changed the meaning of the past. ‘Now that we’ve met again’, she says, ‘we can change our memory of Dec. 16th. It no longer has that sad ending of us never seeing each other again’. To which Jesse responds, ‘yeah, a memory’s never fnished if you really think about it’. In this case, the work of interpreting events in light of their place in the relationship as a whole is explicit and self-conscious, but this kind of interpretation and reinterpretation takes place implicitly all the time. The signifcance of interactions and events within a romantic relationship, and so their character, comes to us in light of what has happened so far and is constantly updated and reinterpreted in light of what happens next. The phenomenon described here is, I hope, a familiar one, but it may seem a long stretch from the fact that we update the signifcance of memories in our romantic relationships to the claim that such relationships involve a peculiar kind of temporal experience that they share with narratives. To understand this claim more fully, we need to look at one more feature of our experience of the relation between past, present, and future in both contexts, multi-perspectivalism.

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Multi-perspectivalism and temporality In many ways, multi-perspectivalism is the key component of the kind of temporal experience I am describing. To get a sense of what this feature involves, it will be helpful to return to the example of the memory of Jesse and Céline’s failed reunion and the way in which it is changed when they meet again. This experience is actually immensely complex. When Céline says that the memory of the 16th is changed, she does not mean that she now remembers the 16th as a happy time. Obviously, she still remembers it as a horrible, sad time. Her beloved grandmother had died, and she had to miss her meeting with Jesse. What has changed is the signifcance of that day and this, in turn, changes the nature of the past. But it does so by thickening the experience, not by overwriting it. When Céline thinks of the 16th now, she simultaneously re-experiences the devastation of that day and the happiness of learning that the anticipation implicit in her experience then was mistaken (which, in turn, changes the way the future appears to her now). The depth of emotion in her experience stems precisely from the fact that she is able to see things from the point-of-view of herself on the 16th and that of herself in the present at the same time. It is in this sense that our experience of real-life romantic relationships is multi-perspectival. The idea that constructed narratives involve this sort of multiplicity of perspectives is a familiar one. Peter Goldie has developed it to great effect, describing the way in which our experience of a novel, for instance, requires us to take up together the perspectives of the various characters (who have different points-of-view and are in different epistemic situations) as well as those of the narrator and author. Goldie goes on to show that we do something very similar in our own memories, as we see Céline doing with her memory of the 16th (Goldie, 2014).The ability to hold these multiple perspectives, from the past, present, and future, is a central element of human experience and plays a key role in our romantic relationships.To see how, we need to dig a bit deeper into the nature of this experience. Psychologists distinguish between ‘episodic’ and ‘semantic’ memories. (For a classic expression of this distinction, see Tulving, 1972). Episodic memories are the lively memories in which we seem to re-experience past events, with imagery and affect, while semantic memories are propositional memories of facts. I can remember that I graduated

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on such-and-such a day; that is, a semantic memory. Alternatively, I can remember my graduation; hearing in my head the sound of the university band, recalling the heat in the auditorium, the sea of red robes, the noise of the crowd, and the mix of emotions I experienced; that is an episodic memory. It is in episodic memory that we fnd the phenomenon of multi-perspectivalism I have been describing. It is in this kind of memory that we do something akin to reliving a past experience, taking up a past perspective alongside of the present one. Endel Tulving, who is largely responsible for making this distinction, actually describes episodic memory as a form of ‘mental time travel’ (see Tulving, 2002). In at least some episodic memories, moreover, reliving the past involves more than imagery; it involves what might be described as reanimating or reawakening a past self. Joan Didion describes this form of experience in her essay ‘On Keeping a Notebook’. She determines that the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. What gets closer to the truth, she says, is that the entry is meant to remind her of ‘how it felt to me’. (Didion, 2006: 102) To ‘Remember what it was to be me, that is always the point’ (Didion, 2006: 104). Later, she describes what it is to lose such memory. I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be; one of them, a seventeen-year-old, presents little threat, although it would be of some interest to me to know again what it feels like to sit on a river levee drinking vodka-and-orange-juice and listening to Les Paul and Mary Ford and their echoes sing ‘How High the Moon’ on the car radio. (You see I still have the scenes, but I no longer perceive myself among those present, no longer could even improvise the dialogue.) (Didion, 2006: 107) Didion can remember quite a lot about her 17-year-old self, but cannot, anymore, see through her eyes or take up her perspective in the sense I have in mind.

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One of the things humans do, then, is to recall our past selves in the sense that we bring them into the present and see the present partially through their eyes, as Céline does when she recalls the 16th. And not only the 16th. She tells Jesse also that reading his novel has disturbed her by reawakening a young, hopeful self she had lost touch with.Again, the experience is mixed.What she remembers is joyful, but it also makes her sad by contrast with the present, and slightly hopeful for the future, in virtue of the fact that that part of her turns out not to be irretrievably lost. Complementing the capacity to retain past selves is the capacity to imaginatively project ourselves into the future. Again, this can take a semanticized form, where we stipulate hypotheticals propositionally, or a more experiential form, in which we ‘see through the eyes’ of our future self in the present. Although this claim is not uncontroversial, much work in empirical psychology has suggested that the physical systems involved in episodic memory and imaginative projection are the same, making the relevant category the more general one of mental time travel rather than memory or projection (see, e.g., Michaelian, 2016). Throughout the trilogy, we see how this kind of mental time travel is part of Céline and Jesse’s relationship. It is evident in the three stories I mentioned at the beginning, which establish, reestablish, and seek to preserve the relationship, by prompting Céline to see through the eyes of not only her present self, but of her future (in the frst and third stories) or past (in the second) selves. Since perspectives from the past will refne perspectives of the future and vice versa, the impact is on the relationship as a whole. We see this phenomenon in somewhat more subtle forms as well. For instance, in Before Midnight, Céline asks Jesse whether he would try to lure her off the train now, and perhaps, he would not if it were their frst encounter. But he cannot and does not simply see her as she is now; he also sees her still, at this moment, as the intriguing young woman he left the train with in Vienna. Later, when Céline pines for the sweet romantic guy she met in Vienna who made her feel she wasn’t alone any more, Jesse assures her: ‘That’s me. I’m that guy’. This phenomenon is common in real-life relationships. Couples who are going through a diffcult patch may reminisce about when they met or return to the sites of their courtship to reawaken the selves who fell in love.They may remind themselves of all they have been through together or of the plans that they have or have had for the future. Couples with a history can see each other in ways that no one else can, through the

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various perspectives of their time together. This kind of phenomenon does not, of course, happen only in romantic relationships, but it does occur in this context and in a very particular way. I hope that during this section and the last, it has become clear why I characterize the phenomenology I associate with narratives and romantic relationships as an experience of temporal structure.The three features discussed – experiencing something as a limited whole, diachronic holism, and multi-perspectivalism – all represent ways in which the past and future can be kept alive and active in the present.We do not experience either stories or relationships as mere series of distinct events where those in the past are simply over and those in the future not yet present. Past events and perspectives are living parts of the present in both cases to the extent that at least some of them can be reawakened and active in the present, and future events, similarly, are not just in the future, but already here now. This is not the entire, picture, however. The experience of a narrative or relationship as a limited whole, as I described it, entails an experience of oneself as moving along a linear trajectory and occupying a particular moment of that pathway in the present.This means that in our multi-perspectival experience, we animate and experience remembered past and anticipated future perspectives, making them part of our present, and simultaneously, experience ourselves as occupying a particular spot in an ongoing story.We thus experience our past and future selves both as part of who we are now and as distinct from the present self. This is the distinctive form of temporal experience that the Before trilogy depicts as partly constitutive of human romantic relationships. I turn now to a brief discussion of the sense in which this is so.

Constitution and transcendence We have already seen one way in which the form of temporal experience described above can contribute to constituting and maintaining a certain form of romantic relationship. By awakening past and future points of view, we come to experience the present moment as just one among many, seeing what we are going through now from a thicker, more multilayered perspective. This kind of perspective might get someone over her hesitation to get off a train, for instance, or to stick around for the sake of all she and her partner have meant to one another. There is, however, a somewhat deeper, more abstract, sense in which this form of temporal experience constitutes romantic relationships by

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making them the peculiar form of human interaction that they are. To see this, we can start with parallels to constructed narrative. I have not yet said exactly how this form of temporal experience appears in and is constitutive of such narratives, and I do not have the space to give a detailed account here.The basic picture, however, is nicely conveyed by James Wood, who writes that the novel is ‘constantly moving between secular and religious modes’; in its secular mode, ‘it expands the instances of our lives into scenes and details, it strives to run these instances at a rhythm close to real time’ (something both Jesse and Linklater exemplify in their aesthetic endeavors; Jesse in his plans for novels and television shows that take place in real time and Linklater in his flms where characters age at the same rate as the actors).‘But the novel’s eternal or religious mode reminds us that life is bounded by death’ (Wood, 2013: 35). In other words, stories trade in the rich description of moments, but moments that can be seen only by somehow grasping the whole of which they are a part. In this way, narrative structure allows us to transcend time even as (and because) we experience the succession and fnitude of its moments.The ability to both express and transcend individual moments is part of what characterizes a narrative as a narrative, rather than a string of events. Something similar is at play in romantic relationships. One of the dangerous notions we are perhaps being cautioned against when we are told not to expect real-life romances to be like love stories is the idea that love is timeless and eternal. In case we needed reminding of this caution, on Jesse’s frst night with Céline, at one of their most intimate moments, he recites lines from Auden’s ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’, a poem describing the naiveté of a lover’s belief that the depth of his love could conquer time. I see the trilogy as taking this caution seriously, allowing that the belief that time and fnitude are somehow simply overcome through love is indeed naïve. At the same time, it seems to indicate that there is a more fragile, human kind of transcendence available to lovers, that, as Dylan Thomas (whose recorded voice Jesse imitates when he recites the Auden poem) says ‘though lovers be lost love shall not’ (Thomas, 2019). Or, as Céline puts it, I really believe that if there’s any kind of god, he wouldn’t be in any one of us – not you, not me – but just this space in between. If there’s some magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone else, sharing something, even if it’s almost impossible to succeed.

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This form of transcendence, I suggest, comes from the form of temporal experience described. Because we see our relationships as complex, ongoing stories in which the moments that occur between us are meaningful, and meaningfully preserved, throughout the whole, we fnd a kind of way beyond the succession of moments. There are two points in the flms in which the connection between the experience of temporality and transcendence are voiced. One is when Jesse describes the next novel he wants to write during the bookstore scene in Before Sunset.The whole thing, he explains, takes place within the space of a pop song, where a world weary man watches his daughter dancing on the table and is transported back to a high-school experience of watching his sweetheart dance on top of the car. He knows that he is not remembering this dance. He is there – he is there in both moments simultaneously…. Both moments are real, happening together. For a moment all his life is folding in and it’s obvious to him that time is a lie. He sees Céline and adds ‘It’s all happening all the time and inside every moment, is another, all happening simultaneously’. The force of this form of experience in a romantic relationship is exemplifed in Céline’s observation in Before Sunrise that given her backward-looking tendencies and Jesse’s forward-looking ones, in the Ferris wheel at the Prater ‘it was this very old woman kissing this very young boy’. The whole of their relationship is there, timeless, in their frst kiss. This form of experience is also communicated in two images.Toward the end of Before Sunrise, the camera revisits the locations of Jesse and Céline’s adventure, now empty and still, as the sun comes up and the city resumes its life, oblivious to what has transpired there. Here, we see both the power and the poignancy of their romance. It is invisible to the city the next morning when ‘the lovers they were gone’ (Auden, 2019), yet somehow, we feel, the magic remains.4 The other is at the very end, when the camera pulls away from Jesse and Céline and we see them sitting on the terrace among other couples. From outside the relationship, they appear as just another couple. Having been privy to their story, however, we see it as something singular and profound. Both perspectives are accurate. And, to the extent that Jesse and Céline have, in the end, become the couple they saw bickering at the beginning, the

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lesson learned is not that their love is less interesting or special than it seems, but rather that that of the couple on the train is more interesting and special than Jesse and Céline, or we, at frst appreciated. The depth (or as Céline puts it, the ‘magic’) of what is between them, what allows them to transcend the bounds of time, is not something that can be seen at a point in time; it is made real to them through their lived history in all its particularity. The form of transcendence described here is limited, fragile, and human. Love does not keep us from dying, couples who fall in love do not necessarily stay together, or always bring one another joy. Such transcendent relationships are also not without costs. To have a connection of this sort requires integrating one’s life story with someone else’s, and this means cutting off possibilities and foregoing opportunities. But experiencing our relationships as story-like in this way also allows us to overcome a certain kind of impermanence. In Before Sunrise, Jesse tells Céline: ‘I think the only time I get depressed is when I feel that life is just this series of momentary connections’. She responds that ‘if you have a meaningful experience with someone else, a true communication, they are with you forever in a way’. Actual romances are messy and unpredictable, as are some constructed narratives for that matter, but they can also be a path to a particularly human form of transcendence. Even if it is a mistake to expect one’s relationship to unfold like a Hollywood love story, an Indie flm just might provide a model of how profound real-life love can be.

Acknowledgment In writing this chapter, I profted a great deal from feedback received on my talk at the symposium on the Before Trilogy at the 2019 British Society of Aesthetics Conference. I am also and especially indebted to Katrien Schaubroeck and Hans Maes for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Notes 1 For the purposes of this chapter I will use the terms ‘story’, ‘narrative’ and ‘constructed narrative’ interchangeably, explaining in more detail what I mean by these terms as I go along. 2 For instance, in the awkward moment in Before Midnight when the hotel clerk asks Céline to sign a copy of Jesse’s novel.

40 MARYA SCHECHTMAN 3 It is worth mentioning that Jesse is the primary storyteller in the relationship, while Céline, who early on describes her distrust of words and wish to fnd a deeper form of expression, tends more toward play acting and singing. Limitations of space require me to leave the signifcance of this fact unexplored. 4 I have found that many people report this sequence as one of the most powerful in the trilogy. I am grateful to the participants in the symposium on these flms at the British Society of Aesthetics Conference in 2019 for pointing out its power, and especially to my co-panelist Murray Smith, for putting this in context.

References Auden, W. (2019) As I Walked Out One Evening. [Online] Available at: https://poets. org/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening Didion, J. (2006) On Keeping a Notebook. In: J. Leonard, ed. We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live. New York: Alfred K. Knopf, pp. 101–108. Entertainment (2017) Richard Linklater: No One’s Ruling Out a before Quadrilogy. [Online] Available at: https://ew.com/movies/2017/02/27/richard-linklaterbefore-sunset-trilogy/ Goldie, P. (2014) The Mess Inside. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Michaelian, K. (2016) Mental Time Travel. Cambridge: MIT Press. Mink, L. (1970). History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension. New Literary History, 1 (3): 541–558. Schechtman, M. (1997) The Constitution of Selves. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Thomas, D. (2019) And Death Shall Have No Dominion. [Online] Available at: https:// poets.org/poem/and-death-shall-have-no-dominion Tulving, E. (1972) Episodic and Semantic Memory. In: E. Tulving and W. Donaldson, eds. Organization of Memory. New York:Academic Press, pp. 381–402. Tulving, E. (2002) Episodic Memory: From Mind to Brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53 (1): 1–25. Wood, J. (2013) Why?: The Fiction of Life and Death. New Yorker Magazine, 9 December, pp. 34–49.

Chapter 3

Hans Maes A TRILOGY OF MELANCHOLY: ON THE BITTERSWEET IN BEFORE SUNRISE, BEFORE SUNSET AND BEFORE MIDNIGHT

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E L A N C H O LY I S A C E N T R A L E X P R E S S I V E property of the Before flms and key to understanding and appreciating the trilogy as a whole. That, in a nutshell, is the thesis I wish to develop in this paper. Melancholy is understood here as the profound and bittersweet emotional experience that occurs when we vividly grasp a harsh truth about human existence in such a way that we come to appreciate certain aspects of life more deeply. The various encounters between Céline and Jesse, I will argue, are littered with such moments of melancholy. These moments are partly prompted by the circumstances in which they fnd themselves, but both of them also actively seek out this experience by the stories they tell and the refections they engage in. That seems part of who they are as individuals and it may even be part of what attracts them to each other. Melancholy, furthermore, is not just present in the characters’ dialogue and in their facial and bodily expressions but is also expressed through various cinematic means. And, as I will suggest in the fnal section, the flms may resonate deeply with some viewers because they are so expressive of melancholy.

Melancholy In the course of history, the term ‘melancholy’ has been used in a variety of ways to refer to a particular character trait, a mood, various sorts of

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psychological pathologies and even a form of cultural decline (Bowring, 2016). Nowadays, too, people may think of melancholy as a type of sustained sadness or as a form of depression or morosity. However, this is not the kind of melancholy that I am primarily interested in and that I think is relevant in understanding the Before trilogy. When I use the term melancholy, I will use it exclusively to refer to a particular emotion. It is an emotion that is characterized by its bittersweetness, as well as its complexity and profundity. People who experience it usually value it quite highly and they may seek it out in their engagement with novels, poems, songs, paintings or flms. So, it is an emotion that can be evoked by, and expressed in, works of art. Let me give some examples. Anton Chekhov and Lev Tolstoy, two giants of Russian literature, both had an extraordinary ability to express a sense of melancholy. Here is a passage from Chekhov’s famous short story, The Lady with the Dog (1899): Yalta was hardly visible through the morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountain-tops. The leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and spellbound in these magical surroundings - the sea, mountains, clouds, open sky - Gurov thought how in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one refects: everything except what we think or do ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence. And this is from Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869): After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrei’s request, went to the clavichord and began to sing. Prince Andrei stood by a window, talking to the ladies, and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he fell

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silent and suddenly felt choked with tears, a thing he had thought impossible for him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He had decidedly nothing to weep about, but he was ready to weep. About what? His former love? The little princess? His disappointments?… His hopes for the future?… Yes and no.The main thing he wanted to weep about was a sudden, vivid awareness of the terrible opposition between something infnitely great and indefnable that was in him, and something narrow and feshly that he himself, and even she, was. This opposition tormented him and gladdened him while she sang.1 The songs Pancho and Lefty (Townes van Zandt), Twee Meisjes (Raymond van het Groenewoud), Autumn Letter (가을 편지, Kim Min-Ki) and Bella Ciao (as sung, for instance, by Goran Bregovic or the characters of Berlin and the Professor in La Casa de Papel) are also good examples, as are the flms Underground (1995, dir. Emir Kusturica), Barry Lyndon (1975, dir. Stanley Kubrick) and Late Spring (1949, dir. Ozu). Each of these songs and flms, and each of the quoted passages, is soaked in melancholy. But what exactly is distinctive of that emotion as it is expressed in these works? Here is my semi-technical defnition: melancholy is a complex emotional process triggered by the affective appraisal of (what is perceived to be) a profound but typically harsh truth about human existence that puts the precarious value of something that you (feel you should) care about in sharp relief in such a way that you come to appreciate it more deeply. As a result, negative feelings or emotions (e.g., sadness, grief, desolation) will co-occur or alternate with positive feelings or emotions (e.g., joy, gratitude, peacefulness). Some clarifcations are in order. The existential truths that give rise to melancholy can be varied in nature. They can relate to the transience of all things, the indifference of the universe to the life and death of each of us (as in Chekhov), the ‘terrible opposition’ we fnd in ourselves ‘between something infnitely great and indefnable … and something narrow and feshly’ (as in Tolstoy), etc. But it is key that such truths are not just theoretically acknowledged. In order for there to be a real emotion, they need to be vividly grasped or ‘affectively appraised’. According to Jenefer Robinson, affective appraisals ‘are always in terms of one’s own goals, interests, wants, or wishes. I respond emotionally when my interests or those of my group (me or mine) are perceived to

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be at stake’ (2005: 109). One could certainly apprehend, say, the general idea of mortality in a cool and detached way. Yet, it is only when you start to grasp the implications for yourself (or those close to you) that an emotional response might ensue. As Tolstoy refects in The Death of Ivan Ilyich: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius but certainly not as applied to himself.That Caius – man in the abstract – was mortal was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from others. Only when the main character realizes that he is in fact not different from others and that death awaits him, too, is he plunged into the emotional turmoil that is at the heart of the story. Of course, when someone really comes to grasp a harsh existential truth, their response may just be one of sadness, horror or despair. But it can also be more complex and multifaceted. And that’s when melancholy may ensue.The harsh existential truth may come to accentuate the precarious value of something that you (feel you should) care about – the present moment, a past friendship, your lifelong partner – in such a way that you come to appreciate that something or someone more deeply. This gives rise to more positive feelings or emotions that help to offset the initial feelings of sadness or despair. Hence, the bittersweet nature of melancholy and the sad subdued smile or tearful happiness that often accompany it. Moments of melancholy can be quite brief and subtle when there’s a quick shift of the negative to the positive. But the whole process can also be protracted and very intense, with thoughts that are continuously developing and overlapping, affecting and even looping back on each other, resulting in a prolonged alternation of the bitter and the sweet. A famous example of this is the ending of James Joyce’s The Dead (1914), where we are made privy to the melancholic refections of the protagonist Gabriel. He has just come to the painful realization that he has not been his wife’s one-and-only true love and they were not necessarily meant to be together because she did love someone else a long time ago. But ‘as he thought of what she must have been then, in that time of her frst girlish beauty, a strange friendly piety for her entered his soul’

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(Joyce 1969: 223). Gabriel continues to ruminate on the events of the day, on his own foolish pretensions and on sickness and death that will inevitably come upon his family. And then: The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live. Generous tears flled Gabriel’s eyes. (Joyce 1969: 223) The story then ends with one of the most beautifully melancholic paragraphs in world literature (the poignancy of which was exquisitely transferred to the silver screen by John Huston in his flm adaptation of The Dead). Melancholy is not always or necessarily aesthetic in nature. But in those cases where melancholy leads to a deeper aesthetic appreciation, we could consider it as an aesthetic emotion. To put it differently, we may speak of aesthetic melancholy if and when an aesthetic experience is integrated into the complex emotional process described above. An aesthetic experience occurs, some have argued, ‘when we value our aesthetic perception of an object for its own sake and are moved in virtue of that perception’ (Jerrold Levinson quoted in Maes 2017: 28). If that is so, then it seems that the characters in the passages I quoted from Tolstoy, Chekhov and Joyce are indeed experiencing aesthetic melancholy. Prince Andrei appreciates the beauty of Natasha’s music and is deeply moved in virtue of it. Gurov is aesthetically savoring his surroundings whilst being in the thralls of melancholy. And the same goes for Gabriel in The Dead. He is not only moved by the beauty of his sleeping wife but his soul ‘swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead’ (Joyce 1969: 224). Moreover, readers of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Joyce may also be experiencing aesthetic melancholy in savoring these beautiful passages. When you read about the ‘eternal sleep awaiting all of us’ or the world’s

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‘complete indifference to the life and death of each of us’, you are invited to contemplate these existential truths. And doing so may put the precarious value of beauty, and particularly, the beauty and artistry of the prose you are reading, in sharp relief in such a way that you come to appreciate it more deeply.

The characters In all three flms, there are key scenes where the characters are unmistakably experiencing and expressing melancholy, in the way that I have defned it. In Before Sunrise, there is Jesse’s recital of the W.H. Auden poem that presses home the thought that time cannot be conquered and ‘will have his fancy, tomorrow or today’. As the poem sinks in, the bond between the two seems stronger than ever. The playful firtation has made room for a deeper longing and they now seem ready to savor the remaining moments they still have together. Later, at the very end of the flm, when they’ve separated and are traveling alone – Jesse on the bus and Céline on the train – we see the sad but appreciative smile that is so typical of melancholy on both their faces. They are happy to have had this adventure, even though the adventure had to come to an end. Or perhaps, I should say, because it had to come to an end.That, at least, seems to be their own view: JESSE:

Everything is so fnite. I mean, but don’t you think that that’s what makes our time, at specifc moments, so important? CÉLINE: Yeah, I know. It’s the same for us, tonight, though. After tomorrow morning, we’re probably never going to see each other again, right? They make a conscious decision to enjoy their one night together knowing that they will have to part in the morning: JESSE:

So, you think tonight’s it, huh? I mean, that tonight’s our only night. CÉLINE: It’s the only way, no? JESSE: Well, alright. Let’s do it. No delusions, no projections. CÉLINE: Okay, let’s do that.

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Melancholy is also the overriding feature of one of the pivotal moments in Before Sunset, namely Céline’s touching monologue on the ‘little things’: I feel I was never able to forget anyone I’ve been with. Because each person has their own, specifc qualities.You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost. (…) I will miss of the other person the most mundane things. Like I’m obsessed with little things. Maybe I’m crazy, but… when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees, rolling on the sidewalk, or… ants crossing the road, the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk… Little things. I think it’s the same with people. I see in them little details, so specifc to each of them, that move me, and that I miss, and… will always miss.You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specifc details. Like I remember the way, your beard has a bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow, that… that morning, right before you left. I remember that, and… I missed it! In Before Midnight, it is the central dinner table scene and Natalia’s speech in particular where we fnd the clearest expression of melancholy. She is reminiscing about her late husband Elias (in a way that is noticeably reminiscent of Céline’s monologue in the earlier flm): But lately I’ve been forgetting little things. He’s sort of fading and I’m starting to forget him and it’s like losing him again. Sometimes, I make myself remember every detail of his face - the exact colour of his eyes, his lips, his teeth, the texture of his skin, his hair - that was all gone by the time he went. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes I can actually see him. It is as if a cloud moves away and there he is. I could almost touch him, but then the real world rushes in, and he vanishes again. For a while, I did this every morning, when the sun was not too bright outside because the sun somehow makes him vanish. He appears and he disappears like a sunrise or sunset, anything so ephemeral. Just like our life - we appear and we disappear and we are so important to some, but, we are just passing through. Her words resonate with another melancholic scene in which Céline and Jesse are seated on a terrace, watching an ephemeral sunset disappear

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behind the mountains. They are cherishing the warmth of the moment in the knowledge that it will soon be gone (just like, quite possibly, their relationship might soon come to an end). So far, I have focused on scenes where the emotion of melancholy is very pronounced. But as was mentioned in the previous section, while melancholic episodes can be intense and protracted, they can also be more subdued and relatively short-lived. Each of the Before flm is in fact dotted with such brief and often very subtle moments of melancholy. A nice example in Before Sunrise is when they spot the poster for the Seurat exhibition. Céline says: ‘I love the way the people seem to be dissolving into the background. It’s like the environments are stronger than the people. His human fgures always seem so transitory’. The comment is followed by a gentle pause, and while the camera lingers on a drawing of a deathbed scene, we hear a church bell ring. Immediately afterward, when they’re in the church, Céline makes a comment that is similarly laced with melancholy: I was in an old church like this one with my grandmother in Budapest a few days ago. Even though I reject most of the religious thing, I can’t help but feeling for all those people that come here lost, or in pain, guilt - who come here looking for answers. It fascinates me how a single place can join so much pain and happiness, for so many generations. In Before Sunset, they are savoring the sight of another church, Notre-Dame de Paris, when Céline makes this observation (that becomes even more poignant in light of the disaster that took place in 2019): ‘But you have to think that Notre-Dame will be gone one day.There used to be another church at the Seine, right there’. And in the last flm, it is yet another religious building, the small chapel of Saint Odilia with its faded wall paintings, that prompts Jesse to muse on the idea of impermanence and to tell the story of the monks who paint with water on rock on a hot day so that by the time they’re done the paintings have already evaporated. It is not just the places they fnd themselves in that elicit melancholic refections in our characters. It is also the particular timeframe of their encounters that is eminently conducive of melancholy. Firstly, there is the sunset, the most melancholic moment of the day. When the light is fading and the activities of the day have ceased, one is easily flled with thoughts of transience. At the same time, of course, a sunset gives one

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occasion to appreciate the beauty of the ‘golden hour’ or the gifts of the day that has just gone. It is telling that a melancholy sunset features prominently in all three flms (the terrace scene in Before Midnight, the boat trip in Before Sunset, the frst kiss in Before Sunrise). Moreover, in each of the flms, the two main characters meet so-to-speak under a ticking clock2: Jesse has a plane to catch in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, while in Before Midnight, they only have one night together, free of child care, before they have to head back home. So, they cannot but be aware that time is limited and feeting. The fact that each of their encounters is marked by something important coming to an end only reinforces this idea. In Before Midnight, Jesse has just said goodbye to his son. It’s the end of summer and the end of their holiday in Greece.3 In Before Sunset, it’s the last stage of Jesse’s long book tour.And in Before Sunrise, Céline is returning from a visit to her beloved grandmother while Jesse is bringing his disastrous but formative Europe trip to an end. Lest there be any misunderstanding, however, Céline and Jesse are not just drawn to melancholy because of the physical environment or the temporal circumstances in which they fnd themselves. Even in the absence of any external cue, they seem to be seeking it out, as they spontaneously engage in melancholic refections throughout their conversations. Where other people might dwell on everyday particularities, Céline and Jesse will typically use such particularities as springboards to talk about more general aspects of human existence. They are continuously putting things in a broader perspective as a way to maintain, convey or achieve a clear view of what they really care about. This is also evident in the stories they tell each other, often a propos of nothing. These stories tend to have a melancholic punch line, like the story of Céline’s friend George in Before Midnight. He found out that he had an incurable disease with only nine months to live, but this did not drive him to despair. On the contrary, ‘he was fnally able to enjoy everything about life, even like being stuck in traffc. He would just enjoy looking at people… staring at their faces. Just little things’ (Note the reiteration of that signifcant little phrase here.). The story of George appears as an interesting mirror image of the one that Jesse tells in Before Sunrise. JESSE:

I remember my mother once, she told me, right in front of my father – they were having this big fght – that he didn’t really want to have me, you know, that he

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was really pissed off when he found out that she was pregnant with me; you know, that I was this big mistake. And I think that really shaped the way I think. I always saw the world as this place where I really wasn’t meant to be. CÉLINE: That’s so sad. JESSE: No, I mean… I eventually kind of took pride in it…like my life was my own doing or something… like I was crashing ‘The Big Party’. In the second flm, too, there are melancholic mini-stories. For instance, Jesse mentions how he went to a Trappist monastery and really began to appreciate the monks’ lifestyle: how they were quick to laugh, easy to be around, very attuned to everything. And he contrasts this with the hustle and bustle of everyday existence: You realize that most of the people that you meet are trying to get somewhere better, trying to make a little bit more cash, trying to get a little more respect, have more people admire them, you know… it’s just exhausting! Another example is the story Jesse tells about being in a band and being preoccupied with the future rather than enjoying the present. Or the story he wants to incorporate in his next book, about a man who has made it – good job, beautiful wife, nice house – but who comes to realize that happiness is in the doing, not in getting what you want, and who is subsequently moved by his fve-year-old daughter dancing on top of a table. To recapitulate, Jesse and Céline share many intense as well as more subtle moments of melancholy in their various encounters. These are partly prompted by the environment and the circumstances in which they fnd themselves. But both of them also actively seek out and create such moments by the stories they tell and the refections they engage in. That seems part of who they are as individuals. And, I now want to add in conclusion, it seems part of what attracts them to each other. Right from the start, in Before Sunrise, the two feel a special connection. I think it is not too far-fetched to suspect that it is their mutual appreciation of melancholy that helps to explain why they feel this special

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bond. As Brady and Haapala (2003) have pointed out, solitude forms the characteristic backdrop of melancholy because the solitary state is so eminently conducive of refection. However, melancholy can sometimes be experienced and explored in company. But the conditions have to be right: you and your conversation partner(s) need to be similarly inclined to face up to certain existential truths and you need to value and take pleasure in roughly the same aspects of life (the ones that are accentuated by the contrast with those diffcult existential truths).Those conditions are rarely fulflled, but they clearly are when our two main characters meet in the Before trilogy. Jesse and Céline share a penchant for melancholic musings and it seems that they are, at least in part, drawn to each other because of it. It’s quite telling, for instance, what Céline says when she’s asked (in the scene of the pretend phone conversation in Before Sunrise) why she got off the train with Jesse. The moment she fell for him, she confesses, is when he told the beautifully bittersweet childhood story of seeing his great grandmother who had just passed away through the mist of a garden hose. Likewise, in Before Sunset, it is after Céline’s melancholic refections on the “little things” that Jesse confesses his hopeless and continuing attraction to her: ‘Oh, God. Why didn’t we exchange phone numbers and stuff’?

The flm Melancholy is manifestly present in the characters’ dialogue and in their facial and bodily expressions. But ‘flm expression’ is not exhausted by what we might label ‘character expression’. There are other ways in which flms may express emotions. In this section, I will argue that the Before flms also express melancholy via (1) the soundtrack, (2) the recurrent use of certain stylistic devices such as the ‘Ozu sequence’ and (3) the ‘stealing glances sequence’, (4) some notable motifs and (5) various flmic references. (1) Before Sunrise opens with the overture to Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, which is spirited and lively but has a melancholic undertone that only becomes more pronounced if you know the story of Dido and Aeneas, the lovers who were eventually forced to part. Similarly, the frst music we hear in Before Midnight is the instrumental piece The Best Summer of My Life written for the flm by Graham Reynolds. It starts slow and sad during

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what the flmmakers have dubbed the ‘fallout scene’, i.e., the scene at the airport where we witness the fallout of Jesse’s decision to abandon his marriage (and part with his son) for a life with Céline. But the music picks up when he exits the airport and Céline fnally comes into view, giving the overall piece a distinctly bittersweet feeling. Melancholy is expressed even more clearly and explicitly in the various songs that are used throughout the trilogy. Take Julie Delpy’s An Ocean Apart that is the opening track of Before Sunset.The chorus of that song serves up a tough existential truth (‘Time goes by and people cry and everything goes too fast’), while the verses describe moments that are to be cherished (‘Now we are together/Sitting outside in the sunshine’ or ‘Now we have each other/Enjoying each moment with one another’). The ending of Before Sunset, with Céline dancing to Nina Simone’s Just in Time, also bathes in melancholy. While some of the lyrics of the song appear optimistic (‘No more doubt, no more fear, I have found my way, your love came just in time’), the song is mainly sung in an elegiac tone with a voice that seems to come from a place of suffering (‘I was lost them losing dice were tossed/My bridges all were crossed nowhere to go’). Suffering and death are also part of the context in which the song is set in the flm. Céline and Jesse have just had a bitter altercation in the car where they’ve opened up about the misery in their respective lives. When he enters her apartment, he sees a photo of ‘little cross-eyed Céline’ with her grandmother and we are reminded of the grandmother’s death and how it was her funeral that kept the two lovers apart. And then during the opening verse of Just in Time, it is the recent death of Nina Simone they ruminate about. Set against such a background, the already poignant song becomes even more poignant. Finally, the song that plays over the closing credits of Before Sunrise, Kathy McCarthy’s Living Life, also has the typical duality of melancholy. Troubling existential concerns (‘When everything’s so tasteless/And all the colours seem to have faded away’ or ‘Because I’m learning to cope/With the emotion-less mediocrity’) are punctuated with the injunction to nevertheless cherish the one life you have (‘This is life/And everything’s all right/Living life’). (2) The ‘Ozu sequence’.That is the way Richard Linklater has referred to the stylistic device employed in all three flms whereby a slow series of shots shows the main locations of the story in the absence of the principal characters. The shots come at steady intervals and are flmed with a stationary camera that lingers long enough on each site to bring

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the viewer in a contemplative mood. The effect is mesmeric. And, as we know from the gentle, bittersweet cinema of Ozu, it is a device that is eminently suitable to express melancholy. In Before Sunrise, the sequence comes at the end of the flm. Dawn is breaking and ordinary life resumes in those places where Céline and Jesse have spent the night of their lives. It speaks powerfully of the fact that everything must end sometime. In the fnal shot of that sequence, we even see an old lady trundling past the bottle of wine the two lovers have left behind in the park, turning this tableau into a moving ‘memento senescere’. And that’s not all. The cherished places of their budding romance – the bridge where they start their journey through Vienna, the amusement park where they kiss, the statue where Jesse recites the poem – appear without luster in the stark morning light. Cars and people just pass by without taking special note. The sequence thus conveys, in a soft and subtle way, the diffcult truth that others will likely be indifferent to the places and things that are of the utmost signifcance to us.The sites of momentous occasions in our lives are just part of banal everyday existence for other people. I am reminded here of a passage in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz: how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described, or passed on. (Sebald, 2011: 30–31) In Before Sunset, the Ozu sequence comes at the start of the flm. We see various locations in Paris – a street corner, a café, a quiet courtyard – before the flm cuts to Jesse and the reporters in the bookshop Shakespeare & Co (one of the many nods to the work of James Joyce).4 The melancholic character of this opening sequence is only revealed on a second viewing. Because it’s only then that we come to realize that what seemed like a banal series of touristy shots of Paris is in fact a carefully constructed montage of the various places where Céline and Jesse will have their life-changing second encounter. So, upon re-watching the flm, the viewer comes to realize that she herself is (inevitably?) like those indifferent passersby at the end of Before Sunrise who take no special note of the places and things that are of utmost importance to other people.

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The Ozu sequence in Before Midnight is clearly meant as a continuation of those previous sequences in Before Sunset and Before Sunrise. But it also stands out for a number of reasons. To begin with, no exterior scenes are shown here, but we rather get to see the interior of a hotel room. Moreover, the sequence doesn’t come at the very end or at the very beginning of the flm, but is inserted as the story is still unfolding. And, most importantly perhaps, while the sequence in the other two flms is presented from a third-party perspective, here it comes as a series point-of-view shots from the perspective of Jesse (see MacDowell, 2013 for why this choice might not be unproblematic). He’s surveying the hotel room as if it were an abandoned battleground. Through his eyes, the viewer, too, is reminded of the petty fghts that took place here and the deeper disappointments that have come to the surface. At the same time, we are also reminded of the earlier love scene on the bed. And the abandoned wine bottle may take us back to the frst flm and the wine bottle they obtained for their very frst night together. The sequence is profoundly melancholic. It evokes the pain and diffculties that come with a long-term relationship but also conveys (as the flmmakers are keen to point out in the commentary track) that there is still love, that there is still something worth saving.5 The way this scene is set up, by the way, is powerfully and (I think) deliberately reminiscent of the fnal scene in both James Joyce’s and John Huston’s The Dead, where Gabriel is also surveying his hotel room as if it were an abandoned battleground: His eyes moved to the chair over which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string dangled to the foor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of emotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? (Joyce 1969: 223) (3) In all three flms, there is what I want to call the ‘stealing glances sequence’.The most memorable of these, perhaps, occurs in Before Sunrise. Céline and Jesse have entered the listening booth in the record store to play Kath Bloom’s Come Here. As the script says: ‘They glance subtly up at each other but usually not when the other is looking. The song makes both of them a little nervous as it brings out a shyness about the uncertainty of their relationship at that point’ (Linklater, 2008: 42).The

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characters themselves are not melancholic – they are shy and nervous and full of longing – but the scene has a defnite melancholic undertone. The tender and slightly sad song in combination with their furtive and bashful glances captures the beautiful feetingness of a budding romance. If their glances were to meet, they could be assured of each other’s feelings. But their eyes never interlock and so the feeting moment in which they could seal their romance passes. Luckily for Céline and Jesse, they will get another opportunity, but – and this is a thought that will no doubt resonate with some viewers – such a second chance is not given to everyone.6 In Before Sunset, the stealing glances sequence happens when they’re walking up the stairs to Céline’s apartment and a similar sort of uncertainty and longing flls the air. But already in the scene that comes before that, when they’re in the car and confessing to the misery in their lives, their glances fail to meet at crucial times. Céline wants to touch and comfort Jesse, but he fails to notice this, and vice versa. The opportunity for an embrace passes by and the audience is again reminded of the fact that the right moment might be lost – a bitter truth that makes the sweetness of a possible reunion stand out even more. In Before Midnight, it is the fnal scene, at midnight on the terrace, that presents us with the uncertainty of whether their glances will meet and whether they will be able to make up and remain together as a couple. As the camera slowly pulls away, they do seem to re-engage, but the bittersweet music leaves us wondering whether this is only a temporary reprieve. (4) There are some notable motifs throughout the trilogy that lend further support to the idea that melancholy is key to understanding these flms and that the harsher truths of human existence always serve to accentuate the central romance between our two beautiful and young(ish) protagonists. One such motif is that of the grandmother and, by extension, that of old age. It’s there in Before Midnight where Jesse receives the news of his grandmother passing away, and where a grand old couple, Natalia and Patrick, preside over the dinner table and meditate on the passing of time. It’s there in Before Sunset where, early on, we learn that it was the funeral of Céline’s grandmother that prevented her from meeting him again in Vienna. Later on, Jesse (and the viewer) gets to a see a picture of Céline’s grandmother and is reminded of the time that has since slipped away. But the motif is, surprisingly perhaps,

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most prominently present in the frst flm, Before Sunrise. Not only do Céline and Jesse repeatedly talk about their great-grandmothers in their various melancholic ponderings, but the flm is also dedicated to the director’s grandparents. And, as we’ve already seen, the flm ends with the poignant ‘memento senescere’ of the old lady walking past the empty bottle of wine. Another recurrent motif that is meant to offset, however briefy, the sweetness of romance is that of war. In Before Sunrise, Céline draws attention to the fact that there’s a war going on, and that people are dying, less than 300 kilometers from Vienna. In Before Sunset, Jesse mentions the war that could have destroyed the Notre-Dame (but didn’t). In Before Midnight, he recounts how the occupying army of Turks was responsible for scratching out the eyes of the beautiful icons they encounter in the shrine. Céline later reminds him that politicians going to war for no reason is just one example of how ‘the world is fucked by unemotional rational men deciding shit’. (5) Finally, there are some extra scoops of melancholy for the cinephile hidden in this trilogy.The flms are laden with cinematic references and it’s revealing that most of these references are to movies that are through and through melancholic. Let me list some examples (besides the ‘Ozu sequence’ that I have already discussed). Before Sunrise references two melancholic masterpieces that are also set in Vienna. One is The Third Man (1949, dir. Carol Reed). Not only do Céline and Jesse kiss in the Ferris wheel that is the backdrop to the most famous scene in The Third Man, but they also have their ‘men killing each other over a woman’ conversation precisely when they pass the doorway where Harry Lime makes his long-awaited entrance. Moreover, the church they visit, where Céline talks about her grandmother in Budapest, is the Church of Maria am Gestade which already featured in The Third Man. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948, dir. Max Ophüls) is the other classic set in Vienna that Linklater pays homage to. It also makes use of the Ferris wheel in the Prater, it has a memorable farewell scene at the train station and the two protagonists spend one – and only one – night together rambling the streets of Vienna. (As Stefan says to Lisa: ‘I suppose sooner or later we’ll have to decide where we are walking to … I almost never get to the place I set out for any way’.) Furthermore, the scene where Céline and Jesse sit directly opposite one another in the train is framed in precisely the same way and intentionally brings to mind the scene of the amusement train ride in Letter from an Unknown Woman.

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Before Sunrise also contains some less obvious but equally revealing references. For instance, the rabbit that Céline and Jesse unexpectedly fnd in the cemetery is a direct homage to Some Came Running, the melancholic drama directed by Vincente Minnelli that has a rabbit quivering in the grass in one of its crucial scenes. Or think of the tram ride in Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) and the spinning scene from Truffaut’s 400 Blows (1959) that seem to be reprised in Before Sunrise.7 Some have also speculated that the play that Céline and Jesse are invited to early on in the flm, Bring Me the Horns of Wilmington’s Cow, is a reference to Sam Peckinpah’s brutal but melancholic Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). In Before Sunset, Céline says ‘maybe we’re only good at brief encounters, walking around in European cities in warm climate’, thereby alluding, so it seems, to Brief Encounter (1945, dir. David Lean), a flm that resonates both thematically and affectively with this second installment of the trilogy. She makes this comment when they’re on a tourist boat in Paris – quite likely a reference to the bittersweet scene in Casablanca (1942, dir. Michael Curtiz), where Rick and Ilsa also take a Paris tourist boat. Additionally, it’s been suggested that Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), which has a similar timeframe as Before Sunset and is about a young woman in Paris coming to terms with her mortality, was a direct infuence on Linklater (Stone 2013: 130). One of the side characters in Before Midnight, Patrick, is played by Walter Lassally, who was the cinematographer of Zorba the Greek (1964, dir. Michael Cacoyannis).8 That flm, which is all about joy in the face of bleakness, is also set in Greece and has a writer as its main character. Moreover, the surprising shot of the goats in Before Midnight might be a nod to the important scene in Zorba where Irene Pappas’s goat is abducted by the men in the village. However that may be, a flm that is certainly an important reference point for Before Midnight is Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy (1954). In the car ride from the airport, Céline explicitly mentions the flm as she recalls one of its key scenes: I remember a couple walking through the ruins of Pompeii, looking at bodies that had been lying there for centuries. I remember the bodies caught in their sleep, still lovingly holding each other. I don’t know why, sometimes I have this image in my mind when, you know, we’re asleep and you hold me.

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Journey to Italy also begins with a car ride and a long discussion between two partners who have been together for roughly eight years. And there are many other parallels: the mutual recriminations, the looking at art and ruins and refecting on the passing of time, the husband ogling other women, the unmistakable allusion to James Joyce’s The Dead. In all sorts of ways, the cinephile is invited to view Before Midnight through the lens of Journey to Italy and given the diffcult existential truths that are front and center in Journey, this certainly gives the flm an extra melancholic layer.9

The audience The Before trilogy does not just express melancholy, as was argued in the previous section, but it is also highly expressive of that emotion. This distinction, between expression and expressiveness, is thematized by Jenefer Robinson (2007). Expression, she explains, should be thought of as a relation between an artwork and an expresser, who is either the artist or an imagined agent such as a narrator or a character in the work. Expressiveness, by contrast, should be thought of as a relation between the artwork and the audience to whom it communicates. Whether something is or is not an expression depends on whether it is a product of a person or agent who is expressing his or her emotions. Expressiveness, on the other hand, depends on how effectively the artwork reveals to a (suitable) audience what that emotion is like. (Robinson, 2007) And Robinson adds: ‘I have suggested that among the most effective ways of doing this is to evoke that emotion in the audience’ (Robinson, 2007). For example, someone might express her state of mind verbally by saying ‘I feel melancholic’. That would be an expression of melancholy, but it wouldn’t be very expressive. Alternatively, one could create a work of art and by means of a story or dialogue or music or purely visual means (or all of the above) induce the audience to feel melancholic and to learn what it is like to be in such a state. That, I posit, is what the Before flms do.

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The characters don’t simply state that they are feeling melancholic. In fact, the word ‘melancholy’ is never once mentioned in the trilogy. But in a great variety of ways, the flms do offer us an insight into what it is like to be in that state and, at times, leave us feeling melancholic (in the way that I have defned that emotion).10 They do this better than, say, any photograph or painting of melancholy that I’m aware of.This, of course, is partly due to the nature of the medium. Paintings and photographs are static and mute. A painting or a photograph will typically depict one moment and so it is much more diffcult for it to really capture the complex process and developing nature of melancholy (the bitterness and the sweetness). Paintings and photographs also cannot articulate and make explicit the musings that give rise to melancholy. Films, on the other hand, do not have these limitations. And the Before flms in particular exploit all the means at their disposal – stories, dialogue, images, music – to reveal melancholy in all its complexity and variety: from the very intense and protracted to more subtle and subdued episodes, from the melancholy of twentysomethings to that of mid-life or old age, from the bittersweet feelings triggered by a ‘memento mori’ or ‘memento senescere’ to those prompted by other existential truths like the fact that each life will have its share of unfulflled promises, or that it can be extremely challenging to maintain a passion as the years progress, or that there is always a war raging somewhere causing suffering to countless people while the rest of us live our peaceful lives. It is, I think, because the flms are so expressive of melancholy that they have resonated so deeply with some viewers. For the Before flms are prone to hit home if you are the sort of person who can appreciate that bittersweet feeling of melancholy (as I have defned it). David Foster Wallace aptly describes the pang of recognition one can feel in engaging with fction: There’s a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s these brief fashes and fames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I’m in a deep, signifcant conversation with another consciousness. (Miller, 2012: 62)

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Chances are, if you yourself have a penchant for ‘la douleur exquise’, that this is what you’ll experience when you watch the Before trilogy. So, while I argued in an earlier section that a shared appreciation for melancholy is (at least in part) why the characters are attracted to each other, I want to suggest here that it may be the very same thing that helps to explain why many viewers are drawn to these flms and why the trilogy has attracted such a cult following. Now, integral to feeling deeply attracted to something (or someone) is the desire to revisit or to keep interacting with that something (or someone). And while none of the Before flms was a blockbuster, the trilogy has earned itself a very loyal audience with many fans who have seen the flms multiple times. Does it reward such repeated viewings (and I’m asking this question specifcally with an eye to the prized feeling of melancholy)? The answer is ‘yes’.The series has rich veins of melancholy that one can keep mining as an audience. Firstly, because each flm is carefully constructed and multi-layered, there will be certain elements the poignancy of which one will only grasp on a second viewing. The clearest example of this is the ‘Ozu sequence’ in Before Sunset that I’ve already discussed. But there are other instances. Early on in Before Sunrise, when Céline describes her frst sexual feelings toward a boy she met on a summer camp, she recounts how she and the boy promised each other to write and meet again but then didn’t – a throwaway remark that acquires more signifcance in light of the later developments between herself and Jesse.11 In Before Midnight, Céline pronounces the sunset to be ‘gone’ whilst sitting on a terrace. It is that very same terrace that she will later return to after declaring that her love for Jesse is gone. Secondly, what goes for the individual flms, also goes for the trilogy as a whole. It is so carefully constructed that revisiting the frst flms in light of the fnal installment, and vice versa, is rewarded with extra sparks of melancholy. For instance, the fght between the older couple in the train that effectively brings Céline and Jesse together in Before Sunrise will resonate differently for viewers who have seen Before Midnight. Such viewers will also be able to connect the passage in Before Sunrise where Céline says she loves the red in Jesse’s beard with her observation in Before Midnight that the red in his beard has gone. The time-traveling bit that Jesse does in Before Midnight is a reprise of the time-traveling spiel that gets Céline off the train in Before Sunrise. Knowing this will add some sweetness to the scene in Before Midnight and, conversely, it may add some

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bitterness to the scene in Before Sunrise. Another example is the reference to Quaker weddings in both Before Sunrise and Before Midnight. The romantic admiration they express for this quiet ceremony in the frst flm will, for those who have seen the whole trilogy, be offset by the ironic and somewhat cynical tone they adopt in the fnal flm. (Speaking more generally, the trilogy offers an easy recipe for melancholy in that it will be diffcult for fans not to let the beautiful naivety of the younger couple be offset by the more jaded experience of the middle-aged couple.) A fnal note about aesthetic melancholy. As I have argued in the frst section, melancholy is not always or necessarily aesthetic in nature. For instance, at the end of Before Sunrise, when Céline and Jesse have separated and are traveling alone, they seem to be in the thralls of melancholy (as I have defned it), but there’s nothing particularly aesthetic about the emotion they experience at that point. However, melancholy can and often does go hand-in-hand with an aesthetic experience. It’s when the contemplation of a harsh existential truth leads to a deeper aesthetic appreciation that we may speak of aesthetic melancholy.There are quite a few examples of this in the trilogy: when Céline and Jesse slowly watch the sun disappearing behind the mountains in Before Midnight, when they contemplate the beauty of Notre-Dame in Before Sunrise or when they ruminate on Seurat’s ephemeral fgures in Before Sunrise. Moreover, viewers of the trilogy may also come to experience aesthetic melancholy in savoring some of these scenes.When our main characters admire the Notre-Dame and refect on how it narrowly escaped in WWII but will one day be destroyed, we as viewers are also invited to contemplate that harsh truth and to share in the aesthetic admiration for that magnifcent cathedral. In Before Sunrise, there is Jesse’s poignant recital of the W.H. Auden poem that presses home the thought, for both the couple and the viewer, that time cannot be stopped.The sharp awareness of the transience of all things makes Céline and Jesse savor the remaining moments they still have together, but it also seems to deepen their, and the viewer’s, appreciation for the poem itself. It clearly sinks in and hits home on this occasion. What goes for the poem, I want to argue in conclusion, goes for the flm as well. For it is not just the poem that expresses so eloquently the unforgiving march of time. The flm itself, especially in that scene, becomes beautifully expressive of that idea and resonates more deeply as a result of it. Such moments are often among the most powerful

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instances of aesthetic melancholy. A work may be expressive of a diffcult existential truth, and the latter may put the beauty and artistry of the work itself in sharp relief in such a way that you may come to appreciate it more deeply. That, I contend, is the extraordinary feat that all the Before flms achieve and that helps to explain the hold they have on their audience.

Conclusion Melancholy, I have argued, can be understood as the profound and bittersweet emotional experience that occurs when we vividly grasp a harsh truth about human existence in such a way that we come to appreciate certain aspects of life more deeply. It is an emotion that is frequently experienced and expressed by the two main characters of the Before trilogy. Their shared moments of melancholy are partly prompted by the environment and the circumstances in which they fnd themselves. But both Céline and Jesse also seek out and create such moments by the stories they tell and the refections they engage in.That seems part of who they are as individuals and it may help to explain why they feel so drawn to each other. Melancholy, furthermore, is effectively expressed in the trilogy through various cinematic means, such as the soundtrack, certain stylistic devices, notable motifs and a plethora of cinematic references. As a result, the flms are highly and uniquely expressive of that complex emotion. And, as I have suggested in the fnal section, this may help to explain why the flms resonate deeply with some viewers and have attracted such a devoted audience. Given this intriguing parallel between the mutual attraction of the main characters and the love that viewers may feel for these flms, let me end with this (rather melancholic) thought: to feel a real and profound connection and to be able to maintain that connection as time progresses is, sadly, something that happens very rarely. But when it does, it is to be cherished.12

Notes 1 Interestingly, on the Criterion website Linklater refers to his all-time top ten list of flms as ‘spirit-and-the-fesh titles’, which include Andrei Rublev (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969), Au hasard Balthazar (dir. Robert Bresson, 1966), Fanny

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3

4

5

6

7

8

9

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and Alexander (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1982). And in a comment that is reminiscent of the Chekhov quote, he says: “I can’t quite grasp the notion of how long people live and how long the earth has been here, the universe has been here, and then our little part in that. It’s a beautiful poetic thing and kind of a haunting thing at the same time” (Richard Linklater in Kogonada’s video essay On Cinema & Time, 2013). The flm titles themselves serve as a kind of ticking clock. And it’s worth noting that The Clock (1945 dir. Vincente Minnelli) was a flm that Linklater reportedly showed to his two leads in preparation for Before Sunrise (Stone, 2013: 121). As Linklater says on the commentary track of Before Midnight: ‘the notion of the end of summer, holidays are over, school is starting: there was always a certain melancholy attached to that’. The original Shakespeare & Co, owned by Sylvia Beach, was frequently visited by James Joyce. Beach also published Joyce’s Ulysses under the imprint Shakespeare and Company. Before Sunrise takes place on the 16th of June, which is Bloomsday (named after the main character in Ulysses).The original script of Before Sunrise included dialogue about John Huston’s flm adaption of Joyce’s The Dead. Before Midnight heavily references Rossellini’s Journey to Italy (1954), which itself is loosely based on The Dead. Interestingly, Joyce once translated Gerhart Hauptmann’s Vor Sonnenaufgang (Before Sunset, 1932) and also alludes to this work in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Following the previous two flms, it might also lead to the realization that the anonymous hotel rooms that we all pass through on our travels have likely been the décor of momentous changes in some people’s lives. The fact that ‘kairos’, i.e., the right moment, can be missed never to return, is, in my view, nowhere described more heartbreakingly than in the ‘mushroom picking scene’ of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Truffaut’s series about Antoine Doinel, the character he follows from boyhood to adulthood, was a known inspiration to Linklater. Worth mentioning in this context is that Before Sunset was originally going to open with the profoundly melancholic song L’amour à vingt ans, taken from Truffaut’s second Doinel flm, Antoine et Colette (1962). Patrick is a writer and owns the house where Céline and Jesse are staying. It is quite likely that this character is named after Patrick Leigh Fermor, who owned the house where the movie was shot and who was a writer. His most famous book, A Time of Gifts, is a beautifully melancholic memoir of the author’s journey through pre-war Europe. In the commentary track of Before Midnight, another flm about marital disillusionment is mentioned (by Ethan Hawke) as a potential reference point, namely Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1973). And Stone (2013: 181) notes how Linklater has acknowledged the infuence of Michael Apted’s deeply melancholic Up series, charting the lives of a number of children since 1964 with seven year ellipses.

64 HANS MAES 10 If there’s one emotion that lingers after each of these flms, it’s melancholy. All three flms leave the viewer with a bittersweet feeling (though there might be a more sweet aftertaste after the frst flm and more bitterness after the last flm). 11 Similarly, when Céline wistfully says that they will miss the Seurat exhibition, the frst image she points to is “Voie Ferrée” (Rail Road) – surely not a coincidence given the important role that trains and railroads play in the meeting and parting of Céline and Jesse. 12 I wish to thank James MacDowell, Aaron Meskin and Katrien Schaubroeck for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Bibliography Bowring, J. (2016) Melancholy and the Landscape: Locating Sadness, Memory and Refection in the Landscape. London: Routledge. Brady, E. and Haapala,A. (2003) Melancholy as an Aesthetic Emotion. Contemporary Aesthetics, 1 (1). Joyce, J. (1969) The Dead. In: Robert Scholes and Richard Ellmann, eds. Dubliners. New York: The Modern Library, pp. 199–224. Linklater, R. (2008) Before Sunrise & Before Sunset:Two Screenplays. New York:Vintage. MacDowell, J. (2013) Before Sunrise after Before Midnight: Genre and Gender in the Before series. Alternate Takes, http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/?2013,9,524 (accessed 01 May 2020). Miller, L. (2012) The Salon Interview: David Foster Wallace. In: Stephen J. Burn, ed. Conversations with David Foster Wallace. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, pp. 58–65. Robinson, J. (2005) Deeper than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, J. (2007) Expression and Expressiveness in Art. Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics, 4(2), pp. 20–41. Sebald, W.G. (2011) Austerlitz. London: Penguin. Stone, R. (2013) Walk, Don’t Run:The Cinema of Richard Linklater. New York: Wallfower Press. Tolstoy, L. (1967) The Death of Ivan Ilych. In: Introduction by John Bayley, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 247–302.

Chapter 4

Christopher Cowley ‘RELATIONAL VERTIGO’ IN BEFORE MIDNIGHT

I

WA N T T O E X P L O R E A phenomenon that should be familiar to most adults who have been in long-term intimate romantic– sexual relationships. I have not seen this phenomenon named, but I will call it relational vertigo. I have in mind that moment when one participant, perhaps both, suddenly becomes aware of the very real risk that the relationship is unraveling or will soon unravel irretrievably. There might be the same distinctive hollowing-out feeling as with physical vertigo, but the phenomenon mostly comprises a kind of sudden, numbing understanding of one’s existential vulnerability. I am assuming that if the relationship has been genuinely intimate and trusting, then it will also be identity-conferring. Each party will have partly adopted the ends and projects of the other, will feel on-going concern for the concerns of the other, will feel vicarious pain and joy at the pain and joy of the other. The failure of such a relationship is therefore not the failure of a discreet project, resulting in mere disappointment or frustration; rather, the vertigo has to do with a much deeper threat to one’s identity. I’m not sure how more can be said about the existential vulnerability in question: it involves an awareness of the stark limits of words and actions to fx the situation, of the radical unpredictability of the near future, and of the power of brute fortune. Once the words run out, one can only undergo the vertigo while foundering, wincing and dreading. And even when both participants recoil from the

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brink, the ripples of the vertigo remain on the surface, a sign of a deeper discord that could surface anytime in the future. Richard Linklater’s flm Before Midnight (2013) is a fascinating representation of such vertigo, and I propose to use its protagonists to focus my discussion.1 The flm’s commercial and artistic success is somewhat surprising, since the flm is very static and does not have much of a story.The entire ‘third act’ of the flm (where the protagonists are fnally alone) depicts no more than the protagonists talking.2 But this is where the vertigo takes place, and so I will focus on this third act.

The situation of Before Midnight Although this paper is not meant to be a plot summary or a critical review, a certain amount of plot and character detail will be necessary in order to make my subsequent discussion of relational vertigo more precise. This is the third flm in a trilogy directed by Richard Linklater. The same actors, playing the same characters, Jesse and Céline (the characters are roughly the same age as the actors), appeared in all three flms, with nine-year intervals, so we see them age from 23 to 32 to 41. By the time of Before Midnight, they seem to have been married for eight years, they have two twin daughters who seem to be about seven. For most of their eight-year marriage, they have been living in Paris. During the flm’s tight 12-hour timespan, they are nearing the end of a six-week sojourn at a writers’ retreat in rural Greece with half a dozen others: the second act comprises an extended multi-group discussion during the preparation and consumption of a communal lunch. Céline is French, an environmental activist, working for a French non-governmental organization in Paris. In an early dialogue of the flm, she learns of a setback in one of her projects. This is the last straw, and she is slowly deciding to return to work in a government department, even though she has deep concerns about infexible and underfunded government policy and about working for the same cretin boss she had before. Jesse is a commercially successful American novelist. He has a child, Hank, now aged 14, from a previous marriage with an American woman, now living in Chicago, and with custody of Hank. At the beginning of Before Midnight, we get a brief glimpse of Jesse saying goodbye to Hank at the Greek airport: Hank has just spent a week visiting Jesse

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and Céline at the retreat and is now fying back to the United States on his own. As part of an already awkward discussion, Hank tells Jesse that Hank’s mother still “hates” him, which impedes the communication and reunions between father and son. One of the themes of the flm is Jesse’s fear of losing touch with Hank, especially during his teenage years. It is unclear to what degree his fear has crystallized into a desire to move his Parisian family to Chicago, but Céline recognizes that potential desire and rejects it forcefully – and Jesse quickly denies that he had any such desire – although he becomes more concrete about it later. This is one of the ‘fault lines’ of their relationship. As we learn later, Céline is tied to Paris by her professional life and by her family, and she cares enough about the French language to speak it with her girls. The second and deeper fault line has to do with a classic gendered disagreement in parenting policy and work–family balance. Jesse has clearly left the bulk of the parenting and housework to Céline, and this is hardly the frst time that Céline has complained about this. Perhaps Jesse feels that his artistic success entitles him to devote more of his time to writing and to promotional tours – and to bringing in more money for the family. In contrast, Céline’s professional frustrations are closely linked with the priority she accords to her children and with the unreliability and frequent absence of their father. One of the virtues of the flm script is the tragic irony of watching Jesse discussing his next novel with some of the other guests at the retreat. The novel sounds terrible: self-important, rambling, incoherent, glazed with a cheap mysticism. The flm spectator marvels at how such a charlatan can fnd commercial success.3 In contrast, we never see Céline at work (She is “on holiday”, although this means extra work for her to look after the twins’ needs out of school, while Jesse lounges around discussing literature.). And while we may have doubts about Jesse’s dubious aesthetic values, we do understand the genuine value of the environmental ideals to which Céline is committed, just as we understand her frustration at not being able to fght for them more effectively. These two fault lines are overt in the sense that the characters themselves refer to them regularly – whether in passing or whether in highstake confict situations – as long-standing reasons for grievance. And neither character is surprised to hear such grievances in the mouth of the other: there really is nothing further to say about them, and during the third act, each character defends themselves with a lame ‘global’

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response of “you should have known before you married me”, in order to implicate the other – perhaps dishonestly – as co-responsible for their present predicament.4 Of course, there will be other fault lines in the relationship, of which the characters are more or less aware. One essential feature of intimate relationships is that they are richly and impenetrably opaque, not only to outsiders, but even to the participants themselves; such relationships therefore represent a profound challenge to the Cartesian ideal of frstpersonal ‘privileged access’ to mental states, partly because there exists an entity – the relationship – with its own history, its own potential, above and beyond the history and potential of the two individuals. Sometimes the situation might be clearer to contemporaneous third parties, or to the participants themselves later in retrospection, but of course never perfectly clear.5 The overt and covert fault lines will lead to the vertiginous fssures in the third act. In the frst and second act, however, the overall impression of the relationship has been crafted to be harmonious enough.The couple are clearly familiar and comfortable with each other, with each other’s professional situations, with each other’s extended families, and they share enough by way of parenting values and policies. They are comfortable using the frst-person plural in group situations such as the second-act lunch scene.6 Now that we have something of a grasp on Céline, Jesse and their marriage, we can take a more philosophical turn. In the next three sections, I want to briefy summarize three inter-related notions of recent philosophical interest, after which we can pull them together into a better understanding of relational vertigo. The three notions are as follows: (i) relational autonomy, and the special kind of vulnerable dependency on an ultimately unknowable other; (ii) Bernard Williams’s Moral Luck, with reference to the special kind of vulnerability to contingent misfortune in intimate relationships; and (iii) the problem of one person’s imaginative understanding of the other person.

Relational autonomy and relational vertigo The contemporary discussion of relational autonomy dates back at least to Nedelsky (1989), but its roots are in Hegel.7 “If we ask ourselves what actually enables people to be autonomous, the answer is

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not isolation, but relationships — with parents, teachers, friends, loved ones” (1989: 12). The concept of relational autonomy is a response to the familiar traditional understanding of liberal ‘atomistic’ autonomy, according to which a Cartesian person is autonomous insofar as she is free to act on her desires, without external obstacle (prison walls, poverty), without internal obstacle (fear, alcoholism) and without the desires themselves having been non-rationally implanted (hypnotism, oppressive socialization). Harry Frankfurt (1971) famously bolstered this substantive conception with a procedural conception whereby the atomistic individual could endorse or repudiate their frst-order desires in their quest for autonomy. In contrast to the atomistic conception, the concept of relational autonomy begins with the observation that each of us grows up within intimate relationships with signifcant others: at frst family members, then teachers, but later the intense friendships of adolescence, during which the self takes shape. To put it crudely, according to the relational view, the self can only defne itself in attraction or opposition to various other selves. I develop and discover my values and priorities during everyday interactions and experiments and conficts with others. But even the healthy adult self requires intimate relationships in order to be fully autonomous. The relational autonomy conception will point at those moments of crisis in my life where I have to talk it over with a close friend, someone I am confdent understands me, someone who has the authority, concern and knowledge to give the good advice that I cannot see, someone who can confrm or reject my inclinations, someone who can help me to make sense of what I am going through and help me deal with the consequences of my decision. Our intimate relationships thereby provide the forum for the development of the autonomous self, and what’s more, they go on to partly constitute the autonomous self, and blur the boundaries of the self. Sometimes I pursue my likely self-interest, only to discover the ‘impossibility’ of continuing such pursuit once I realize that it will harm someone I care about. Sometimes it might be worse for something to happen to someone I care about than for the same thing to happen to me.8 This conception of the relational autonomy takes us a good way to understanding the special kind of vulnerability, not only to the fate of the intimate other, but also to the fate of the relationship itself.This vulnerability is essential to relational vertigo. Normal situations of confict

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with a non-intimate other – for example in the workplace – essentially present themselves as another external challenge, to be navigated in more or less the same way as fnding the best route to one’s destination using a map. There will be better and worse options, there will be hunches and probabilities, there may well be regret and recrimination. But as with so much of one’s life, one can muddle through without letting the situation or the obstacles or antagonists get to one. When the relationship is truly intimate, then serious discord is not experienced as external to the self, does not present external options for the self to decide between; rather, it undermines the very self, undermines the value structures within which the self can make meaningful choices about external options, undermines the conception of possible futures presupposed by the stable self.This is the vertigo I am talking about. There is a question about whether to use the metaphor of vertigo to describe this undermining of the self. Why not simply call it a kind of depression or despair, for example? In my search for greater precision, I think there are distinctive features. First, one can be depressed about all sorts of things, whereas I am focusing on a relatively narrow experience, with the explicit link to the relationship. Second, vertigo is essentially sudden in a way that depression is not. In the physical version of vertigo, it only begins when I go out on the balcony, and I am overcome by a very distinctive kind of unease associated with losing the ground beneath my feet. Third, vertigo is linked to a fear of falling, or falling apart, physically or metaphorically; whereas depression need not be associated with any particular fear. Fourth, depression is normally understood as essentially individual, whereas relational vertigo is something that may be experienced by one or both partners at the same time. Fifth, I am inclined to say that depression is essentially focused on the world (including the future world), or experienced as a failure to ft into that world; whereas the vertigo is experienced as a wobble of the self, and perhaps even as an attack. Perhaps the purest form of vertigo has to do with jealousy (even though in Céline and Jesse’s case, there is more annoyance than jealousy about past infdelities.) What physical and relational vertigo has in common with depression is cognitive impenetrability to reassuring beliefs. With physical vertigo, one can genuinely and frmly believe the balcony to be safe, and yet, one is too terrifed to venture out onto it. In a similar way, relational vertigo is immune to the genuine reassuring belief about the other’s love, commitment, desires; or to genuine memories about surviving past discord.

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Anna Karenina Bernard Williams’s ‘Moral Luck’ (1981) concerned his famous examples of the lorry driver and of Gauguin.There has been far less discussion of his example of Anna Karenina, but this is much more relevant for my purposes.9 Williams’s overall project is to criticize the view – implicit in such diverse moral schemata as Christian morality, Kantian moral autonomy and legal culpability – that true morality is immune to luck: it is fair to hold someone morally responsible only for those actions within their control and their understanding. In response to this ‘immunity’ assumption, Williams demonstrated that our ordinary practices of blaming are shot through with luck. The non-negligent lorry driver, skilled, sober, cautious, his brakes recently checked, etc., is not blameworthy at all, and yet a child runs in front of the lorry and is killed. It is perfectly intelligible for the lorry driver to blame himself, and we would be suspicious of any driver who dismissed such a tragedy as having nothing morally to do with him. The semi-fctional Gauguin aspires to be a great painter, and to that end abandons his family in 19th-century Paris to a predictably grim fate. The abandonment – at the time of the abandonment – is clearly not justifed since Gauguin’s future artistic success will depend on a huge amount of luck; and yet he is lucky, he is successful, and this success, writes Williams, retrospectively justifes the abandonment.10 The above two examples concern individuals, and the impact of luck on their moral status. In contrast, the Anna Karenina example concerns two people. Karenina11 is married to Karenin, and they have a ten-year-old boy together. Like Gauguin, she abandons her family for the sake of a very risky project the affair with Vronsky. Like Gauguin, her project will be vulnerable to the ‘extrinsic’ luck of whether they are physically able to be together; but while Gauguin needed the ‘intrinsic’ luck of artistic talent, Karenina needs more than talent: she needs the ‘extrinsic– intrinsic’ luck of relationship chemistry.12 She might cease to love him, he might cease to love her, or the relationship might founder for any number of reasons despite their continuing love. The essential asymmetry of the relationship does not help, in the sense that she needs it to work much more than he does, given the sexist double standards of the time (remember she has left a husband and a child), and as time goes on, her desperation increases, and this makes things even more claustrophobic for Vronsky. Throughout, Karenina is conscious of two things: the cost of her relationship, especially to her son; and the

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fact that her relationship with Vronsky, although under stress, might still go better. Certainly, at the moment of abandoning her family, she correctly perceived their relationship as something that could go well – it was not mere wishful thinking, Tolstoy is at pains to imply that it might have gone well, and his readership at one level must surely be cheering her on, cheering them on, even while they might condemn the general practice of mothers abandoning husbands and children.The climax of the novel (spoiler alert!) constitutes what might be called the ultimate form of relational vertigo, a situation of such pain and disorientation that can only be resolved by suicide. Williams describes different ways that the ‘project’ could end, and the different meanings of such endings. If Vronsky dies from an accident or a disease, Karenina could still say that it was worth leaving her family for whatever time she had been ‘allowed’ with him. Their relationship could remain intact in her memories, and she might console herself with thoughts about reunion in the afterworld. She might even commit suicide with the thought that there was nothing left for her in the world because her lover was not in it (1981: 27). If, however,Vronsky leaves her, or seems to be on the verge of leaving her (we are never sure what his thoughts are, how much Karenina’s paranoia and desperation was distorting her interpretation – indeed, perhaps Vronsky was not even sure about his thoughts and feelings), then the failure seems to be extrinsic to Karenina, but intrinsic to the relationship and therefore effectively intrinsic to Anna. He is leaving her because of who she is, or of what she has done or said, and this will suddenly give new and devastating meaning – retroactively – to the abandonment of her husband and child. As a result, the suicide she does end up committing will be accompanied by very different thoughts; as Williams puts it: “What she did, she now fnds insupportable, because she could have been justifed only by the life she hoped for, and those hopes were not just negated, but refuted, by what happened” (1981: 27). As an extreme form of relational vertigo, Karenina’s case is useful to reveal an essential component, the experience of radical contingency. When things are going well in an intimate relationship, it is tempting to settle into a comfortable, even a complacent sense of necessity. The longer the relationship, the greater the sense of something like fate. The thought that “we belong together” so easily slides into “we will be together forever”.This is compatible with minor discord, sacrifce, feeting irritation

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and an awareness of the need for hard work to make it work. But longterm couples retain an essential and not unreasonable faith in their joint project, such that, whatever the current reality, we can make it work with enough good will, enough communication, enough respect. What Williams’s discussion of Anna shows, I think, is the ineliminable role of luck in every intimate relationship. Obviously the extrinsic luck of good health is important, but its extrinsicness does not threaten the relationship as such. To put it another way, since we are all equally vulnerable to the extrinsic misfortune of illness and accidents, there is no additional threat to the relationship. When serious discord strikes an intimate relationship as a form of intrinsic misfortune, however, this can be vertiginous precisely because it exposes the role of brute, uncontrollable luck in the feelings one has for the other, and in the bluntly opaque chemistry of our interactions. When a relationship ends because one of the participants dies, it is an occasion for grief. But at least the cause of the end is very clear, and third parties will be able to console the survivor through a shared awareness of human mortality. But when the relationship ends through discord, then it might not be at all clear what happened; one realizes with horror that there is nothing necessary holding it together at all – no love, no resolve, no expectations, no fate. It is often tempting for the participants, and for third parties, to use the language of faultless natural catastrophe, but this will only distract one from the gnawing truth that the end might have involved no more than human cruelty, ignorance, fear and anger – destructive forces that could be unleashed at any time on any other relationship in one’s life. The opacity of intimate relationships is mirrored by the opacity of the origins, shapes and consequences of these forces. In Anna’s case, the vertigo had fatal consequences; in the case of Jesse and Céline, there is a nervous reconciliation at the end of the flm, but nothing has resolved, nothing has been learned, no new marital commitments have been made, and both can predict and dread the next crisis.

Love and understanding We’re almost in a position to talk about the relational vertigo in the flm itself. But in this section, I need to warn against a simplistic understanding of relational vertigo as mere evidence of the relationship’s

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intrinsic weakness. An unsympathetic third party might say that the couple were insuffciently loving or insuffciently understanding, and that the vertigo (perhaps predictably) merely reveals such insuffciency. Such a third party might not even be inclined to blame either participant, and merely speak about the parties’ incompatibility. This ‘Darwinian’ conception of intimate relationships would see vertigo as a form of healthy destruction, allowing both participants to separate, learn and move on in their lives. Certainly this is sometimes the case. But I would resist the suggestion that it is inevitably the case. Relational vertigo can happen to those relationships with the greatest love and understanding between the participants – among whom I consider Jesse and Céline. Because of the essential opacity of intimate relationships, because of the merging of identities in a way that undermines familiar atomistic notions of contract and informed consent, because of the multi-layered contexts that infuence the meaning of individual acts and utterances (present and past), it is usually very hard to pin specifc blame on specifc instances of carelessness or ignorance or insensitivity as “the cause” of the vertigo. It is more honest to accept that relational vertigo can strike at any time in any relationship. I hasten to add, however, that genuine love cannot endure under the assumption that “vertigo might strike” at any time: mature love needs a robust kind of confdence about the future, and understanding needs a confdence that enough can be understood.13 There have been long-standing debates in philosophy about the nature of love, about the nature of interpersonal understanding, and about the relation between the two – and this is not the place to get bogged down in either. Suffce to summarize some important points about the complexity of both concepts, again to help us grasp the contours of the phenomenon of relational vertigo, especially as exemplifed by Céline and Jesse in the flm. The most important misconception of love is as a kind of passive feeling (into which one “falls”), which comes and goes uncontrollably. Instead, it is better understood as a complex disposition involving ways of feeling, but also ways of seeing, ways of thinking and ways of spontaneously acting. It is at least partly under one’s control; at the simplest level, one can “promise to abstain from activities that will endanger love. One can more positively promise to nurture conditions that are conducive to love. One can even promise to adopt or strive for attitudes and

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perspectives which are constitutive of love” (Solomon, 2002: 26). Two important such attitudes are attention and generosity: one chooses to attend more closely to the other’s concerns, and/or chooses to give the beneft of the doubt, while also choosing whether or not to admit one’s anxiety or shame to the other.14 Far from vertigo revealing the couple’s love as inadequate, it is the partly chosen self-exposure necessary for genuine love that makes the couple vulnerable to vertigo. The concept of ‘understanding’ is hugely variegated, especially in philosophy. For our purposes, the important thing is to distinguish between one person’s biographical understanding and her imaginative understanding of the other. The frst concept is more like a kind of knowledge and invokes the detached enquiry of the psychotherapist or the biographer. I can know a person very well in the sense that I know what they believe about how the world is and how it should be; what they desire, long for or are averse to; what they hope for and feel ashamed about, etc. I can understand such a person in the sense that I can render their prima facie perplexing action intelligible, and in the sense that I can reliably predict their dispositional behavior – and reliably avoid certain situations likely to provoke confict within our relationship. I do not wish to downplay the importance of such biographical understanding as part of intimacy; clearly someone without any biographical interest in the other cannot seriously claim to love them. Importantly, however, biographical understanding is compatible with a kind of risk-averse hardness that will stife love. (And of course biographical knowledge is also compatible with cruelty, manipulation, coercion and deceit.)15 In contrast, ‘imaginative’ understanding of another person starts with the familiar notion of imagining oneself “in the other’s shoes”. But there is a real question about what exactly those shoes contain, and how imaginatively accessible they are to others. Obviously they contain shared conceptions of the general vulnerabilities of the human body and mind; but how much of the particular do they contain, and how is such understanding of the particular governed by the normative? For a very simple representation of these complexities, let’s take A and B in a relationship. One day B loses his job because of company down-sizing, and he is sad and angry. A’s initial thought is that B is over-dramatizing it; but A wants to help him and wants to understand. A starts by asking herself: “how would I feel if I lost my job?” But this is not enough, because A’s job happens to

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play a different role in A’s life than B’s job did in B’s life. B is also much more ambitious (in career terms) than A, and B had identifed much more closely with his job than A does with hers. So the next question is whether A can imagine herself as that ambitious, as so closely identifying with her job and then imagine herself as unemployed – how would she feel? But even that might not be enough, let’s say, because of B’s particular history of needing to make up for youthful profigacy, of his need to prove himself in front of his skeptical parents, of his need to be seen as the ‘masculine’ breadwinner, etc. My point is this: we can see love as motivating enquiry and sympathy, but this might only be possible to a point. The failure of imaginative understanding – against the background of long-term sufficient understanding – could be an essential component to the relational vertigo. Indeed, the articulation of the experience of the vertigo might take the form “I can’t understand this person anymore”. Perhaps, if the other’s incomprehensible identity-conferring commitment can be ‘quarantined’ so as not to disrupt the healthy parts of the loving relationship, then both parties could agree to disagree. This might be the case with strongly divergent political allegiances, for example.

Back to the flm With the adumbration of these three key concepts – relational autonomy, moral luck and imaginative understanding – we are in a better position to understand relational vertigo, and especially the particular kind exemplifed so well in the third act of the flm. I have already expressed my surprise that such a static drama could win commercial acclaim. Even low-budget soap operas have more plot movement and gladiatorial spectacle than this flm, and nowhere is the flm’s austerity so evident than in the scene leading up to Céline’s blunt but catastrophic declaration: “You know what’s going on here? It’s simple – I don’t think I love you anymore” (107). After that, there is only sullen silence and deep division, Jesse in the hotel room, Céline at a table on the terrace, with the future wide, wide open.16 One of the important contextual features of relational vertigo has to do with “exit options”. The idea is that if a person has a unilateral lowcost option to exit a situation (not just in money and logistical terms,

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but also in power–political terms), then the fact that they do not exit means that their continuing presence can be taken as consent. Ignoring the absence of realistic exit options leads to systematic misunderstanding of domestic abuse situations, as when the frustrated friend says “why doesn’t she just leave him?” The problem for the two protagonists in Before Midnight is that they are ‘trapped’ abroad, which makes imminent unilateral exit very costly.After Céline stroms out of the hotel room, Jesse makes the frst reconciliatory move by coming down to the terrace, and Céline accepts his presence by playing the cutesy time machine game, although it is not clear what is going through her mind. She might just be buying time until they get back to their Paris existence, where she has old friends to consult and stay with, where she knows how to rent a new fat, where she can borrow money from her parents, etc. Typically, exiting a heterosexual relationship will almost always be more costly for the woman because her salary might well be lower (and we can presume that Céline has not saved much from her NGO work), because she will be more likely to keep the children and therefore to be responsible for them alone (as well as concerned for the effects of the exit on them) and because there might be a real question of whether the man will support them fnancially after separation. So Céline might still fnd herself trapped in her marriage after their return to Paris. Although the Greek holiday was meant to be relaxing, it turns out to have been the worst thing the couple could do. The characters start the third act by expressing their joy in “Walking, having a conversation […] About something else than scheduling, food, work” (61), but they soon begin probing and picking at the fault lines to pass the time, and without the safety valve of their respective Parisian friends to complain to. Like sausages, some (otherwise perfectly healthy) intimate relationships can only be enjoyed if their ingredients are not examined too closely.17 Alternatively, in setting the flm in a holiday retreat, perhaps Linklater believed that this would expose the ‘naked’ characters, away from their layers of mundane occupational ‘clothing’ and distracting family baggage. But it could also be said that such extraction was unfair – to them, and to the relationship – in releasing inauthentic destructive paranoias and insecurities normally kept in check. Jesse seems to be essentially nomadic, and would be happy anywhere as long as he could read and write. But Céline seems much more rooted in Paris life, in her

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Paris-based work opportunities, and in her various understandings of her Parisian past and future. I think she draws much more sustenance from that place than she perhaps realizes, especially given her central self-identifcation as a mother of children with whom she speaks French. There is a real question of what a flm of Céline’s and Jesse’s vertiginous crisis would have looked like in Paris, where the poignancy of the non-happy end would be much greater if the couple had nowhere to retreat to afterward.18 Presumably Linklater and the two actors considered this while writing the script, especially when the second flm took place in Paris. It would have been good for us viewers to see more of the parenting politics in action, for example, especially since this is one of the most important fault lines for Céline. On the one hand is Céline, who says: “I can tell you every detail of the past seven years based on what was happening in the girls’ lives” (62). On the other hand is Jesse, who while slowly immersing himself in parental responsibilities seven years earlier, decided to participate up to this point and no further – presumably in parallel with his growing success as an author. It would have been good to see Jesse’s avoidance and Céline’s compensation in this sphere of their marriage, since this would have informed our understanding of any later vertiginous crisis catalyzed by this fault line. It might also have prompted a humbled Jesse to offer a detailed and verifable parental commitment rather than the time machine game as his peace offering. This would, however, imbalance the flm by shifting the spectator’s interest and concern toward the basic on-going question of what Céline wants and what she’ll settle for, and the subsidiary question of how explicitly she can or ought to articulate this to herself. Staging the flm in Paris would have allowed a deeper look at Céline’s professional commitments and frustrations, rather than only hearing about it in a brief phone call. This would have lifted Céline out of her wifely and motherly roles and given her some kind of accomplishments and ambitions to rival her husband’s. Otherwise, all we hear is the threat that she feels.19 It is true that Jesse does have some understanding and some sympathy for Céline’s professional predicament, but for us viewers, it is all at one remove from the dilemma that Céline physically has to face in Paris. One fnal thought.At some point in the past, Jesse also made the decision not to work on his French language skills, and it would have been good to see him in his arrogant monolingualism in the very capital of the

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French language and the city he had committed to living in. (It would also have been useful to see something of his awkward relationship with Céline’s parents, once they had tired of his charm.) Presumably, Linklater was limited by the actor Ethan Hawke’s own language skills, and perhaps Linklater shares Jesse’s lack of interest in French language and culture. Although Céline does not pick up on this, there is something deeply disrespectful about English-speakers refusing to learn the mother tongue of their partners, for it prevents those partners from the full range of self-expression in moments of passion, anger or humor. The disrespect is doubled when such English-speakers choose to live in their spouse’s country. Perhaps Céline had resigned herself to this, choosing instead to focus on the parenting equality battle. But the very fact that the flm’s vertiginous crisis played itself out entirely in English emphasized the deep linguistic and cultural gap between them. One can only hope that the fourth flm – which ought to come out in 2022, if the pattern continues – will address this. By 2022, the twins will be 16 years old, they will have strong opinions and that will bring in an interesting new dynamic as well.20

Notes 1 I take the pagination of the screenplay from the PDF available at Linklater et al. (2013): http://www.sonyclassics.com/awards-information/beforemid night_screenplay.pdf. The Wikipedia entry describes something of the flm’s success. It gathered 98% approval on the Rotten Tomatoes website, it was nominated for an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay, among other awards: https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Midnight_(flm). As a representative of the many positive reviews, Guardian flm critic Peter Bradshaw gave it fve stars in The Guardian, 20 June 2013: https://www. theguardian.com/flm/2013/jun/20/before-midnight-review. For completeness, I should cite one negative review, by Ellie Bramley in The Guardian on 19 November 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/flm/flmblog/ 2014/nov/19/before-midnight-my-most-overrated-flm [all websites accessed November 2019]. 2 I am dividing the flm into three acts. The frst act mainly focuses on the couple talking in the car with the twin girls asleep in the back seat.The second act comprises an extended multi-group discussion during the preparation and consumption of a communal lunch. The third act focuses on the couple talking during a stroll and then in the hotel room.

80 CHRISTOPHER COWLEY 3 It is also troubling that he mines his private sexual relationship with Céline for material and agrees to discuss it at the public lunch (28). During the third act (99), she forcefully prohibits him from doing that again, but this is surprising. If she feels that strongly about it, she would have told him when the book frst came out, and he would have been a lot more sheepish about it at the lunch. 4 So Céline says, “You mean you f***ed up by moving to Paris to be with me?” (95). And soon thereafter, Jesse says, “You shouldn’t have hooked up with a writer” (99). 5 There is also a question of whether the actors are aware of the fault lines as part of their efforts to ‘inhabit’ the role by understanding themselves as emerging from a determinate biography; so the actor might inhabit the fault line without the character being explicitly aware of it.The actor Ethan Hawke has to ‘become’ the divorced Jesse and carry that trauma ‘under’ his performance. 6 One revealing scene occurs early on (13). Céline and Jesse are driving with their twins asleep in the back of the car. As they drive, Céline notices some ancient ruins (remember that they’re in Greece) and reminds Jesse that they promised to take the twins to see the ruins. Jesse responds by saying that it would be a shame to wake them up. He then proposes a compromise: that they stop at the ruins the next day on the way to the airport (to return to Paris). Céline responds, “You know we won’t”, and Jesse concurs, “Yeah, probably not”. Later, Céline concludes: “Oh my god, we are sh*** parents. We should have stopped”. But Jesse is comfortable: “Aw, it’s okay”, and they laugh affectionately. Parenting is an obvious source of stress and discord in any couple, and we learn about some of that later on, but here we have broad agreement on what ought to be done and on what will be done, and on the deception and excuses that will now have to be told to the twins when they awake. 7 See Nedelsky (1989) and Christman (2004). See also the important collection by Mackenzie and Stoljar (2000). 8 There are two bigger questions which I cannot address in adequate detail here: frst, the degree to which issues about relational autonomy overlap with more general issues about social autonomy; second, the degree to which issues about relational autonomy are distinct from issues about the relational self. 9 In Williams (1981), Gauguin is on p. 22, the lorry driver is on p. 28 and Anna Karenina is on p. 26. 10 Williams can be reproached for drawing this conclusion too much from Gauguin’s own self-serving perspective. It is not obvious that his family would or should accept the abandonment as justifed, no matter what success he fnds; nor is it obvious that we art-lovers should accept that the abandonment was even necessary for the art. 11 Williams shares the common practice of referring to Anna Karenina by her frst name, while referring to Gauguin and Vronsky by their surnames, as if Karenina were a child.

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12 ‘Extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’ are Williams’s terms to distinguish two kinds of luck, two corresponding kinds of unlucky failure, and two different ways that the failing protagonist can experience the failure. In the case of extrinsic failure, the protagonist can say to himself: “I might have been a contender.” 13 Would I go so far as to call this a form of illusion or even self-deception? Some might, I wouldn’t. I would prefer words like optimism or trust. I am not saying that the lovers need to deny the possibility of vertigo; just that they do not need to be called insecure if the possibility does not spontaneously occur to them. I guess I am not persuaded by those who would argue that the most authentic kind of love is only to be found in carpe diem or prior to the Apocalypse. 14 The philosophically rich notion of attention is of course inspired by Iris Murdoch (1970). One classic example of the near-vertiginous dilemma of giving or withholding the beneft of the doubt can be seen during the heated argument in Act three from the flm: JESSE: If you don’t want to move back to the States we won’t. End of story. I’m just trying to fnd a way where I can be more of a consistent presence in his life, and ideally, I’d like to do that as a family. CÉLINE: I feel a passive aggressive threat in everything you say. Either do this, or I will resent you for the rest of our lives. (95–96) Is Jesse serious in calling it “End of story”? Was Céline ‘entitled’ to deny Jesse the beneft of the doubt here, to read this threat into the exchange? Who knows? But she did. And it is followed by a very pregnant silence. 15 Niko Kolodny (2003: 141) makes a similar point about the limits of biographical knowledge. He takes a biographer who has a very detailed biographical knowledge of his subject, but never meets her. He publishes the book, and then meets her, falls in love with her and begins a long-term relationship with her. A few years later, he has a special kind of amnesia that obliterates all his memories since the book’s publication. Kolodny argues that we would not then expect him to fall in love with her again merely on the basis of his biographical knowledge, if he has no memory of their relationship. 16 One general criticism of the flm is the priority given to Jesse’s story over Céline’s, and this imbalance undermines the drama by encouraging greater sympathy for Jesse. We meet a member of Jesse’s wider family (Hank) but not Céline’s.We learn a lot more about Jesse’s job and life than about Céline’s. And as James MacDowell (2013) points out, at the end of the flm, when the couple split, the camera stays with Jesse in the hotel room rather than with Céline on the terrace. 17 Many American flms seem to demand a moment where one protagonist declares “we have to talk about our relationship”, as though this open

82 CHRISTOPHER COWLEY contractual stage were necessary in any serious relationship. While fresh air is generally a good disinfectant, I suggest that some aspects of some relationships do not beneft from close examination. 18 Since the vertigo happened abroad, then there is a sense in which it was a safer outlet for pent-up frustration. If they survive the vertiginous crisis (and at the end of the flm, we’re not at all sure), they can re-package it as something that happened “over there”. They might even reach a point of joking about their “disastrous” trip, while reassuring themselves that all is well back home in Paris. 19 Céline: “I think the problem is that you don’t want me to have a more substantial job. On some level, you feel threatened by my achieving anything that could diminish your status in our relationship” (96). This argument is very articulate and suggests that she has adopted it from a friend and rehearsed it several times. Of course, it is too confrontational, since it will only get the obvious defensive denial from Jesse. Once she reaches this point, she has given up. 20 My deep thanks to Katrien Schaubroeck and Hans Maes for very insightful comments on an earlier draft.

References Christman, J. (2004) Relational Autonomy, Liberal Individualism, and the Social Constitution of Selves. Philosophical Studies, 117 (1/2), pp. 143–164. Frankfurt, H. (1971) Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person. The Journal of Philosophy, 68 (1), pp. 5–20. Kolodny, N. (2003) Love as Valuing a Relationship. Philosophical Review, 112 (2), pp. 135–189. Linklater, R., Delpy, J. and Hawke E. (2013) Before Midnight. Available at: http:// www.sonyclassics.com/awards-information/beforemidnight_screenplay.pdf MacDowell, J. (2013) Before Sunrise after Before Midnight: Genre and Gender in the Before Series. Alternate Takes. Available at: http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/?2013, 9,524 Mackenzie, C. and N. Stoljar (eds.) (2000) Relational Autonomy Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy,Agency and the Social Self. New York: Oxford University Press. Murdoch, I. (1970) The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Nedelsky, J. (1989) Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources,Thoughts and Possibilities. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 1 (7), pp. 7–36. Solomon, R. (2002) Reasons for Love. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32 (1), pp. 1–28. Williams, B. (1981) Moral Luck. In his: Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 20–39.

Chapter 5

Murray Smith EPIC INTIMACY

Time will have his fancy, tomorrow or today. W. H. Auden1

C

É L I N E A N D J E S S E A R E RU M M A G I N G through the stacks of vinyl in Teuchtler Schallplattenhandlung, a record store in Vienna. Outside, a sign on the store advertises its commitment to items ‘Alt & Neu.’ Inside, Céline discovers an album by Kath Bloom, an artist she’s heard of through a friend, but never heard. ‘Do you wanna go and see if the listening booth still works?’ suggests Jesse. They head for the cubicle at the back of the store. We see the needle drop; a few seconds of vinyl crackle and the song ‘Come Here’ begins (‘There’s a wind that blows in from the north/And it says that loving takes this course’). Jesse and Céline listen to the whole song (or so it’s implied) in the tiny space of the booth, with a mix of delight and awkward embarrassment in this latest episode in their fast fourishing romance. They look at and away from each other, laughing and blushing, their glances sometimes catching and sometimes missing, while Bloom’s evocative lyrics and resonant voice fll the soundtrack (‘No, I’m not impossible to touch/I have never wanted you so much’).And importantly, the majority of the action is captured by a single continuous take, lasting just shy of a minute and a quarter. Rarely are we given the chance to watch desire and attachment grow with such delicacy, as well as quiet daring.

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The intimacy of the scene in both spatial and temporal terms is striking. We are confned to these two characters in this cramped space, and for the most part, from one point in space; what’s more, the flm dwells on this miniature episode for a disproportionately long time, by conventional standards, inviting us to dwell on the smallest of small-scale gestures. Nothing happens, and yet everything happens. In these ways, the sequence is exemplary of certain characteristic features of Richard Linklater’s flmmaking, especially (though by no means exclusively) in Before Sunrise (1995) – where we encounter the scene in the listening booth – and in that flm’s two successors, Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). I want to consider, through these flms, Linklater’s distinctive treatment of certain substantive preoccupations manifest in his work: the nature and passage of time, the effect of that passage on people and places, and the special role of flm in representing and exploring these preoccupations. Looking at these matters in these ways will ultimately lead us to consider whether there is any worthwhile sense in which we might consider Linklater to be a particularly ‘philosophical’ flmmaker. While I am generally rather sceptical of the idea that narrative flmmaking is a hotbed of philosophical activity, in Linklater’s case, there is much to be said in favour of the idea. The titles of the flms comprising Linklater’s trilogy mark his concern with time, each title framing the action as prior and building up to a traditionally key moment in the diurnal cycle: sunrise, sunset, midnight. One of the effects of such titles, and the action that unfolds in each of the flms, is to create an overarching structure of suspense: however idiosyncratic the flms may be in other respects, in each case, our attention is held in part by whether and how certain goals will be met by the time that we reach each of the iconic moments. Will Jesse leave Vienna on his early morning fight? And what will be the terms of his parting with Céline? Nine years later, will Jesse make his late afternoon fight from Paris, and (again) what will be the terms of his parting with Céline? And nine years further on, will Jesse be able to save his relationship with Céline by midnight? And what will be the terms on which it continues, if at all? Each flm also poses a question about the future beyond the titular deadlines. Before Sunrise wraps its question around a deadline: will Céline and Jesse live up to their pact to meet on track 9 at the Wien Hauptbahnhof at 6pm on 16 December 1994 (exactly six months on from the day that they meet on the train from Budapest)?2

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Alt & Neu These sorts of actions, goals, and events fall into the middle of the temporal spectrum to which humans, partly by virtue of narrative, are cognitively tuned.That is, it seems our minds are structured so that we readily understand human actions on a scale from seconds to whole lifetimes, mostly by thinking in terms of projects, small and large, pursued by individuals – from playing a record in a store, to nurturing a romantic adventure, to realising a vocation. These are, so to speak, the middlesized dry goods of the temporal world.We think naturally in these terms about our own lives and those of others. Artistic narratives – in novels, flms, and television – exploit this narrative dimension of our ordinary cognition, but may also expand it: such narratives can help us grasp, and refect on, temporality in ways that elude our ordinary thinking. If we are typically caught up with thinking at the level of hours, days, weeks, and months, artworks can retune our attention to the passage of time second by second, towards one end of the spectrum, or across whole generations and eras, towards the other end. At the extreme, some artefacts and practices seek to represent cosmological, evolutionary, and geological timescales – ‘suprahuman’ temporal scales whose vastness overwhelms us. Consider the ‘Clock of the Long Now,’ a clock designed to last for 10,000 years, under construction in Texas (with prototypes on display at the Science Museum in London and the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco). One of its creators, Steward Brand, described the idea behind the clock in the following terms: Such a clock, if suffciently impressive and well-engineered, would embody deep time for people. It should be charismatic to visit, interesting to think about, and famous enough to become iconic in the public discourse. Ideally, it would do for thinking about time what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think. (Brand, 2018; my emphasis) Or consider the performance of John Cage’s As Slow as Possible in the St Burchardi Church, Halberstadt, Germany, beginning in 2001. Cage’s composition does not determine the absolute length of the notes and chords comprising it.Various performances of the piece, ranging from

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several minutes to several hours in duration, were given after Cage composed it in 1987. Contemplating the implications of Cage’s title and the capacity of an organ to sustain notes indefnitely, and to be continuously maintained as a working instrument, members of the Halberstadt community devised a performance which would last 639 years – the duration between the frst documented permanent organ installation, in the Halberstadt Cathedral in 1361, and the year 2000, when the performance was slated to commence. Actually beginning on 5 September 2001, the performance was initiated by a 17-month rest, the frst chord being sounded on 5 February 2003. The glacial tempo adopted by the Halberstadt performance entails that changes in the notes being sounded occur very infrequently, at intervals typically ranging from several months to several years.The performance, scheduled to end on 5 September 2640, is thus designed to make us think about musical periodicity in fantastically extended durations.3 Such works and practices are sublime in nature, at once pointing to temporal phenomena which outrun ordinary human comprehension – it is very hard for humans to get their heads around durations and rhythms so far removed from the customary timescales of human life – while at the same time rendering the very phenomena we cannot normally grasp. The shot of Earth from space, the Clock of the Long Now, and Halberstadt’s As Slow as Possible give form to that which, in ordinary cognition, exceeds the bounds of form. This is not quite Linklater territory, but there are flmmakers who have mined it, and as we will see, there are routes between Linklaterland and the sublime country occupied by the Clock of the Long Now and photos of Earth from Space. James Benning is one such flmmaker, and – for all the differences between their flms – it is no coincidence that Benning and Linklater are longstanding friends and mutual admirers, together forming the subject of the documentary portrait flm Double Play (Gabe Klinger, 2013). The flm recounts the origins of their friendship: at the dawn of Linklater’s career as cinephile and flmmaker, in his capacity as co-founder of the Austin Film Society, and fush with the Society’s frst city and state funding, Linklater invited Benning as the inaugural visiting guest flmmaker of the Society in 1989. Many of Benning’s flms depict landscapes and are entirely devoid of narrative content – or at least, the viewer who approaches them with narrative expectations will come away sorely disappointed. Rather these are flms

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that invite us to attend to the look and sound of landscapes, especially as these modulate through the rhythms of the cycle of the day, of the weather, and of the impact of natural and human activity on them. Of Benning’s 13 Lakes (2004), Linklater asks: ‘how many of us have sat for ten minutes and just studied the way light moves, [or] the ripple of a wave?’ Sometimes, the emphasis falls on the effects of longer passages of time, as with One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (2007), which juxtaposes shots from Benning’s noted earlier flm One Way Boogie Woogie (1977) with shots taken from the same or similar camera positions a quarter century later. Although Linklater’s work is much less austerely formal than Benning’s, there are echoes of such strategies in Linklater’s flms. Appropriately enough for a flmmaker who occupies a niche not merely close to mainstream narrative cinema but within it, however, there is a much more overt emphasis in Linklater’s work on human presence. Linklater’s flms, for all their quirks, and for all their sensitivity to landscape and place, revolve around characters; these are flms concerned with the interrelations among people, place, and time. As befts a cinephile, Linklater’s approach to this subject matter is often informed by and fltered through particular, earlier cinematic explorations of time, people, and place – or sometimes, more simply, by the fact of earlier cinematic representations of people and places. Consider another key sequence early in Before Sunrise. Céline and Jesse are seated opposite one another on the train to Vienna. Jesse initiates a new thread of conversation: J: C: J: C: J: C: J:

I’ll tell you…sittin’ for weeks on end looking out the window has actually been kind of great. What do you mean? Well, er, for instance, you have ideas you wouldn’t ordinarily have. What kind of ideas? You wanna hear one? Yeah, tell me. Alright…I have this idea, OK. For a television show. Some friends of mine are these cable access producers…d’you know what that is? Cable acc-…I don’t know, um, anybody can produce a show, real cheap, and they have

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C: J:

to put it on, right? And I had this idea for a show that runs 24 hours a day, for a year straight, right? What you do is you get 365 people from cities all over the world to do these 24-hour documents of real time, capturing life as it’s lived. You know, it would start with, er, a guy waking up in the morning and, er, takin’ a long shower, um, eatin’ a little breakfast, makin’ a little coffee…[mumbles]…readin’ the paper Wait, wait – all those mundane, boring thing everybody has to do everyday of their fuckin’ life? I was going to say the poetry of day-to-day life…

What Jesse so animatedly describes here is a neo-realist vision for the cable access age (and arguably one even more readily realised in the era of the internet, which was just dawning when Before Sunrise was released). André Bazin, the most signifcant commentator on Italian Neo-Realism, famously wrote of Cesare Zavattini’s ‘dream to make a whole flm out of ninety minutes in the life of a man to whom nothing happens’ (Bazin, 1971: 82). At least two things are at stake in the neo-realist endeavour: the goal of rendering ordinary action in real time (and more generally minimising the mediation necessarily introduced by representation), and the related ambition to ‘de-dramatise’ the action, such that it is not experienced as signifcant only or primarily in respect of some future deadline. In simple terms, the ambition is to get the spectator to dwell ‘in the moment,’ on the action as a ‘thing-in-itself’ rather than (merely) as a stepping stone in an unfolding narrative. But now the question arises: to what extent do we fnd in the Before trilogy, and in Linklater’s work more generally, not only a spokesman for, but an actual embodiment of, the ethos of neo-realism? Of the frst of these goals – depicting the entire action of a flm in real time – we should immediately acknowledge that very few flms, mainstream or otherwise, come near to realising it. Moreover, expressed as an absolute – as the ambition not just to avoid temporal compression, but to remove all mediation – it is not realisable. Bazin spoke of Vittorio De Sica and Zavattini aspiring to create an ‘asymptote’ of reality – a mathematical metaphor for a representation which approaches reality ever more closely without ever quite touching it. Interestingly, the closest thing we currently have to the neo-realist ideal is not far removed from Jesse’s

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concept: the advent of ‘slow tv,’ in which particular activities (often journeys) are recorded and allowed to play out continuously in their full duration. Various cinematic precursors and parallels can be cited, but the televisual trend really began with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation’s Bergensbanen – minutt for minutt (2009), depicting the sevenhour train journey from Bergen to Oslo in its entirety. Other less kinetic subject matter was subsequently given similarly ‘slow’ treatment, such as the BBC productions The Last Igloo (2019) and The Great Mountain Sheep Gather (2020) (though it should be said that compared with many of Benning’s landscape flms, these works look like action movies). At this point in the history of the moving image, the purest instances of slow tv represent the point where – at least with respect to time – the asymptote of representation runs closest to reality. The most obvious tell that Before Sunrise is a long way from fulflling the neo-realist ideal in anything like its pure form is its length – a 101 minutes of screen time representing a plot of roughly 24 hours (assuming that the flm’s opening sequence shows us the train travelling through the countryside between Budapest and Vienna across the morning of the frst day; Jesse’s Austrian Airlines fight, towards which we see him travelling on a bus in the flm’s fnal sequence, leaves at 9.30am the following morning). So, at the level of the story as a whole, there is extensive elision. Within scenes, things look a bit more promising, for here we fnd an effort to let many actions play out at a leisurely pace, in real time, as in the sequence in the listening booth. Even here, though, the action is elided after the frst minute and a quarter of the song.At this point, ‘Come Here’ continues on the soundtrack, initiating and accompanying a montage sequence in which we see Jesse and Céline strolling through Maria-Theresien-Platz, with the Museum of Natural History visible behind them, then hustling to catch a tram before arriving at Friedhof der Namenlosen, the Cemetery of the Nameless in the district of Simmering. The editing here implies that they listen to the complete song in the booth, while the flm nonetheless moves the action on and eventually fades down the song as the couple enter the graveyard.4 Teuchtler Schallplattenhandlung, Maria-Theresien-Platz, Friedhof der Namenlosen: Before Sunrise doesn’t label these settings, nor does it contrive reasons for Jesse and Céline to name them. So by what logic and legitimacy do I name them in offering this critical appreciation of the flm? Like much other knowledge that informs and enriches our

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understanding of a work of art, including the kind of allusions to other works which will play a major role in the argument to come, artists may assume the accessibility of such knowledge without aggressively or even explicitly activating it through devices like titles or dialogue. On a frst viewing, the majority of viewers will have little or no detailed knowledge of Vienna – just as most viewers will have little or no detailed knowledge of the settings of most of the movies they watch; often all they will possess are a few clichés and fragments of stereotypical imagery. An interest in a work will naturally pique our curiosity about the places it represents, and all the more so in the case of flmmaking as committed to the specifcity of place and the practice of location shooting as Linklater’s. Thus, in naming and otherwise contextualising some of the Viennese locations that appear in the flm, I simply follow the impetus the flm will generate in any engaged viewer. What of the idea of ordinary or ‘de-dramatised’ action? This second neo-realist goal fares a little better. Much of Before Sunrise follows Céline and Jesse as they walk and talk about nothing much in particular. But what counts as ‘ordinary’ – dramatically insignifcant – action is, to some extent, a relative matter. As I’ve already hinted in the opening paragraph, in one sense, nothing happens in the listening booth beyond the act of listening to the song. But relative to the norms of this flm, the scene is stuffed full of action: Jesse and Céline knowingly put themselves into an intimate space, one in which the delicate and highly personal matter of musical taste is at stake – will they both like the music? Will their individual responses to the music bring them together or push them apart? Everything points to the former, of course, and our expectations are not disappointed. The lyrics we hear play a crucial role, spelling out the desires of the incipient lovers:‘Have I never laid down by your side/ Baby, let’s forget about this pride…Come here, come here…’The action seems to suggest that the characters are thinking: ‘We both love music, and we both love this type of music, and I’m attracted to you and you know that and I know that you know that and you’re attracted to me and I know that and you know that I know that.’ We sense they are on the brink of kissing, but the timing isn’t quite there, the moment hasn’t quite arrived. The action of the scene – the interplay of expressions and glances fnely balanced between awkwardness and amusement – is, however, pregnant with dramatic signifcance. In so far as the sequence moves the romance on to a new stage of

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self-consciousness, it’s tempting to describe it as a plot point. And the flm does have at least one plot point – when Jesse, having said goodbye to Céline as the train pulls into Vienna, returns and pitches to her the idea that they spend the day together. Perhaps the frst kiss between the two of them constitutes another plot point. But otherwise, the idea of a plot point, with its implication of a pointed shift in the direction of the narrative, only fts loosely with the incremental nature of narrative progress in the flm.

Allusive temporality Neo-realism is not the only historical precursor evoked by Jesse’s cable access dream project. Notably, Jesse talks about getting ‘three hundred and sixty-fve people from cities all over the world to do these twentyfour hour documents of real time, capturing life as it’s lived.’ The ‘city symphony’ flm, a type of poetic non-fction flmmaking that emerged in the 1920s, aimed at something similar. The single most famous example, after which the genre came to be known, is Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a City (1927); other examples include Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhatta (1921, New York), Alberto Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures (1926, Paris), and Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929, a composite of various Soviet cities, including Kharkov, Kiev, Moscow, and Odessa), all of which are structured by the cycle of a single day (from dawn to dusk, if not always a complete 24-hour cycle).We should also note a signifcant literary inspiration here: Ulysses (1922), James Joyce’s landmark novel which follows the movements of Leopold Bloom through Dublin on 16 June 1904 – long celebrated as ‘Bloomsday’ – the same day of the year, 90 years later, that Céline and Jesse arrive in Vienna.5 Ruttmann’s Berlin is divided into fve ‘acts,’ marked by intertitles. The opening sequence of Before Sunrise directly alludes to the opening act of the flm, in which we see a train approaching Berlin, speeding through the surrounding countryside before arriving at the Anhalter Bahnhof station.While the pace of Ruttmann’s opening railroad montage is much brisker than Linklater’s, specifc shots in Before echo those in Berlin. A shot of fast receding track taken from the back of the train in Sunrise evokes a shot of rapidly unfolding track seen from the front of the train in Berlin; another shot from Sunrise, of the view from the train as it crosses over

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a river bridge, the light fickering stroboscopically through the metal framework of the structure, recalls a similar shot in Ruttmann’s flm.6 The framework of the city symphony underpins all three flms in Linklater’s trilogy, in so far as, in each case, the action unfolds across roughly a day in a single location: Vienna, Paris in Before Sunset, and Kardamyli (a town on the Peloponnesian coast of Greece) in Before Midnight. (In two cases – Sunrise and Midnight – we follow the characters as they journey into the location at the start of the flm.) And indeed, Linklater’s breakthrough feature flm Slacker (1990) exhibits another variation on the city symphony form, taking us on a tour of Linklater’s adopted hometown of Austin. The flm implements the tour via an unusual concatenated character structure, whereby each scene focuses on a new character or group of characters, those characters having been picked up at the tail end of the preceding scene; in this fashion we encounter 98 characters in all. The attention to a large ‘cast’ of human fgures places Slacker even closer to the classic city symphonies than the Before trilogy, since these flms typically place an emphasis on social groups and types rather than individuals; even where human fgures are individuated in the city symphonies, as they frequently are, no fgure emerges as anything like a protagonist, recurring and re-identifable across sequences. Before Sunrise does, however, retain the city symphony’s attention to a large cross-section of the population of the metropolis at one remove, through the diverse array of characters that Jesse and Céline encounter during their journey through Vienna. The continuity with Slacker is visible: it is just that the urban tour is now conducted, for almost the entire duration of the flm, by a pair of protagonist guides. Still other allusions, cinematic and otherwise, feature in Before Sunrise. Collectively, these allusions bring the history of flm, as well as past episodes and eras of human social life, into our experience of the flm. As the sun sets, Céline and Jesse visit the Wiener Riesenrad – the giant Ferris wheel featuring in two studio era classics, Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) and The Third Man (1949), as well as the spy thriller Scorpio (1973) and Bond movie The Living Daylights (1987). It is in this scene that the frst kiss between Céline and Jesse – the kiss that seems imminent but does not arrive in the listening booth scene – takes place. The romantic character of the action here echoes the action connected with the wheel in Letter and Living, but the wheel’s status as a movie icon seems more signifcant than the content of any particular scene in these flms.7

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Elsewhere in Before Sunrise, the flm’s references to neo-realism deepen and, in some ways, darken. After Céline and Jesse part at the train station, the flm’s penultimate sequence revisits a number of the spaces in the city that we have seen the couple visit earlier in the flm, now shown in the early morning sunlight: a riverboat restaurant on the Danube, streets and alleys through which they wander, and the park where they spend the night (and where, as we surmise in Before Sunrise but only confrm in Before Sunset, they make love for the frst time). These spaces still reverberate with the presence of Céline and Jesse; in the shot of the park, we can see the wine bottle and glasses with which they celebrated the consummation of their relationship (and which they blagged from a generous restaurateur). But without their literal presence, or indeed the presence of any other human fgures – it is early morning and the streets are empty – the city and its history are brought to the fore.8 We are given space to contemplate not just the story of the courtship we’ve just witnessed, but the long history of Vienna and the many generations who have populated its passages and squares and waterways.9 Before Sunset varies the gesture by beginning with a prospective montage sequence, displaying the Parisian spaces – this time bustling with daytime activity – through which Céline and Jesse will saunter later in the flm. In these sequences, the connection with the tradition of the city symphony is at its most overt. The valedictory dawn sequence in Before Sunrise is adumbrated by the couple’s encounter, deep into the evening before, with a poster for a Georges Seurat exhibition. Céline in particular is mesmerised by the reproductions of Seurat’s works on the posters.‘I love the way the people seem to be dissolving into the background,’ she says of Seurat’s Two Clowns (1886–1887). ‘Look at this one,’ she says, shifting her attention to La nourrice (1882–1883).‘It’s like the environments, you know, are stronger than the people. His human fgures are always so transitory…it’s funny, transitory?’ ‘Transitory,’ Jesse confrms.The hesitation in Céline’s speech, here and throughout the flm, is important, and of a piece with the evanescent human agents Céline sees in Seurat’s paintings. The contemplative and somewhat melancholy tone of these two sequences – of the Seurat exhibition posters and of Vienna’s empty spaces at dawn – contrasts with the bleaker tone of the conclusion of Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse (1962), another flm in the neo-realist tradition that Before Sunrise inevitably brings to mind. Antonioni’s flm

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concerns an affair between a young woman,Vittoria (Monica Vitti), who works as a literary translator, and Piero (Alain Delon), a stockbroker. After breaking off another relationship at the beginning of the flm, Vittoria gradually slides into a relationship with Piero. But the relationship, like the flm, is permeated by a diffuse mood of disconnection and doubt, partly arising from a clear lack of compatibility between Vittoria and Piero. In the flm’s penultimate scene, however, the couple seem at ease with each other, and when they part, they agree to meet that evening in ‘the usual place.’ The flm’s concluding scene shows this place with neither of them turning up for the rendezvous.This mutual failure to follow through, which might have been presented as the inevitable destination of a romantic mismatch between the arrogant and materialistic Piero and the empathic, thoughtful Vittoria, takes on more ominous overtones by virtue of the magnifcently brooding atmosphere conjured by the flm’s quasi-abstract cinematography and Giovanni Fusco’s dissonant score. The emotional and metaphysical void evoked by the sequence – Sartre’s worm in the heart of being10 – is a far cry from the still silence of Vienna in the penultimate sequence in Before Sunrise, suffused as it is with the romantic story we’ve just witnessed, and the promise that it might survive and even fourish. It’s true that in Before Sunset, we discover that Céline and Jesse botch their promised reunion – for different reasons, neither of them show up. We might imagine track 9 at the Wien Hauptbahnhof at 6pm on 16 December 1994, our lovers conspicuously absent. But we only discover this after they have, belatedly, encountered one another again, in the Parisian bookstore where Céline fnds Jesse reading from his latest book. The anguish of the empty platform and the lost years – the kind of absence and loss that L’eclisse plays up – is suppressed by the structure of the frst two flms in Linklater’s trilogy. The mood of the trilogy blackens, however, with its third instalment, Before Midnight; one review remarked that, compared with the frst two flms, ‘the third can feel like a sudden drop in cabin pressure’ (Tobias, 2013). Jesse and Céline are now nine years into a full-blown relationship, following their long-delayed second encounter in Paris – itself nine years after the frst in Vienna. Parenthood and professional demands, pulling them in different directions, have taken their toll. Céline is an environmental advocate; Jesse a successful author; they have twin daughters, and at the beginning of the flm, Jesse’s son Hank – from his

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frst marriage – is visiting with them. As they stroll around Kardamyli, things get fractious. They have turned into a version of the quarrelling middle-aged couple that Céline and Jesse encounter on the train at the beginning of Before Sunrise. This spat between husband and wife heats up quickly, the couple raising their voices, the woman slapping, snatching, and tossing aside the man’s newspaper, storming off into another carriage, the man trailing behind her. Notably, the flm eschews subtitles for this exchange, so what most viewers will pick up from the argument is not a specifc disagreement, but an impression of ingrained contempt and chronic cantankerousness in the relationship. Ironically, it is the sight and especially the grating sound of this embittered couple that bring Céline and Jesse together – she is seated across the carriage from them, but moves as the temperature of the dispute rises. ‘Have you ever heard that, as couples get older, they lose their ability to hear each other?’ asks Céline – virtually the frst thing she says to Jesse. Yet another neo-realist allusion hovers in the background behind Céline and Jesse’s growing ill-temper in Before Midnight – this time to Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia (1954), in which the marriage between the well-heeled couple played by George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman gradually frays. In a memorable scene, the couple visit the ruins of Pompeii, encountering the volcanically mummifed bodies of those buried by molten lava and ash from the erupting Mt Vesuvius, perpetually frozen into postures of agony. ‘[H]aunted by the ghosts of vanished civilisations,’ as A. O. Scott puts it (Scott, 2013), through these bodies, Sanders and Bergman are confronted not just with archaeological time – the generations of humans extending back to antiquity – but geological time, the extent of which dwarfs the entire history of human civilisation. Linklater’s distinctive achievement in the Before trilogy lies in creating a work at once epic and intimate, the feeting but emotionally charged moments constituting the texture of Jesse and Céline’s story – the visit to the record store, listening to Nina Simone in Céline’s apartment, fuming in the hotel room in Kardamyli – set against the 18-year span over which the story unfolds and the flms were shot, itself embedding the traces of human existence across generations and over millennia. As Jesse and Céline recognise in their dialogue, we humans may create interpersonal signifcance for ourselves – in relationships, communities, societies, and civilisations – but it inevitably decays.Tomorrow or today, time will have its way.

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Conclusion: flm as philosophy? There can be little doubt, then, that in the Before trilogy – and across his wider oeuvre – Richard Linklater has created a rich and thoughtprovoking body of work. The discussion above establishes that the flms sustain discussion in the light of many philosophical questions and themes. Why not grant then that, notwithstanding its status as a work of narrative flmmaking, and one occupying a familiar niche within the contemporary entertainment industry – the indie flm sector – that the trilogy counts as a kind of philosophical work? In other places, I’ve argued that we should be cautious in taking this step and sceptical of the apparent ease with which we can assimilate certain kinds of flmmaking (and more broadly art) to philosophy (Smith, 2006, 2016, 2019). The ease is indicative of the facile nature of the assimilation: if we weaken the conditions suffciently for what it takes for something to be deemed an instance of philosophy, that we can make virtually anything ft in the category. But rather than rehearse those arguments again here, I want instead to pursue the positive argument that, in the case of Linklater, there are good grounds for construing his work as ‘philosophical’ in a reasonably robust sense. Many works of art possess ‘cognitive value’ – they furnish us, that is, with knowledge of the world. In engaging with narrative flms, for example, we might gain insights into human psychology and learn about particular individuals and places, social types, institutions, and historical episodes. We may also sharpen some of our cognitive capacities, becoming more sensitive to the subtleties of human motivation and behaviour, exercising and expanding our capacity for empathy and our emotional attunement to diverse situations. Our understanding of the appropriate ft between particular predicaments, situations, and emotions may deepen in the light of our experience of certain artworks. Moreover, the act of understanding artworks themselves both depends on and cultivates various propriety kinds of knowledge (of character types, genres, conventions, and so forth). In general, our cognitive stock is enlarged, and the cognitive toolbox with which we manage and exploit our cognitive stock is augmented, by our engagement with art. All this is true, but what would motivate and justify describing such forms of cognitive value as specifcally ‘philosophical’?

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At least two features of Linklater’s flms might provide a positive answer to this question. The frst is the sheer abundance of talk. In this respect, the listening booth sequence is somewhat atypical – although even here our visual perception of Jesse and Céline is infected by the words of the song. But why does all the talk matter, for the purposes of the issue at stake? It is not just the amount of talk in the flms, but the volume of specifcally philosophical dialogue that is striking and signifcant. To be sure, the philosophical content is casually expressed and surfaces in the fow of conversation (and of action more generally) which is by no means dominated by philosophical refection. Céline and Jesse goof around, tell jokes, gossip, exchange personal anecdotes, walk, sightsee, talk to sundry locals, doze, kiss, and make love. They’re not talking, and especially not talking philosophically, all the time. And yet, a thread of vernacular philosophising is present here and is a vital part of the fabric of Linklater’s flmmaking. This is partly a question of the subject matter of the dialogue. Jesse and Céline routinely stray onto the territory of traditional philosophical topics and puzzles, especially – as we’ve seen – those bearing on the nature of time and personal identity. But it’s not just a matter of the content of the talk; another ingredient is necessary. That second ingredient is a certain self-consciousness. It’s not just that Jesse and Céline talk about time and personal identity, nor that the action more broadly raises questions about these phenomena. Rather, it’s the fact that they ruminate over these matters with a measure of detachment and refexivity – they are conscious of the fact that they are refecting on matters of traditional philosophical concern, like time and identity, rather than simply being focussed on those matters in ordinary, frst-order fashion. And this feature of the way the characters talk generalises to the characters and to the flms themselves. Many of Linklater’s protagonists – and certainly the ones under consideration here – exhibit a tendency to subject things which we typically take for granted to refective scrutiny. Consider the very frst lines uttered by the character played by Linklater himself in the opening scene in Slacker: Man, I just had the weirdest dream back on the bus there…I mean, how many dreams do you have where you read in a dream? Wait. Man, there was this book I just read on the bus - You know, it was

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my dream, so I guess I wrote it or something. But, uh, man, it was bizarre. It was like, uh…the premise for this whole book…was that every thought you have creates its own reality, you know? It’s like every choice or decision you make…the thing you choose not to do…fractions off and becomes its own reality, you know…and just goes on from there forever. I mean, it’s like…uh, you know, in the Wizard of Oz…when Dorothy meets the Scarecrow and they do that little dance at that crossroads…and they think about going all those directions…then they end up going in that one direction… Another example would be like back there at the bus station. As I got off the bus, the thought crossed my mind…you know, just for a second, about not taking a cab at all. But, you know, like maybe walking, or bummin’ a ride or something like that…Say I have a dream some night…that I’m with some strange woman I’ve never met…or I’m living at some place I’ve never seen before. See, that’s just a momentary glimpse into this other reality…that was all created back there at the bus station. You know, shoot. And then, you know…I could have a dream from that reality into this one… that, like, this is my dream from that reality. Of course, that’s kind of like that dream I just had on the bus, you know.The whole cycle type of thing. Man, shit. I should’ve stayed at the bus station. Linklater delivers this opening monologue sitting in the back of a cab, in one extended take of just over three minutes, from the same camera position, with an inexpressive and apparently unmoved cab driver visible in the foreground throughout. In cinematographic terms, the scene is very similar to the listening booth scene from Before Sunrise with which we began: the long take from a single, fxed, unostentatious camera position quickly became a part of Linklater’s stylistic repertoire. There is also a clear kinship between Slacker and the Before trilogy in terms of their treatment of speech. Although the Before flms are focussed on the dialogue between Céline and Jesse, with occasional interactions with other characters – rather than on character monologues – in other respects this opening slice of speech from Slacker is a quite representative sample of Linklaterese: we fnd the same philosophical speculation (has Linklater been reading David Lewis’ On the Plurality of Worlds? – published in 1986, just as Linklater’s intellectual and cinematic interests were crystallising) mixed in with social observation (the Austin alternative cultural scene)

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and quirky characterisation – these elements combining to produce a gentle but punchy humour. Like many of Linklater’s central characters, Jesse and Céline are living out the examined life; the question underlying much of their dialogue is simply: how to live well? If one were to try to reduce philosophy to a single impulse, that would be it: don’t just accept what is habitually done or said – think about it sceptically.Applied to Linklater’s flms, this, then, is the second feature of them that might justify the ‘philosophical’ appellation. The flms not only embed within them many characters exhibiting philosophical self-consciousness of the kind just described, but also manifest a strong awareness of the norms and conventions through which flmmaking (and art more generally) operates – an awareness expressed in part through the weave of allusions explored above.

Notes 1 W. H. Auden, ‘As I Walked Out One Evening,’ as rendered by Dylan Thomas, remembered by Jesse Wallace, and represented by Richard Linklater. Jesse recites the frst line of the fourth verse, ‘The years shall run like rabbits,’ the ffth verse, and fnally the seventh verse: ‘In headaches and in worry/Vaguely life leaks away,/And Time will have his fancy/To-morrow or to-day.’ We discover Jesse’s surname at the beginning of Before Sunset, at the launch of his new book at the Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare and Company. Céline’s surname is never revealed in any of the flms comprising the Before trilogy. 2 The closing seconds of Before Sunset strongly suggest that Jesse will miss his fight and his affair with Céline will resume (Céline [imitating Nina Simone]: ‘Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.’ Jesse [breaking gradually into an everwider smile]: ‘I know.’). So, is the question at the end of this flm really an open one? Well, in 1996, Linklater wrote to flm scholar Robin Wood to say, of Céline and Jesse’s agreement to meet in Vienna six months after their summer romance, that ‘neither he nor the two actors ever doubted that the date would be kept’ (Wood, 1998: 324). Evidently Linklater and his collaborators changed their minds when it came to scripting Before Sunset. Setting aside the theoretical question of how much authority we should give to an author’s assertions, what we discover at the outset of Sunset about the failed rendezvous in Vienna should lead us to take any similar commitment surfacing at the conclusion of the flm with a pinch of salt. (And this holds even though, of course, it turns out that on this occasion, unlike the frst one, Céline and Jesse see through their amorous intentions – this fctional truth only being revealed unequivocally to us nine years later, in Before Midnight.). Moreover, Linklater works in a refexive twist on this question in Before Sunset: in the bookstore where Jesse reads from his new

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novel The Time, inspired by his experience with Céline in Vienna, three journalists speculate over whether the couple in the book will meet again: one is sure they will, another convinced they won’t, and a third hopeful but doubtful. Here, Linklater seems to recognise through the work itself that the question at the end of the frst flm – and by implication any parallel question at the conclusion of the subsequent flms – is a genuinely open question. For further detail, see the Wikipedia entry on As Slow as Possible. My thanks to Rainer Reisenzein for drawing the example to my attention. The fade comes 2 minutes into the 2 minutes and 48 second duration of the recording. Joyce’s novel thus precedes all of the city symphonies by several years, with the exception of Manhatta, and in fact, parts of Ulysses were published between 1918 and 1920 in The Little Review.Whether Joyce’s novel acted as a model or inspiration for one or more of the city symphonies, and an exploration of the deeper roots of the ‘day in the life of x’ form, is a topic for another time and place. Wood (1998: 325) notes that the opening sequence also alludes to Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1689) by using extracts from the opera as score. Along with the echoes of Max Ophuls’ Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) conveyed by the Viennese setting (to which I return in the main text, below), Wood argues that these allusions invoke past conceptions of ‘romantic love as variously doomed and tragic’ (326). At the time of writing, the wheel’s latest moving image appearance is in the BBC television series Vienna Blood (2019). The relationship between spaces and the effects of human inhabitation of and presence within them is an intriguing feature of Double Play, which juxtaposes sequences from flms by Benning (in the majority of which humans are absent or only feetingly present) with those from Linklater’s flms (in which human presence, and the impact of humans, are ubiquitous). The early morning city sequence in Before Sunrise is delicately poised between the two emphases. Linklater’s kinship with neo-realism is again evident here. In his video essay What Is Neo-realism? (2013), Kogonada notes De Sica’s tendency to allow shots to linger on spaces and incidental characters for some seconds after the principal character(s) have left the frame. De Sica…keeps rolling. He lingers on the space that the lead character has just left, to stay on others who are still there, or are about to enter the frame…What [David O.] Selznick sees as waste and excess becomes the essence of a different kind of cinema and sensibility, in which shots linger and veer off to include others, in which in-between moments seem to be essential, in which time and place seem more critical than plot or story. To ask ‘what is neo-realism?’ is to ask: ‘what is cinema?’ The dawn montage in Before Sunset accentuates this tendency and makes it (in Russian Formalist terms) the ‘constructive principle’ or dominant. See also Kogonada’s video essay on Linklater (2014), framed by the flmmaker with the following statement:

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If cinema is the art of time, Linklater is one of its most thoughtful and engaged directors. Unlike other flmmakers identifed as auteurs, Linklater’s distinction is not found on the surface of his flms, in a visual style or signature shot, but rather in their DNA, as ongoing conversations with cinema, which is to say, with time itself. 10 See Kovács (2006) for a discussion of L’eclisse in the light of Sartrean ideas: ‘Sartre places Nothingness right into the world, “into the heart of being, like a worm”’ (136). Kovács quotes Sartre (1957: 57).

References Bazin, A. (1971) Umberto D: A Great Work. In his: What Is Cinema? Vol. II. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brand, S. (2018) About Long Now. Long Now Foundation, accessed 22 February 2018. http://longnow.org/about/ Kogonada (2013) What Is Neorealism? Sight & Sound magazine, May 2013. Online at: http://www.bf.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/ comment/video-essay-what-neorealism. Kogonada (2016) Linklater // On Cinema & Time. Sight & Sound magazine, October 2016. Online at: https://www.bf.org.uk/news-opinion/sightsound-magazine/interviews/long-conversation-richard-linklater-cinematime Kovács, A. (2006) Sartre, the Philosophy of Nothingness, and the Modern Melodrama. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64 (1) Special Issue: Thinking through Cinema: Film as Philosophy, pp. 135–145. Lewis, D. (1986) On the Plurality of Worlds. London: Blackwell. Sartre, J.-P. (1957) L’être et le néant. Paris: Gallimard. Scott, A. O. (2013) Nine Years Later, Once More: Review of Before Midnight. New York Times, accessed 24 May 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/ movies/before-midnight-with-julie-delpy-and-ethan-hawke.html Smith, M. (2006) Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64(1), pp. 33–42. Smith, M. (2016) Film, Philosophy, and the Varieties of Artistic Value. In: K. Thomson-Jones (ed.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film. New York: Routledge, pp. 182–202. Smith, M. (2019) The Wartenburg-Smith Film as Philosophy Debate: A Response to Diana Neiva. ASAGE (American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-journal) 11 (1) (Spring-Summer 2019). https://asageorg.wordpress.com/2019/07/27/ the-wartenberg-smith-flm-as-philosophy-debate-murray-smith/ Tobias, S. (2013) NYT Recommendation: Before Midnight. New York Times, accessed 10 June 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/watching/recommendations/ watching-flm-before-midnight Wood, R. (1998) Sexual Politics and Narrative Cinema: Hollywood and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chapter 6

Diane Jeske ‘ROMANTIC OR CYNIC’: ROMANTIC ATTRACTION AS JUSTIFICATION

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O P U L A R C U LT U R E I S D O M I N AT E D B Y depictions of romantic love. Pop music is almost entirely devoted to songs about being attracted to someone, being wildly in love with someone, or being heartbroken at the loss of someone.The romantic comedy, or ‘rom-com,’ is one of the most successful of Hollywood flm genres, but even other genres of flm often include some sort of romantic plot or sub-plot. Taken together, these songs and movies present a view of life that sees romantic love as what gives life its meaning and purpose. Romantic love is worth almost any sacrifce, we are told, because it is what will make us happy, and, without it, our lives will be empty and lonely.This is the case even in flms where it is quite clear that the romantic leads have plenty of friends and meaningful work in their lives. Movies, as opposed to novels, have the shortcoming of having to present the development of attraction and love within a roughly two-hour time frame. Given this, I have to believe that it is more than just my skeptical nature that leaves me unconvinced that any of the relationships depicted on screen will last any longer than the end credits that follow the fnal scene of the flm.This is particularly true given that the interactions between the romantic leads usually involve shallow interactions with no in-depth conversation at all. At frst, it seems that Richard Linklater’s trilogy of flms (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight) bucks the trend of unconvincing screen

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romance by utilizing three flms to show the progress of a romantic relationship. Further, our two protagonists, Jesse and Céline (played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy), spend their screen time talking to each other, either one-on-one or within a larger group of friends. Nonetheless, Linklater’s flms have one important feature in common with popular songs and more conventional Hollywood flm romances: they affrm romantic attraction as providing a very strong justifcatory force deriving from the centrality of romantic relationships to a good or happy life. But there is an odd sort of tension that plays out on screen. As I will show in the following discussion, Linklater’s flms set up a familiar contrast between romantic love/attraction and reason or rationality, with a clear message that when romance is in opposition to rationality, rationality ought to be set aside in favor of romantic love or attraction. Here, however, we have something of a paradox: if rationality ought to be set aside, is that just to say that factors other than romantic attraction are rationally trumped by that attraction? In other words, is what is being suggested really that romantic attraction and the potential for romantic love ground or constitute such strong reasons for action that other factors are inevitably sidelined? Is the pull of romantic attraction and/or love to be seen as in opposition to reason? Does romantic attraction and/or love have signifcant justifcatory force? Answering these questions, I believe, is extremely important, given the ways in which popular culture overwhelmingly endorses affrmation of the signifcance of romance, thereby enculturating us into a worldview dominated by its pursuit. Linklater’s flms offer an excellent opportunity to examine how this message is promulgated, given that they purport to be offering an alternative to the standard Hollywood exploration of romance. However, while interesting questions are suggested at various points throughout the trilogy, ultimately its message, although nuanced, remains conventional. In the frst section, I will clarify various questions that are in the neighborhood of the one that I will be addressing. I will also make some important distinctions and indicate where I am intentionally remaining somewhat vague. In the second section, I will show how Linklater’s flms provide both an answer to the question about romantic attraction and justifcation and also manage to throw that connection into doubt. In the third section, I will evaluate the affrmative answer that the flm gives.

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I should be clear that I am not engaged in an evaluation of Linklater’s trilogy of flms as an aesthetic achievement, but in the way in which those flms, more or less overtly, endorse and attempt to support a controversial philosophical thesis. The view that Linklater’s flms fail to justify their endorsement of this thesis need not detract from enjoyment and appreciation of those flms, just as the unintelligibility of time travel need not detract from enjoyment and appreciation of flms with timetravel plots. In fact, the mere fact a flm offers us food for philosophical thought is itself an achievement.

Love, romance, and justifcation In Linklater’s trilogy, Jesse and Céline spend an evening and night together in Vienna (Before Sunrise – from hereon, Sunrise) and a few hours together in Paris nine years later (Before Sunset – from hereon, Sunset). At the end of Sunset, Jesse has effectively decided to abandon his life in New York and to stay in Paris to be with Céline. Perhaps, the frst question that comes to mind is, do Jesse and Céline, at the end of Sunset, love each other? This is a very diffcult question, the answer to which requires an analysis of the concept of love. Importantly for the case of Jesse and Céline, we need to know to what extent knowledge of the other person is a necessary condition or a constituent part of loving another. If, for example, Jesse moves to Paris and, after a month or so of life with Céline, he realizes that he drew faulty inferences about her character and personality from his relatively brief prior interactions with her, is it correct to say that he loved her at the time at which he frst moved to Paris (even if, perhaps, he ceases to do so after he gets to know her better)? Or did he love some idealization rather than the real Céline? (see Voice, 2011: 95) If the latter, we might say that Jesse was infatuated with Céline, where infatuation is, according to Joseph Kupfer (1993: 112), some combination of attraction and preoccupation involving a radically incomplete understanding of the object of the infatuation. David Annis (1988: 3) also claims that “[i]nterpersonal romantic love involves a somewhat strong epistemic component. For X to love Y, X must know Y fairly well; otherwise the attraction is mere infatuation or something else, but not love.” We might ask whether it is possible to know someone “fairly well” after roughly the day or so of interaction

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that Jesse and Céline had with one another. This depends on what we need to know about another person to be said to know her “fairly well:” does this involve knowing those properties that the other “takes to be central to his self-conception” (Delaney, 1996: 343), or does it also involve experiential knowledge, for example, knowledge of what it is like to be consoled by or to endure a stressful situation with that person? Perhaps, it involves being able to assess a person’s self-conception relative to one’s own assessment of the person. Different theories regarding how much and what sort of knowledge is requisite for love will yield different answers to the question as to whether Jesse and Céline love one another at the end of the second flm. Whatever we say about the role of knowledge of the other in love, I think that love is best understood as a complex state of affairs, not as a simple feeling. To say that Jesse loved Céline is to say of Jesse that he had various attitudes directed at Céline, that he had various dispositions to act, to feel, to believe with respect to Céline, and various beliefs and desires regarding Céline. But there is no one determinate set of attitudes, dispositions, desires, and beliefs such that every instance of love involves instances of all of the elements of that set. It does seem that to truly say of Jesse that he loved Céline, it must be the case that he had some desire for her well-being and some disposition to promote that well-being and to feel glad when she fourishes and sad when she does not, but the strength and scope of such desires and dispositions will vary in different cases of love. And that cannot be all that there is to love since many of us desire and are disposed to promote, to some extent, the well-being of any sentient being. Further, the extent to which a person, for example, admires or respects1 the object of her love is quite variable and, I would argue, it is possible for love to exist without admiration or respect (consider, for example, a parent’s love of her new-born infant). Similarly, the scope and strength of a person’s desire to be with the object of her love can vary wildly from one case to another: for some couples, for example, living together strengthens their love while, for others, it erodes it. It seems clear that for love to exist, the lover must care about the beloved, and, as Aristotle famously claimed in his discussion of friendship, it seems that it requires that the lover care about the beloved for the beloved’s own sake. While philosophers of friendship and love have universally accepted Aristotle’s claim, it is surprisingly diffcult to spell out exactly what it is to care about a person for her own sake.2

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But it would seem to at least involve having an intrinsic as opposed to merely instrumental desire for the other’s happiness. So, at the end of Sunset, whether Jesse and Céline love one another seems to depend on their attitudes to the other’s well-being: do they desire it intrinsically, or, rather, only in so far as, in projecting a happy life with the other, they see it as instrumental to their own happiness? I will suggest in the next section that there is a serious worry that each is focused on his or her own romantic fulfllment and happiness and so might be viewing the other only or at least primarily as a means to that. However we answer the question whether Jesse and Céline love one another, we might think that we have not settled the question as to whether Jesse and Céline were “in love” with each other. To say of two people that they are in love with one another is to say either something more than or something rather less than that they love one another. On the one hand, to say that Jesse and Céline were in love with one another implies that they loved each other but did so in some distinctively ‘romantic’ way: perhaps, romantic love must involve or be accompanied by sexual desire (Solomon, 1988: 14), a view of the other as a suitable person to spend one’s life with (Ben-Ze’ev, 1997: 11), or a desire to in some way merge with the other to form a joint identity.3 On the other hand, to say that two people are in love can mean that they are in some romantic stage prior to actually loving each other. Kupfer (1993: 118) claims that, unlike love which takes time, people can fall in love quickly and easily. It does seem that when being in love is an early stage in the process of coming to love someone, there is usually limited knowledge, some degree of idealization, and often some fantasizing or projecting a future life together. While this stage can have the beneft of seeing the other in a positive light and thus opening one to appreciating and eventually genuinely, fully loving the other, it can also have the downside of leading to disappointment if reality does not live up to one’s early rosy expectations. Falling in love is usually exciting, more so, for most people, than the beginning stages leading to full-fedged friendship. It is this heightened excitement and expectancy that can render reality in romantic relationships so much more disappointing than it usually is in ‘mere’ friendships. With respect to both loving another person and being in love with another, we can ask whether such a state requires or is susceptible to justifcation. Harry Frankfurt (2004) has famously defended the so-called

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‘no-reasons’ view, according to which love is not subject to justifcation, because the objects of our love provide the foundation for our reasons. Others have claimed that love is susceptible to justifcation, and that such justifcation can be found either in the lover’s relationship to the beloved or in the properties of the beloved.4 Although this debate is important and interesting, it is not my focus. Rather, my concern is the extent to which romantic attraction – that which occurs in that stage of falling in love that precedes full-blown love – can itself provide justifcation for various sorts of actions, whether or not it itself is susceptible to justifcation. In other words, what is the justifcatory status of being in love with someone, where we are understanding being in love as something other than and as not presupposing genuine full-blown love? This is a very important question, both philosophically and practically, given the prevailing cultural attitudes toward romantic attraction. There is an interesting, related question: if love (full-blown love) is justifcatory, does romantic attraction somehow have a different justifcatory status than do other forms of love? Or is it merely the strength of the love, not the ‘type,’ that determines its justifcatory status? In answering my question about the justifcatory status of being in love, I will allude to answers to these other questions as well. Before turning to the movies in detail, it is important to emphasize that I am concerned with justifcation for an agent’s actions and not with her motivations. It seems quite obvious that people who are in love have various sorts of motivations, often of a very strong sort, and that pointing to someone’s being in love is relevant to explaining her actions. The philosophical as opposed to the psychological question, however, is my concern: regardless of how people in love do in fact act, how ought they to act?

The flms Before Sunrise Jesse and Céline meet on a train and decide to get off and spend the night together wandering around Vienna. There is an obvious physical attraction between these two young people in their early twenties, and the actors do a nice job of conveying the mode of interaction that often characterizes frst dates: a lot of somewhat awkward laughs, covert,

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assessing glances, ‘accidental’ physical contact leading up to kissing and then sex, and attempts to charm the other with their most interesting stories (e.g., Jesse relates how he ‘saw’ the ghost of his grandmother, she relates a story of an early crush on a swimmer, etc.) and ‘deep’ thoughts (preoccupation with death, worries about the numbers of souls in existence). But, of course, this frst date differs from other frst dates in being approached as a one-off from its very beginning, given that he has a fight to catch back to the United States while she will get back on the train to her home in Paris. The dialogue sets up some philosophical questions that are left hanging, but also provides background for assessing the choices of our protagonists. Fairly early in the flm, Céline tells Jesse that her grandmother recently confessed that all the time that she was married she was in love with another man she had known before marriage. Jesse replies that it was better that the grandmother only fantasized about the man because, he claims, if she had truly known the man, she would have been disappointed. Jesse insists that we all have romantic projections that cause us to idealize people, such that we would have been let down by further interactions with those people.Then, a bit later, Céline asks Jesse what about her would drive him ‘mad’ if they were around each other a lot, and Jesse claims that Céline would come to hate his mannerisms if they spent a lot of time together. These bits of dialogue bring us back to the question of the role of knowledge in love. Linda Ronstadt was likely correct in claiming that “[i]t’s so easy to fall in love,” because that frst stage occurs when everything about the other is new and intriguing, when the other is trying to present the best and most interesting parts of herself (as Jesse and Céline are clearly trying to do), when interactions occur outside of the routine mundanity of everyday life. Céline claims that their situation in Vienna feels ‘otherworldly,’ and, in an important sense it is: it is an interlude in the routine of their ordinary lives. Jesse actually compares being with Céline to losing himself through the use of drugs or alcohol. But if part of being in love involves projecting forward to a life together, then the danger is apparent: what you see is highly unlikely to be what you get. Céline herself wonders, in Sunset, whether she and Jessie only work together when they are walking and talking in a beautiful city in nice weather. And there are certainly indications of very different attitudes to life on the part of Jesse and Céline: they have very different reactions to both

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the palm reader and the street poet. In the case of the palm reader, Jesse scoffs while Céline is more open to the possibility that the palm reader is genuine. In the case of the street poet (he offers to compose a poem around a word they give him, and then they can decide how much money the poem is worth), Jesse insists that the man has a ready-made poem into which he simply inserts the word he is given, while Céline is simply moved by the poem. Interestingly, just before they met the street poet, they were talking about how mannerisms can come to grate after time and also how Céline was annoyed at Jesse’s reaction to the palm reader – she interprets his skepticism as petulance at attention being diverted from him. And while Céline claims that life is about seeking to be loved, Jesse claims that he would rather excel at something than be in a caring relationship. Céline twice suggests that she and Jesse should approach their situation as rational adults. But the atmosphere of the flm is clearly suggesting to the viewer that doing so would somehow be a mistake: we are clearly meant to be rooting for Jesse and Céline to have something more than just the one night together. Jesse says that if he had to choose between never seeing Céline again or marrying her, he would marry her. He admits that may be ‘romantic bullshit,’ but then points out that people have gotten married with less justifcation.The suggestion here is that ‘romantic bullshit’ is not really bullshit at all, but something worth weighing quite heavily in one’s deliberations about how to act – or, perhaps, we are meant to conclude that it is rational deliberation itself that is the ‘bullshit.’ So, it seems that the flm is littered with warnings about taking falling in love too seriously, given its quickness and ‘otherworldly’ context, while also suggesting that such warnings should be set aside in light of romantic not-really-bullshit-after-all. And so, we are left to hope that Jesse and Céline meet up again in six months as they plan to do at the end of the flm. Before Sunset But they do not meet again in six months.As we learn later in Sunset, while Jesse returned to Vienna as they had agreed, Céline did not because she had to go to her grandmother’s funeral. Now, nine years later, Jesse has written a best-selling novel based on their night in Vienna, and Céline

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shows up at a reading that he is doing at a bookshop in Paris. Once again, they spend time (a couple of hours?) in a café and wandering around Paris. There is an important exchange between Jesse and a stranger at his reading.The stranger asks whether the protagonists in the novel actually get together six months later, and Jesse responds that what the reader thinks about that reveals whether he is a romantic or a cynic. Jesse is suggesting that either one thinks that the protagonists get together again (romantic) or one has a generally negative view of human motivations (cynic). But then, the ‘rational adult’ of the frst flm is being equated with the cynic, where cynicism is by its very nature a pessimistic outlook on human nature. This dichotomy very clearly aligns hopefulness with the romantic. Jesse tells Céline that he has fantasized that they did actually meet up after six months, engaged in a frenzy of sex, but then didn’t really get along. We saw this worry about greater exposure leading to disillusionment expressed more than once in Sunrise, but now that worry is being more frmly aligned with the negative cynical view: it is the view Jesse, who knows that they did not get together, fnds himself taking. On the other hand, we see Jesse getting lost in romantic projection: he tells Céline that he thought of her as he drove to his wedding (Jesse has gotten married and has a four-year-old son) and that both of their lives would have been so much better if she had met him as agreed. Céline has become the alternative and the antidote to his unhappy marriage. Céline at frst tries to downplay the signifcance of that night, claiming that she does not recall that they had sex, and suggesting, in response to Jesse’s claim that they would both have been better off if she had shown up in Vienna, that perhaps they are only suited for walking around together in these interludes, again alluding to the worry that falling in love may not be a reliable indication of whether full-blown love is in the offng. But later, Céline falls apart emotionally, admitting to being very unhappy and having invested that one night with Jesse with ‘everything.’ She has had some bad relationships and her one night with Jesse has become her alternative and antidote to those failed romances. Jesse needs to catch his plane, and Linklater has a choice to make: have Jesse and Céline be those ‘rational adults’ who return to their lives or have them be romantics by getting Jesse to miss his plane. Linklater opts for the latter, seemingly suggesting that fnally, after nine years,

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romance has (rightfully?) triumphed over ‘cynicism.’ But now there is nine years of complicated living between our two protagonists, nine years of unhappy relationships that surely make more likely that they are idealizing each other. And Jesse has a son, a son of whom he says that he does not want to miss one moment of his life. However, at the end of the flm, he makes a decision that will inevitably lead to a disruption in his relationship with his son, a decision the apparent proximate cause of which is his being charmed by Céline’s singing. In Before Midnight, we learn that what follows Jesse’s decision to miss his fight is several days of sexual passion shut off from the rest of the world. In Sunset, we once again see the obvious physical attraction between Jesse and Céline. But I agree with Aaron Ben-Ze’ev’s (1997) observation that in sexual desire, imagination plays a more signifcant role than does knowledge of the other, but that in love, it is the other way around. And it is quite clear that Jesse and Céline have come to play important imaginative roles for each other: they are synecdoches for romantic fulfllment and a happy life. Thus, particularly for Jesse who has a son to consider,5 this is a very dangerous situation, a situation where Robert Solomon’s (1998) claim that “[love] itself is the virtue, a virtue so important that rationality itself pales in importance,” if accepted, could have disastrous consequences. But is being in love a virtuous state? This is a complicated question, because, as I said above, love, as a complex state, can vary with respect to its constituents. For example, love can be more or less altruistic. While it seems that all love must involve some desire for the other’s well-being and perhaps a desire to be the one who promotes that well-being, some love has a greater emphasis on desires to be with the other, to bask in the other’s presence, and is thus more intertwined with desires that are at least partly self-interested in nature. It is diffcult not to see Jesse and Céline at the end of Sunset as focused more on the self-interested aspects of love or of being in love: they are pinning their hopes for fnding fulfllment on each other. So, their ‘love’ or ‘being in love,’ even if in some sense virtuous, does not seem to be so to the same extent as, say, the love of a parent for her child where the parent desires the child’s well-being more than she desires her own, or cannot understand what it would be for her to be well-off if her child is not. So, the end of Sunset seems to support the claim that ‘being in love,’ whether it is rational or not, has justifcatory force. It is diffcult to see

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this, however, as much more than saying that for each agent, the pursuit of his or her own happiness has justifcatory force, because each of Jesse and Céline seems to be reaching for his or her own romantic fulfllment rather than acting from some altruistic love for the other. Before Midnight Another nine years along and Jesse and Céline are still together and have twin girls.We see two important things in this flm: (1) the aftermath of Jesse’s divorce and subsequent separation from his son and (2) various underlying tensions and miscommunications that are present in Jesse and Céline’s relationship.The flm takes place in Greece where Jesse and his family have been for six weeks while Jesse is enjoying a writing residency at a famous writer’s house. Jesse’s son Hank has just left for home in the United States and the rest of the family will spend one fnal night in Greece: frst, at a dinner with friends, and then Jesse and Céline at a hotel alone. Jesse repeatedly expresses guilt at being apart from his son. Recall that in Sunset, he said that he didn’t want to miss one minute of his son’s life. But he has missed many, many minutes, only seeing his son in the summers and at holidays – he is not part of his son’s day-to-day life. Céline reacts angrily to Jesse’s expressions of sorrow and guilt, saying that she will not give up her life in Paris to move to the United States. She repeatedly returns to her unwillingness to do so and his unfairness in asking it when, in fact, Jesse has not even suggested it. Early in the flm, she actually says that this is the beginning of their breakup. It is made quite clear that the distance between Jesse and his son is an omnipresent thorn in Jesse and Céline’s relationship, an issue that neither has ever worked through and that they have never adequately discussed together. And any attempt to talk through options leads to angry recriminations. At one point, Jesse even says that he ‘fucked up’ his life because he loved Céline’s singing, a suggestion that his decision to miss his plane at the end of the previous flm was impulsive and groundless in comparison to the fact of his son waiting for him. As Jesse and Céline argue at the hotel, it comes out that each thinks that the other has cheated on at least one occasion in the last nine years.What is interesting is the lack of denial on the part of either of them. In fact, it seems that there is actually unclarity between them as to whether they

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have a sexually exclusive relationship. Some philosophers of romantic love have emphasized the role of exclusivity in strengthening intimacy and in satisfying a desire for union.6 But one does not need to make any such claims for exclusivity to hold that it is at least important for the partners to a romantic, sexual relationship to be agreed on whether their relationship is exclusive or not. Céline expresses a great deal of resentment at Jesse’s alleged infdelity while he seems to take it for granted that her having oral sex with an old friend is to be expected. What really matters is the fact that they seem unaware of the other’s attitudes and expectations on this matter. During the dinner with friends, before their night at the hotel, a young woman suggests that maybe we are wrong to think of love affairs as being meant to last forever. This remark recalls important parts of the discussion in Sunrise: Céline suggests that to be rational adults would be for her and Jesse to accept that what they have is one night together and that that can be enough.The young woman’s comment suggests that it is the ‘forever and ever,’ ‘happily ever after’ attitudes that create diffculties, and it is hard not to wonder if that is the problem with Jesse and Céline: after the sad years between the frst two flms, they had convinced themselves that they abandoned their happily ever after back in Vienna. And now, they are living with the fall-out of their impulsive quest to get it back. The young woman mentions that her grandmother said that people shouldn’t be consumed by romantic love because it is really friendship and work that bring happiness. Here, we have a suggestion that perhaps our protagonists have gone wrong in interpreting their prior unhappiness as due to lack of romantic fulfllment, that they should have turned to other sources of happiness in their lives.They let their lack of success in romance color their entire outlook, and then, of course, grasped at one another as their lifelines back to the happiness of their youth. But the interactions of Jesse and Céline in Midnight do not unequivocally suggest that they have found that happiness. After their blow-up in the hotel room, Céline leaves and Jesse fnds her sitting alone having a drink on the hotel patio. She resists him for a while but then gives in and they return to bantering with one another. Nothing has been resolved, all of the issues that led to the blow-up remain. What is the viewer to think at this point? That romantic love conquers all lesser problems? That Jesse and Céline were right to see

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each other as ‘soulmates’ without whom they could not be happy? (Although it is not entirely clear how happy they are together.) That Jesse was right to sacrifce a fuller relationship with his son? That all of their misunderstandings and lack of communication are irrelevant in light of their love for one another? It does seem that by having Jesse and Céline together at the end of the trilogy, Linklater is choosing ‘romantic’ over ‘cynic.’ But why? And should we affrm the choice that Linklater has made?

Rational and moral complexity vs. happily ever after Linklater’s flms position themselves as an alternative to standard romantic comedies, and they do differ in important ways: the course of three flms allows more time to chart the development of a romantic relationship, the romantic protagonists spend a good portion of the flms actually talking with one another, and the diffculties of their relationship are brought into the open. However, there is one way in which Linklater’s flms follow the Hollywood formula: they give the viewer the expected and desired ‘happily ever after.’We might as well have, over the fnal scene, the words “and they lived happily ever after (with a few diffculties, sure, but still…).” So, the flms constitute an affrmation of the ‘romantic’ as opposed to the ‘cynic.’ But is that ‘happily ever after’ earned by the flmmaker? In order to answer this question, we need to go back and contrast the situation of the protagonists at the end of Sunrise with their situation at the end of Sunset. At the end of Sunrise, when Jesse and Céline agree to meet up in six months, they are young and have no commitments to other persons that would be undermined by the development of a serious romantic attachment between them. They are obviously both physically and intellectually drawn to one another. As I pointed out, there are some indications of differences in their outlooks on life that might end up being problematic for them, but they enjoy each other enough, it seems, for it to be worth the effort of trying to see if they can develop a lasting, committed intimacy. Adrienne Martin (2015: 699) correctly points out that features of another that lead us to want intimacy then lead us to acquire more and hopefully more accurate knowledge of the other, and that such additional knowledge can strengthen love and attachment. However, it also has the potential to weaken or even destroy

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it. Nevertheless, loving, intimate relationships (romantic or otherwise) are valuable parts of a good life, so it seems that Jesse and Céline have strong reason7 to see if they can develop such a relationship and make their commitment to it an important part of their life plans. The situation at the end of Sunset is very different. Jesse and Céline still have reason to aim at the development of loving intimacy, but each has accumulated additional reasons over the intervening nine years. Each is in a committed romantic relationship (even if less than successful), they have careers, and, perhaps most signifcantly, Jesse has a very young son. As in Sunrise, a fully developed intimate relationship remains only a possibility, and they may have reason to discount the probability of its success at this point given the ways in which their unhappiness is coloring their perceptions of each other as romantic ideals. In any case, they have to somehow weigh their reasons to pursue a potentially valuable relationship against their reasons to care for their current partners and, in Jesse’s case, his child. Their responses to their former romantic partners are problematic, to say the least. The man that Céline was involved with in Sunset is never mentioned in Midnight, while Jesse and Céline paint Jesse’s ex-wife as a mean-spirited shrew with an alcohol problem. But we all know that you need to take someone’s view of his or her ex, or of his or her partner’s ex, with a whole lot of grains of salt. For example, one of their big complaints against Jesse’s ex is her unwillingness to let her son live with Jesse and Céline in France – but what loving mother wouldn’t fght against having her son taken to another continent to live with her ex-husband and his current partner? Even if Jesse’s marriage was failing at the end of the second flm, he had obligations to his wife to end the relationship in the most responsible way possible, especially given that they share a child. Instead, he misses a plane home and, I suppose, either fails to inform his wife of his whereabouts or phones her to say that he is staying in Paris with a woman he met once nine years ago. Given that his relationship with Céline has potential, but only potential, to develop into something of great value, it seems that rationality requires Jesse to weigh his son’s need for him very, very heavily. Bernard Williams (1981: 18) has famously said that in many cases one ought to act simply for the well-being of a beloved intimate and that any other intrusive thoughts are “one thought too many.” But this admonition seems to assume that an agent has only one intimate connection, or that

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intimate connections cannot come into confict with one another. Jesse cannot simply act to promote his relationship with Céline, because he has other relationships which generate commitments. For him to be anything other than the rational adult Céline urged both of them to be in Sunrise is a failure of responsibility with serious consequences for at least four people (Jesse, his wife, his son, and Céline). And we see the effects of Jesse’s impulsiveness in Midnight: he is consumed by guilt about his truncated relationship with his son, Céline is harboring fear and resentment about the mere possibility that Jesse will ask her to move back to the United States,8 Jesse’s son is torn in two directions, and Jesse’s wife is bitter and resentful. So, how do we arrive at that happy ending? How is this relationship working and why is the audience rooting for it to keep going? In Midnight, the topic of soulmates is brought up during the dinner conversation, and I think that it is that concept which somehow permeates these flms, coloring the viewer’s perceptions and responses. Our romantic sensibilities involve the idea that our true love is somewhere out there, and, when we fnd him or her, we ought not to let go, because she or he is the person with whom we are meant to be. But this, of course, is a Disney-esque view of romantic relationships, a view that ignores the possibility of other romantic partners with whom one could be happy and also the possibility that one could construct a happy life without a romantic partner.9 There is an important reason why the reconciliation at the end of the flm feels abrupt. None of the issues that plague the relationship between Jesse and Céline has been resolved. And we cannot expect to see them resolved, given just how complex a problem in practical rationality they are facing. One important fact to consider is that even if Jesse and Céline (Jesse in particular) failed to act rationally or even morally at the end of Sunset, their situation in Midnight is yet more complicated. Whether or not they were wrong or irrational to head down their current path, they do now have a loving commitment and serious responsibilities and obligations with respect to their twin daughters. So, trying to overcome their current problems might in fact be rational. But portraying them as reconciling sends out the message that their decision at the end of Sunset was justifed – but rationality in reconciliation now does not imply rationality in the decision-making that led to their current situation. Romantic or cynic? That question posed by Jesse sets the tone and themes of Linklater’s trilogy. What I hope to have shown is just how problematic this dichotomy is. Romantic love and romantic intimacy

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have great value, just as do other forms of love and intimacy. But it is not the only or even the paramount value in human life – one does not need to be a cynic to recognize how romantic aspirations and attraction can complicate our lives and create serious dilemmas for us, and one does not have to be a cynic to hold that romantic attraction does not always outweigh other considerations. Linklater’s flms present us with a great deal of food for philosophical thought, but their abrupt, ‘happy’ conclusion undermines the complexity of the issues raised. Being a rational adult need not be seen as a dull and unfortunate choice: being rational is compatible with recognizing the value of romantic, loving commitments, but may also force us to see that we cannot always achieve all values in one lifetime.

Notes 1 I am using ‘respect’ here in the ordinary colloquial sense, not in the Kantian sense of an attitude directed at rational agency as such. 2 For a discussion of how to understand what it is to care about friends for their own sake, see Jeske (2019: 28–35). 3 For a discussion of what such a joint identity might amount to, see Merino (2004). 4 For the relationships view, see Kolodny (2003), and for the qualities view, see Keller (2000). For a nice overview of the debate between these views and the ‘no-reasons’ view, see Kroeker (2019). 5 Although Céline is also in a committed relationship and she claims to love her romantic partner. 6 See, for example, Soble (1987: 382) and McKeever (2016: 216). 7 There are issues here about how to understand the nature of these reasons. For a discussion of such issues, see Jeske (2008). 8 I think that Céline is also harboring a great deal of resentment about her portrayal in Jesse’s novels. 9 Arneson (2006), has an interesting discussion of the circumstances in which Cathy-and-Heathcliff-esque devotion might, in fact, be rational. Needless to say, Jesse and Céline are in very different circumstances than were Cathy and Heathcliff.

References Annis, D. (1998) Emotion, Love, and Friendship. The International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 4 (2), pp. 1–7. Arneson, R. (2006) Desire Formation and Human Good. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 59, pp. 9–32.

118 DIANE JESKE Ben-Ze’ev, A. (1997) Romantic Love and Sexual Desire. Philosophia, 25 (1), pp. 3–32. Delaney, N. (1996) Romantic Love and Loving Commitment: Articulating a Modern Ideal. American Philosophical Quarterly, 33 (4), pp. 339–356. Frankfurt, H. (2004) The Reasons of Love. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jeske, D. (2008) Rationality and Moral Theory: How Intimacy Generates Reasons. New York: Routledge. Jeske, D. (2019) Friendship and Social Media: A Philosophical Exploration. New York: Routledge. Keller, S. (2000) How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 37 (2), pp. 163–173. Kolodny, N. (2003) Love as Valuing a Relationship. Philosophical Review, 112 (12), pp. 135–189. Kroeker, E. E. (2019) Reasons for Love. In: A. Martin, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy. New York: Routledge, pp. 277–287. Kupfer, J. (1993) Romantic Love. Journal of Social Philosophy, 24 (3), pp. 112–120. Martin, A. (2015) Love, Incorporated. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 18 (4), pp. 691–702. McKeever, N. (2016) Love: What’s Sex Got to Do with It? International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 30 (2), pp. 201–218. Merino, N. (2004) The Problem with “We”: Rethinking Joint Identity in Romantic Love. Journal of Social Philosophy, 35 (1), pp. 123–132. Soble, A. (1987) The Unity of Romantic Love. Philosophy and Theology, 1 (4), pp. 374–397. Solomon, R. (1988) The Virtue of Love. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 13 (1), pp. 12–31. Voice, P. (2011) The Authority of Love as Sentimental Contract. Essays in Philosophy, 12 (1), pp. 93–111. Williams, B. (1981) Persons, Character, and Morality. In his: Moral Luck:Philosophical Papers 1973–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–19.

Chapter 7

Kalle Puolakka THE MANY FACES OF CONVERSATION IN THE BEFORE TRILOGY

Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (1925)

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V E N T H E U N F O C U S E D V I E W E R C A N N O T but help noticing that Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy includes a great deal of talking. The trilogy, however, is very much focused on a particular form of talking, conversation, in particular on conversation between two people, Céline and Jesse. The close interaction conversations can potentially involve makes them somewhat unique among other types of human communication. Especially, in its most complex forms, conversation is not a mere matter of simple response and reply, but it can possess a complex and evolving structure to which the conversationalists’ own capacities and actions, moreover, have a decisive effect. A conversation can even be seen as a kind of performance between the conversationalists, the form and character of which decidedly depends on how they carry on what their interlocutor has said and done. In addition to these performative aspects, this interaction can also take the form of connecting, which shows that conversations can possess different social values. It can, for example, increase our feelings of empathy and affection toward someone. Had Céline and Jesse’s frst conversation on the train in Before Sunrise, the opening flm of the trilogy, been marked by awkward moments of

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silence and clumsy conversational initiatives, the flm would most likely have come to an early close, with Jesse dashing off to see Vienna and Céline continuing her journey to Paris. All three flms of the Before trilogy illustrate, from different angles, some key aspects of conversations, such as their background conditions, how new possibilities open up in the course of a conversation, the growth they can exhibit, or even the role of gestures and facial expressions in a conversational exchange. While the perspective of the frst two flms is very much on an engagement between two people, the third flm, especially with its extensive meal scene, opens up a more collective perspective on conversations. This article takes a look at the many conversations of the Before trilogy. As a background to the examination, I will draw from the work of the philosophers Donald Davidson and John Dewey a kind of ideal picture of what having a conversation can be like, a kind of standard what conversation, at its best, can be, and then consider the conversations of the Before trilogy in light of this model. My ultimate focus will be an aesthetic one. For especially Dewey’s take on conversations suggests that they can be the source of experiences, which Dewey would call aesthetic. Given the prominent role of conversations in the trilogy, this type of aesthetic analysis also gives important insights into the aesthetic features of the flms. But it is certainly not the full story. For the cinematic aspects of the flms, namely, the mode in which the conversations are presented to the viewer, also importantly contributes to their aesthetic character. The trilogy actually goes to the very heart of some core issues of flm theory and philosophy. Not only early flm theorists writing shortly after the advent of cinema in the early 20th century, like André Bazin and Rudolf Arnheim, but also many contemporary philosophers of flm, have extensively considered the question “How can flm be an art form, when it is essentially a matter of mechanically reproducing reality?”1 The question is especially burning with regard to conversation-centered flms such as the Before trilogy. For Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight very naturally invite the question: “Aren’t the three flms nothing more than mere recordings of conversations carried out in great sceneries?” In the fnal part of the paper, I will show that various factors philosophers and theorists of flm have attributed as essential, if not unique, to the medium of cinema, such as camera movement, editing, and framing, importantly contribute to the aesthetic content of the flms and, in many cases, even enhance the aesthetic effect of the conversations depicted in the trilogy.

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The aesthetics of having a conversation Donald Davidson has provided one of the most intricate philosophical looks at human communication. His goals are essentially reformative, for he thinks philosophers have worked on a rather barren understanding of human communication. As a kind of embodiment of the type of communication whose philosophical relevance he promotes, Davidson singles out the radio sitcom writer Goodman Ace’s manner of talking. He fnds Ace an unusually innovative communicator, who frequently tossed witticisms, intricate wordplay, and entre nous to his linguistic exchanges, as well as gave new meanings to old and familiar expressions. These aspects made conversing with Ace a highly lively, even dynamic encounter. As one of his friends divulges, Ace’s conversant had to be constantly “on guard” and could not really fully predict where the conversation would go with him (Davidson, 2005: 89). Davidson is especially critical of so-called conventionalist views of meaning, according to which communication is essentially made possible by rule-governed linguistic conventions. On this view, communication succeeds when the conversationalists follow the linguistic conventions they share, which fx the meaning of utterances. The basic critical point Davidson addresses to these sorts of views is that the conditions of meaning; that is to say, what expressions can mean in a communicative situation are much more fexible than described in conventionalist accounts. If the meanings of utterances were as pre-fxed as Davidson takes conventionalist views of language to assume, it would, in his view, be hard to properly account for the meaningfulness of linguistic behavior of Ace’s kind. Davidson largely adopts an intentionalist view, according to which the meaning of utterances is determined by the speaker’s intentions. Davidson does not, however, claim that the speaker can mean whatever he wishes with his utterances, for the hearer’s readiness to interpret the speaker has to be taken into account. Specifcally, his point is that this readiness cannot be accounted for by pre-established linguistic conventions, but it can rest on highly idiosyncratic features, varying from one situation to another, and which can, moreover, change and develop even during the communicative situation itself. The conditions of communication also depend on the relationship the communicators have to one another – how close it is, what shared experiences they have,

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what they know about each other, etc. This might make possible some communicative moves that are not possible with other people. Despite all this emphasis on fexibility, Davidson thinks the speaker, nevertheless, has to satisfy what he calls the “requirement of interpretability” (Davidson, 2001: 28 and 116–117). In case the speaker wishes to use language in a creative, even unpresented way, he has to ensure that the hearer has the possibility, at least in principle, of interpreting him in the intended way, for example, by providing clues or by some other kind of stage setting that allows the hearer to grasp the intended meaning. Words cannot acquire new meanings out of the blue, but with enough creativity, there is no saying what meanings it is possible for utterances to acquire in a given situation. Whatever relevance one thinks Davidson’s approach to the conditions of communication has on a philosophical theory of meaning, it does show that conversations can exhibit a surprising degree of complexity, creativity, and depth that go far beyond the simple transmission of information. However, the possibilities Davidson sees in conversations suggest that they can also have signifcant aesthetic content. For the close interaction between the conversationalists Davidson attributes to conversations can acquire qualities that John Dewey sees as central to aesthetic experience. Dewey can be a notoriously confusing writer and his major work in aesthetics, Art as Experience (1934), includes dozens, if not hundreds, of descriptions of what Dewey thinks makes an experience aesthetic, each more oblique than the other. Here is a particularly poignant example: “That which distinguishes an experience as esthetic is conversion of resistance and tensions, of excitations that in themselves are temptations to diversion, into a movement toward an inclusive fulflling close” (Dewey, 1980: 56). Dewey’s basic point about aesthetic experience, however, is more or less clear.To count as an aesthetic experience, the experience has to have a particular kind of developmental structure with a specifc set of qualities. Among the essential qualities of aesthetic experience, Dewey lists such qualities as accumulation, rhythm, intensity, resistance-building tension, and consummation, all of which are, moreover, gathered together in a sense of wholeness. These qualities of aesthetic experience are something that the experiencer distinctly feels, which makes aesthetic experience stand out from the general stream of experience of our lives. In this respect, aesthetic experience is, for Dewey, an example of “a stability that

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is not stagnation but is rhythmic and developing” (Dewey, 1980: 19). If the experience, in turn, includes, for example, “dead centers,” or if the experience’s different parts are only loosely connected to one another and lack a feeling of accumulation, the experience is not an aesthetic one, but an “inchoate” or an “anesthetic” experience in Dewey’s terminology (Dewey, 1980: 36). Conversation is among the everyday phenomena that Dewey actually uses to illuminate how our doings, actions, and events can have the quality of satisfying wholeness that is one of the crucial features of an aesthetic experience. He notes that we describe conversations as being carried on and as being “rounded out” (Dewey, 1980: 35), which for Dewey means that we can experience conversations as integral wholes with a clear sense of beginning, movement, and closure. The commonplace feelings of owing a response to someone or of having diffculties in fnding the right words, for example, are indications of the sense of movement that conversations can raise. A particularly aesthetic closure to a conversation, however, is a moment that is marked by “a fulfllment” reached through “ordered and organized movement” (Dewey, 1980: 38). In such signifcant conversational moments, the material of the conversation has, in Dewey’s words, “run its course to fulfllment” (Dewey, 1980: 35).This conversational fulfllment can, for example, take the form of a moment in the conversation to which nothing needs to be added. Conversations can, of course, also be very inchoate experiences. Instead of having the urge to carry on the conversation or even to spice it up with interesting twists and turns, we might just wonder how we can most politely get out of the situation. In a Deweyan terminology, inchoate conversations can be described as having “beginnings and cessations, but no genuine initiations and concludings” (Dewey, 1980: 40). A conversational dead center is broken by an initiation, which, rather than marking the beginning of a conversational development, just leads to another dead center, and so on. In a way, the conversation just drifts and ends at a random point without the sense of closure that Dewey insists is essential to aesthetic experience. Instead of a sense of fulfllment, the conversationalists just part ways feeling empty. These points also bring some new substance to the seemingly simple idea that it takes at least two to have a good conversation. For example, the friend of Ace’s cited earlier describes having a conversation with Ace

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as a real battle of “wits” (Davidson, 2005: 89).The linguistic moves one makes open up new possibilities for the conversation partner to carry on and develop the conversation. In an ideal case, at least from an aesthetic point of view, the separate linguistic moves of the conversationalists begin to build on each other, leading to a sense of accumulation. As Dewey explains in one of his few explicit references to conversations, “in a genial conversation there is a continuous interchange and blending, and yet each speaker… retains his own character…” (Dewey, 1980: 36–37). Moreover, the expectations that arise during the conversation can create tension and rhythm and give the conversation a satisfying sense of direction, that is, a sense of becoming “internally complete” (Dewey, 1980: 254). Some linguistic moves within the conversation can, furthermore, release the tension that has built up, serving as moments of fulfllment within the conversation. Again, Ace was considered a master of this type of language use, for he has been described as particularly good at selecting “the ideal phrase for the situation,” hitting the nail right on the head (Davidson, 2005: 89). In other words, Ace knew exactly which expression would lead to the consummation of the conversation. That, for Dewey, is an aesthetic moment. But Ace could not, of course, have achieved this by himself. For Ace’s expressions to have the defning effects they often had on a conversation, required particular kinds of conversational moves from his fellow communicators. Even a linguistic virtuoso like Ace might have had troubles in linguistically hitting the nail right on the head with a silent, introverted Finnish person, for example. The commonplace distinction between making and having a conversation is a good way of summing up these points.When just making conversation, we are not fully engaged in the situation and the conversation lacks a sense of direction, sometimes proceeding only with great effort. In contrast, when genuinely having a conversation, the conversationalists can feel an inner movement and accumulation in the conversation, that is, precisely those qualities that Dewey fnds typical for aesthetic experience. In this case, the conversation appears to have almost a life of its own that drives the participants forward. In the best of cases, the conversation also does not simply end at a random point but is “so rounded out that its close is a consummation not a cessation” (Dewey, 1980: 35). Unlike in making conversation, the conversationalists part ways with a sense of fulfllment or even with a sense of being one experience richer.

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From a Deweyan viewpoint, aesthetic experience is an integral part of these sorts of conversations. As helpful as Ace is as an example of the kind of to-and-fro movement, which can give conversation an aesthetic character, it is also important to note that his way of employing language represents only one kind of responsiveness central to aesthetic conversations. For while a conversationalist of his type can bring movement and energy to a conversational situation, this can also sometimes take place at the cost of genuine communication and mutual exchange. Ace precisely represents a highly performative type of conversationalist for whom the exchange is more about short-term effects than about making an effort to build up the conversation and connecting more deeply with the others in the situation. Against this background, one could still make a distinction between two types of conversation: conversation as performance and conversation as connection. Both can carry important aesthetic aspects from a Deweyan viewpoint and examples of both types of conversation can be found in the Before trilogy.

From casual talking to having dinner with friends The three flms of the Before trilogy relate to this Davidsonian/Deweyan model in very different ways. Even their basic outlooks on conversations are quite different. While Before Sunrise, the frst flm, consists of some 20 separate conversations between Céline and Jesse, the sites of which, moreover, change from one conversation to another, the second flm, Before Sunset, follows a more or less seamless conversation between them on the streets of Paris. The fnal flm, in turn, brings in new conversational partners to the picture, as well as includes an extensive group conversation of some ten people. Before Sunrise The preconditions for a conversation between Céline and Jesse may not appear that promising. For example, it immediately becomes clear that they have quite different personalities. Céline is refective, a bit melancholy even, while Jesse has a much more relaxed and jocular attitude toward life. Their literary tastes also appear very different. Before exchanging their frst words together, spurred by the noisy disputing

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couple passing them, Céline is shown to be reading Georges Bataille, Jesse a memoir called All I Need Is Love. One cannot but get the feeling that the beginning of the flm plays with the usual stereotypes of the cultured, erudite European and the corny American, who speaks no other language but English. However, they do hit it off. The topics of their frst conversations on the train consist of travelling, their relationship to their parents, childhood experiences, and attitudes toward death.The arrival at Vienna marks a turning point.Their impromptu decision to see Vienna together causes clear nervousness in both of them.The conversation needs a new beginning or initiation in Dewey’s terms. The Q&A Jesse begins on the tram gives the required push to get the conversation going again. Views on frst sexual feelings, experiences of love, and objects of hatred are shared. After getting off the tram, Céline and Jesse proceed via the record shop and the old cemetery to the Ferris wheel, where they share their frst kiss. This event is an important turning point too, for it clearly loosens up the atmosphere. For example, mutual teasing begins to play an important part. Gradually factors shared by Céline and Jesse, such as the kiss, also start making their way into the conversations, opening up the possibility for the kind of intricate conversational accumulation and interplay that both Dewey and Davidson situate to the heart of good conversations. These changes in their conversational background conditions are a sign of a developing closeness between the two. Making conversation starts turning into having a conversation (Teasing would most likely have been the wrong conversational move on the train.). Due to their episodic character, the 20 or so conversations between Céline and Jesse in Before Sunrise do not really evolve into the most substantial Davidsonian/Deweyan heights outlined in the previous section. The difference, for example, to the accumulation that takes place in the conversation between André Gregory and Wallace Stevens depicted in My Dinner with André (1981), a classic in the genre of conversation-centered flms, is quite considerable. Even though from an aesthetic point of view, the conversations between Céline and Jesse in Before Sunrise do not quite match the nearly one-and-a-half-hour conversation André and Wallace engage in, this does not mean that they would exemplify none of the rhythm, sense of movement, and interplay that was attributed to aesthetic conversations

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in the previous section. Jesse’s feeling on the train that he wants to “keep talking” to Céline already shows that he senses the possibility for even more rewarding conversations with her. All of their conversations in Before Sunrise, in fact, exhibit some of the qualities of a good, even aesthetically rewarding conversation listed in the previous section and show what having a good conversation can be like, although, especially when conversing on some more serious topics, Jesse is at times lost for words in the face of Céline’s deep thoughts, such as the transitory feelings Céline expresses the fgures of George Seurat’s paintings raise in her. Jesse is more at home in playful moments, like when chatting about relationships while playing pinball and drinking beer, as they do at the Viennese club halfway into the flm. At least at this point of the trilogy, Jesse appears to be a conversational performer and Céline a connector. However, the episodic character of the conversations of Before Sunrise is not necessarily any kind of faw of the flm, for, as I will argue in the next section, it can also be seen as an important artistic quality that adds to the flm’s general mood. One of the conversational high points of Before Sunrise is the exchange that begins from Jesse’s remark that whenever their conversations turn to the relationship between men and women, he feels Céline shows a very dismissive, even hostile attitude toward men, shown by such remarks as “We [women] at least let you [men] live. So what are you complaining about?” This is, by my count, conversation 14. Céline stops Jesse, agreeing partly, but rejoining, in a much more serious tone of voice, that while she has this pressure “to be a strong and independent icon of womanhood and not have it look like [her] life is only revolving around some guy, … the love of a man and returning that love means a lot to [her].” And then she asks: “Isn’t everything we’re doing in life a way to be loved a little more…?” Jesse responds by telling how he sometimes feels simple family life and “being a good father and a good husband,” while at other times, “it just seems silly,” and he has a strong sense that such a life would just “ruin” his life.What, instead, feels right to him on those moments, Jesse explains, is becoming someone, of excelling in life in some way, and that, Jesse continues, he would die happier “knowing that [he] was really good at something” rather than “to have only been in a really nice, caring relationship.” Céline continues Jesse’s refections by telling a story of a man she knows, who had focused all his energy precisely on his career; that is

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to say, of becoming someone, but then suddenly, at the age of 52, it “struck” this man “that he had never really given anything of himself, that his life was for no one and nothing.” Céline then ends with the following thought: “If there’s some magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone else, sharing something, even if it’s almost impossible to succeed. But who cares – the answer must be in the attempt.” A silence ensues that both Céline and Jesse seem to savor. Jesse’s look is also telling at the end of the exchange; with Céline’s remark, the material of the conversation has run its course to fulfllment in the way Dewey believes characterizes aesthetic experience. It is also very much an aesthetic moment in the sense of conversational connecting. As dawn nears, the question what happens after their mutual night in Vienna nears as well. What would be the best end for it? To see each other again or to leave things for just this night? First Céline and Jesse decide that instead of meeting again, the proper way to complete the night would be to make their few remaining shared hours as meaningful as possible. Evidently torn by the issue, they, nevertheless, come back to it at times during the rest of the night. However, they change their minds only moments before Céline has to board her train to Paris. They agree to meet at the same train tracks in six months’ time. Instead of a culminating conversation, they depart with the promise of talking more. The consummation of the movie, hence, is not conversational, but visual. The movie ends with shots from the earlier conversational locations, now already glazed in the morning sun, waiting for the awakening of yet another Viennese everyday scene. The shots and the accompanying baroque music create a nice dreamlike ending for the story between Céline and Jesse. Before Sunset The conversational starting points of the second flm, Before Sunset, are of course completely different than in Before Sunrise. Céline and Jesse have not seen each other since the night in Vienna. At the beginning of Before Sunset, they encounter each other in a Paris bookshop where Céline has come to see Jesse’s interview on his book, which is based on their night together. Nine years have passed. Still, after exchanging slightly nervous hellos, the two have no trouble getting the conversation going.The

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matters they go through during the frst parts of the flm are not a surprise: Jesse’s book, whether either of them went to their agreed meeting in Vienna, how Jesse felt when Céline did not show up because of her grandmother’s funeral, and, also, how they are doing in general. Céline leads the two, in a very assured manner, to a nearby café, where they continue the conversation.The atmosphere is relaxed; they, for example, both light up cigarettes very casually.There is a lot of joking, teasing, and topics change rapidly but naturally from one to another, from the faws of French men to Céline’s experiences of living in Warsaw for example. Longer stories also blend naturally into the general fow of the conversation. As a whole, the conversation is characterized by the kind of “continuous interchange and blending” that Dewey attributes to “genial” conversations. At Jesse’s request, the two leave the café, after some 15 minutes of conversing, for a walk to see some more Paris before Jesse’s evening fight back to the United States. There is not a great deal of time. The conversation continues on more or less similar lines as in the café.Their mutual night in Vienna also comes up during the walk – Céline, for example, expresses, in a rather sad undertone, that Jesse’s book made her realize how happy and “hopeful” she was at that time compared to her current life situation. However, at this point in the flm, whenever the night comes up, they quickly move on to other matters. The real foodgates, however, start to open on the river boat some 30 minutes before the end of the flm, when Jesse reveals, seriously it seems, to have written the book just to fnd Céline and bemoans how different life could have been had she come to Vienna. He reveals even thinking of her on his wedding day. Although crazy about his son, Jesse is also seemingly unhappy with his wife, comparing his marriage to “running a daycare center with someone [he] used to date.” He says that what brought him to marry his wife was not so much a feeling of love but rather “the simple action of committing yourself and meeting your responsibilities.” They arrive to shore, where the car is waiting to take Jesse to the airport. But it is still not time for goodbyes. Jesse insists that they drive Céline to her home, for “this way [they] can keep talking,” perhaps feeling an accumulation in their conversation that he wants to build on. In the car, Céline, in turn, starts almost raging about her unhappy love life and how especially reading Jesse’s book disarrayed her, making Céline realize

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“how [she] had so much hope in things” and how she now does not “believe in anything that relates to love.” She wants to be let out of the car, but Jesse seems to fnd the right words to calm her down, pulling off an Ace.They continue going through their unhappy situations. Céline feels that she is “dying inside,” being unable to feel neither “pain” nor “excitement,” while Jesse goes on even longer of how his life is “bad 24/7” and how “there is no joy or laughter in [his] home.” He even talks of having this recurring dream about Céline in which he realizes that “there has got to be more to love than commitment” and then ends by telling Céline that he feels he “put the whole idea of romantic love to bed” when she was “not there that day.” Jesse’s outburst even makes Céline laugh a bit, because she got the impression from an article on Jesse she read that he is living this perfect life; but the reality seems to be that Jesse’s “personal life is more of a mess” than hers. At this point, they arrive at Céline’s home. First, they hug each other outside the car, but Jesse decides to escort Céline through the courtyard to her door. Outside, her neighbors are preparing a party. The scenery is very French and cozy. Jesse asks if he could hear Céline play one of his songs on the guitar in her apartment, assuring her that he still has enough time to catch his fight. But as it happens, fnal goodbyes are never exchanged. Céline starts the song, which Jesse listens to with an almost blissful grin on his face. At the end of it all, Jesse replies to Céline’s remark, given in a Nina Simone impression, that yes, he realizes that he is going to miss his fight. And so the flm comes to an end. Especially toward the end of Before Sunset, the conversation between Céline and Jesse reaches a new level of intensity. However, this is arguably made possible precisely by the fact that the culminating moment in the car arises from a continuous conversation of about an hour or so between them, which, moreover, has exhibited a good degree of interaction and internal momentum. No less important is of course their mutual past and the feelings the two still have for each other, the full force of which, it seems, only the conversation has made them realize. In the most unromantic Deweyan terms, the intensity of their conversation in the car is explained by the fact that this background material that has gathered up during the conversation starts to release itself, even leading to a kind of fulfllment. An interesting feature of the end of Before Sunset is also how naturally Jesse seems to merge into Céline’s life. Everything is relaxed and

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comfortable again after the turmoil in the car.This is not the moment to bring up aspects of one’s dreadful love life but for casual chatting and for savoring the sense of closeness that the preceding conversation has created. Conversation is arguably the most powerful way of discovering that one is on the same wavelength with someone else. Sometimes, this can happen quickly, for example, when people with similar interests, background, and character meet for the frst time. However, the connection that Céline and Jesse achieve at the end of Before Sunset is a good example of a case, when a deeper background between the conversationalists in a way resurfaces during a conversation. Precisely in such cases, connection turns into closeness. Before Midnight Already by the very outset of Before Midnight, the most important new aspect of the fnal flm of the trilogy is brought forth. Now, the focus is not solely on the conversations between Céline and Jesse, but the flm also introduces a host of conversational partners for them.The flm begins at a small Greek airport where Jesse is seeing off his son, Hank, who is returning to his mother in Chicago, who apparently has suffered somewhat of a collapse after Jesse divorced her. Hank’s abrupt responses – “Probably read some,” “Yeah,” “All right,” “Thanks” – to his father’s questions stand in a nice contrast to the many longish genial conversations portrayed in the two frst flms. From Hank’s side, the exchange is almost like a row of conversational dead centers in Dewey’s sense. The question on many viewers’ minds receives a response after Hank has made it through airport security: Céline and Jesse are still together. She is waiting for Jesse by the car in front of the airport, and the camera also picks up twin girls sleeping in the backseat. Again, the conversational starting point has changed compared to the frst two flms. Céline and Jesse have a very traditional married couple talk in the car while Jesse drives to the villa where they have been staying for the summer, on an invitation Jesse received from a local university.They, for example, talk about the new job offer Céline received and about the twins. There is a considerable amount of teasing, but also more serious topics are discussed. Céline and Jesse arrive at the villa, where they eventually separate into different conversations. Jesse converses about his writing with a fellow

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author, Patrick, and some other men, whereas Céline goes through their six-week-long visit to Greece with two women, Ariadni and Natalia, while making meal preparations. Céline and Jesse are joined for the meal by six other people. The following scene depicts a group conversation around an early dinner table. At the beginning of this some 15-minute scene, Jesse makes a toast to their residence host, Patrick, to which he responds with a series of witticisms in a very British manner. Again, a great deal of teasing and joking is present, and, all in all, the conversation exemplifes the kind of to-and-fro momentum attributed to aesthetic conversations in the previous section. One of Dewey’s most often cited examples of a non-art aesthetic experience is “that meal in a Paris restaurant” (Dewey, 1980: 36) and, presumably, the meal Céline and Jesse share with their friends cannot be that far off from Dewey’s Paris meal. The meal scene reveals some interesting features of couples’ interactions among a group of people. What the scene in particular brings to light is that a couple’s teasing and joking in such group situations often have an ulterior goal.The kind of linguistic interplay carried out by both Stefanos and Ariadni and Céline and Jesse in the meal scene, for example, can even be taken as a kind of performance that the couple put on for the others, with the ultimate goal of amusing them. Another curious factor about human communication revealed by the meal scene is how, in such situations, some people are clear authority fgures.Their situational stature becomes apparent, for example, in how attentively others listen to what they say and how thoughtfully they are responded to. Patrick and Natalia are clearly such fgures at the early dinner table of Before Midnight. Responding to their thoughts with the kinds of penis jokes Stefanos makes earlier on would be a sign of complete conversational illiteracy. The meal scene also provides some new insight into conversational fulfllments. For Natalia’s closing story, following on the others’ lighthearted conversing about love and relationships, about the small things she misses in her late husband, Elias, and about her recent efforts to keep these memories from fading away, is a good example of how, in a conversation, previous conversational material can be gathered together and further developed in a way that the conversation reaches a fulfllment in the Deweyan sense of the term. The toast Jesse proposes after Natalia’s remarks accentuates the sense of rewarding closure that the conversation reaches at that point. Following the distinction between conversation as

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performance and conversation as connection made earlier, the way in which Natalia brings the conversation to a close is precisely more about connecting than performing and showing off one’s linguistic creativity, as is in the case of Ace. Natalia and Ace, thereby, exhibit very different conversational virtues; she compassion and empathy, he the capacity to invigorate. However, in the closing parts of Before Midnight, the stage is again reserved for Céline and Jesse alone. The two leave together from the villa to a nearby hotel.They chat about all sorts of matters while walking there, Céline noting how strange and nice it is to have “a conversation about something else than scheduling food and work.” As cozy as the atmosphere is at that point, the real big conversation between them, in the end, takes the form of a fght, which is started off by Céline’s remark to Jesse’s son on the phone “Good luck with your mother!” Jesse fnds it a disturbingly ill-ftting remark, but Céline thinks he is overworrying. A huge fght ensues at the center of which is Jesse’s recent thoughts about the possibility of moving to Chicago so that he can be closer to his son. Even though there are more peaceful moments in their exchange, the two have serious diffculties in fnding common ground on any matter. The conversation gradually drifts more and more from connecting to performing, in the sense of fnding something spikey to say. Céline thinks Jesse does not see the sacrifce he is asking from her and the guilt he is placing on her shoulders for not being able to be with his son, while Jesse fnds Céline’s responses overreactions and that most of her lines of thought are just “horseshit.” Céline storms out of the room twice during the fght, the second of which is prompted by Jesse’s comment, referring to the wish Céline expressed earlier in the fght to start playing the guitar more seriously again, that if Céline “took one eighth of the energy that [she] spend[s] on bitching, whining and worrying… If [she] put that energy into playing scales, [she] would be like fucking Django Reinhardt.” Céline returns once more, but only to bring back her wedding ring, saying to Jesse that she does not believe she loves him anymore. The fght between Céline and Jesse illustrates the type of situation where all conversational moves seem to be wrong and where it is diffcult to conversationally connect with the other person. Someone like Goodman Ace could actually be totally at a loss in this kind of situation, for steering such a conversation toward a more fulflling path

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requires very different capacities from the performative capacities of wit and playfulness, which characterize Ace’s approach to conversational exchanges. As everyone familiar with the flm knows, eventually Céline and Jesse manage to make up in the fnal scene. However, the ending cannot really be taken as a straightforward culminating close, despite the apparent sense of happiness, for the ending invites different kinds of responses very naturally, depending largely on one’s stance on the preceding fght. Some may sympathize with Céline and feel that Jesse has put her in an impossible situation, while others might share Jesse’s outlook that Céline is reading too much into his words and is grossly overreacting. Viewers who, for example, are on Jesse’s side might feel that he – again – gives in too easily, when he takes the initiative for reconciliation. Such a viewer – and I am by no means claiming to be among them – would be unlikely to experience the ending of the flm as a fulflling close. But who has said love is easy?

Cinematic conversations Even though the three flms of the Before trilogy give a very rich picture of conversations, this focus also raises some challenges. Is not conversation a somewhat bad subject matter for a flm, let alone for a whole trilogy of flms? Does not a work of cinema with such a focus just become an example of canned theater with a great deal of talking? This issue has already been considered in the philosophy of flm in relation to the earlier mentioned My Dinner with André. For some, the fact that the flm does not seemingly exploit in any imaginative way some of the key elements of the medium of cinema, such as editing, framing, or camera movement, damages the flm’s overall value as a work of cinematic art. According to Berys Gaut, for example, the uncinematic character of André can be taken as a defect of the flm (Gaut, 2010: 295).2 Early flm theorists were eager to emphasize the ways in which cinema differed from theater in particular.Their analyses of the specifcs of the new medium, such as the already mentioned editing, framing, and camera movement, were intended to show how cinema could be much more than the mechanical reproduction of reality and could incorporate creativity and expression of a degree to merit to be regarded as a genuine form of art. Films such as André, which show very little attempt

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to utilize the medium-specifc qualities of cinema can, therefore, even be seen to be in tandem with the very idea of cinema as an art form. However, the Before trilogy evades similar charges with ease. The frst thing to note is that its conversations take place across sweeping European sceneries, which are, of course, impossible to move to the theater stage. One could say that the conversations of the Before trilogy have very cinematic settings, as opposed to the setting of André, which could be quite easily transferred to the theater. But there is much more to the cinematic quality of the flms than the magnifcent backdrops. For example, very precise editing gives the frst flm, Before Sunrise, an episodic character. While this feature of the flm might not be ideal for the accumulation of a conversation, as argued above, the episodic character achieved by the editing technique used enhances the sense of uncertainty, nervousness, and timidity that often accompany frst meetings of the kind depicted in Before Sunrise. In this case, a medium-specifc feature of cinema, editing, genuinely contributes to the artistic character of the flm. Some of the flm’s conversations also take place against a moving background, for example, those on the train and on the tram early on in the flm, creating a cinematic rhythm for the conversation, which cannot be achieved in a theater setting. In the frst flm, many scenes are, furthermore, flmed from unusual camera angles. The most poignant example is the scene where Céline and Jesse are shot listening to a record cramped in the booth of the record shop they visit in Vienna from a very close, slightly downward angle. The angle and close range of the shot directs the viewer’s focus to the eye movements of Céline and Jesse and their timid gauging of each other, again importantly contributing to the general mood of the frst flm. An important difference between the frst and the second flm is that in the latter editing is much more invisible. However, here, it is the camera movement that gives the flm a cinematic feel.The camera follows, from various angles, the conversation between Céline and Jesse in the streets of Paris and adds to the fow and build-up of their exchange. Numerous similar examples of how the medium-specifc qualities of cinema give their own feel to the conversations of the trilogy could be listed. However, it is important to note that one essential feature of cinema, namely its possession of what Gaut calls “intrinsic perspective,” (Gaut, 2010: 39) can also create an outlook on conversations that no

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other art can afford, at least not in the same respect. By intrinsic perspective, Gaut means the fact that the movie shot focuses the viewer’s perception to a particular point on the canvas or screen, which is not the case with ordinary perception of reality. He actually fnds this difference in intrinsic focus a “striking difference” between the two forms of perception (ibid.). However, it seems that precisely intrinsic perspective can be used in flms to create a very intense focus on the conversation shots, which cannot be matched by the medium of theater for example. This focus, can, furthermore, be strengthened by more apparent cinematic techniques such as framing and editing. For these reasons, I believe that conversation-centered flms, such as the Before trilogy, have more promising cinematic potentialities already on a very basic level than Gaut, for example, seems to believe.

A fnal word The frst conversation of the Before trilogy does not, of course, take place between Céline and Jesse, but between an Austrian couple, who are shown engaged in a big fght in the beginning of Before Sunrise. Especially when seen in the context of the whole trilogy, this opening scene receives some humorous aspects, for it is precisely this noisy couple that sets off Céline and Jesse to their mutual journey, which, ironically, ends up, through various twist and turns, in a more or less similar situation in the Greek hotel room in Before Midnight. This article has focused on the numerous conversations Céline and Jesse have along the way, attempting to uncover, with the philosophical and aesthetic tools drawn from Davidson and Dewey, some of their important structural features and highpoints, as well as giving some sense of the cinematic qualities of those conversational exchanges. The previous section closed on a somewhat positive note on the cinematic character of conversation-centered flms. However, flms in this genre can also be seen to carry some important cultural signifcance, especially for our increasingly digitalized age. For smartphones, tablets, and other so-called “interruption technologies” are arguably changing human forms of communication so that face-to-face encounters are becoming increasingly infrequent and superfcial. Films such as the Before trilogy serve as good antidotes for this development, reminding us of the joys of having a conversation.3

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Notes 1 For discussion, see, for example, Carroll (2008: 7–33). 2 For other accounts of the cinematic quality of My Dinner with André, see Smith (2006) and Carroll (2008: 43). 3 A big thank you to the Finnish Cultural Foundation for fnancially supporting the writing of this article.

References Carroll, N. (2008) The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Davidson, D. (2001) Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Davidson, D. (2005) Truth, Language, and History. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dewey, J. (1980) Art as Experience. New York: Perigee Books. Gaut, B. (2010) A Philosophy of Cinematic Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, M. (2006) My Dinner with Noël; or Can We Forget the Medium? Film Studies, 8(1), pp. 140–148.

Chapter 8

Anna Christina Ribeiro LOVE, DEATH AND LIFE’S SUMMUM BONUM: THE BEFORE TRILOGY AS MEMENTO MORI1

The Before trilogy as memento mori art

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I T T L E D I D I K N OW, W H E N I saw Ethan Hawke standing on the corner of Prince and Crosby one afternoon back in the late 90s, justifying the sighs of millions worldwide in jeans and a white t-shirt, and holding a cigarette, that some 20 years later, I would be asked to write a philosophical essay on three of his best known movies. But that is one of the mysteries of time: we never know what it has in store for us; only that it keeps rushing through us as we struggle through it, marking our nows, befores, and afters. It is this entanglement of us and time that Richard Linklater tries to make sense of in some of his flms. In his Before movies in particular, Linklater is concerned with how time is experienced in romantic relationships—the seizing of it in the frst fush of attraction, the efforts to beat it by creating and grabbing second chances, the trying to keep it still as it inexorably gives way to the fghts big and small that punctuate the everyday of long-term partnerships. No less obvious perhaps is Linklater’s concern with what comes at the end of that time as it is circumscribed for us humans, namely death. Although we (thankfully) never see either of them holding a skull, in the Before trilogy, the topic of death and dying is never far from the lips of protagonists Jesse and Céline.The connection between love and death is made at the very start of the frst flm, Before Sunrise, when Jesse asks Céline what she is reading—a trio of Georges Bataille’s stories, among them Le

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mort—and when she returns the question, he shows her Klaus Kinski’s All I Need Is Love. (Strangely, no more is made, in this or the other movies, of these reading choices—unusual at any age, but especially so for two cherubs in their early twenties—beyond a fash of recognition of a kindred spirit, which emboldens Jesse to ask Céline to join him in the train’s restaurant car.) They speak of the death of his great-grandmother when Jesse was about three years old; they visit a graveyard. In Before Sunset, Céline explains that she did not make it to their reunion in Vienna because her grandmother had died in Budapest and was being buried the day they were supposed to meet, December 16, six months to the Bloomsday when they frst met. And in Before Midnight, Céline mentions a friend who changed his view about life once he learned that leukemia would take him in nine months, and Jesse learns that his grandmother died, less than a year after his grandfather.There are many more instances of death creeping into their dialogue as they fall in love, as they meet again and fnd themselves still in love, and as they fght to keep their love alive. The constant pairing of love and death throughout the trilogy invites refection on how to love—a great-grandmother, a child, a friend, a lover—in the face of death. For this reason, each of the Before movies, and the trilogy as a whole, are best seen as works of memento mori art. ‘Memento mori’, the admonition to remember death, can take many forms, but whether the admonition is to be humble (as with Roman generals), keep desires in check (as with the Stoics), or to eat, drink, and be merry (as with so many carpe diem proverbs and art works), the idea remains the same, namely, that an awareness of our inevitable end should bear on how we live life. For Linklater, the proper answer to death is love—romantic love in particular—and he pits them against each other in terms of time vs. timelessness. In the Before trilogy, he shows us how we can beat the inexorable ticking of our limited hours by loving: In Sunrise, by loving against time (approaching); in Sunset, by loving in spite of (lost) time, and in Midnight, by loving because of time (past). In other words, we can ‘exchange time for eternity’—the passing of time with an absorbing timelessness—by being mindful of the future (death) and staying in the present (love). The phrase ‘exchange time for eternity’, which was commonly used in 18th- and 19th-century Christian epitaphs and books to mean death (and to make death mean something good rather than bad), encapsulates this idea perfectly: for love absorbs

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us and keeps us fully in the present, making time appear to stand still. In this, flm, being a temporal art, does one better than vanitas paintings: in their stillness, they only show us symbols of death, but cannot propose a ‘cure’ for the ills of our temporal limitations. An art of time can show us how to deal with time, as it unfolds in it. Whether being fully in the present is the best response to the passing of time, and whether love is the best response to death, are legitimate questions. Moreover, if the only or best response to death is love, that would make love life’s supreme good. And if—as many philosophers would have it—the foundation of morality is life’s supreme good, then love is the foundation of morality. The Before trilogy can therefore be judged from a philosophical perspective: does it make a convincing case that love is the only appropriate response to death, life’s summum bonum, and the ground of practical reason?2 The philosophical literature on death has largely focused on questions regarding what death is and whether it is an evil,3 both of which may seem bizarre to the layperson: death is the end, and of course that is bad—we spend our lives trying to avoid it. But it can be surprisingly diffcult to specify what death is, since we have to touch on questions of existence, of what constitutes a self, what consciousness is, what it means to live on in someone’s memory, and many other subtle metaphysical questions. And while the average person would not subscribe to the wisdom of Silenus, and instead consider an early death an evil, it is less obvious that dying at age 100, or if one is suffering greatly from an incurable illness, is bad. Indeed, it may be argued that having a fnish line is what gives meaning to the race. I will not consider these questions, although my interpretation of the Before trilogy lends support to the view that death confers meaning on life. I will rather assume that death is an end to experience, whatever else it may be, and whether that is a good thing or bad will emerge as we go along. The philosophical literature on love has likewise focused on its nature: what it is to love another human being (is it to love their essence, in which case they are irreplaceable, or a response to their perceived value, or something else?).4 Generally, it is assumed that both loving and being loved are goods, possibly life’s supreme goods, or at least among its highest goods. The same Corinthians that tells us, at 15:32, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’, also tells us, at

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1:13, that though we speak the language of angels, without love, we are nothing. The romantic view, of course, is that the beloved is irreplaceable (and Céline states as much in the boat scene in Before Sunset), that what is loved is a mysterious essence, impervious to the accidents of the beloved’s behavior, even though the evidence is all around us and the empirical studies confrm that we are remarkably quick to fnd new, love-worthy essences upon the loss of one.5 We should not however rush to the judgment that we did not love the previous person but rather that we are capable of loving more than once in a life time— something to be grateful for. I will here further assume that romantic love is a good, one of the things that make life worth living, one of the things that make a life better—and even if it turns out that romantic love is the good, a life can still be very much worth living without it, of course: presumably Corinthians 1:13 includes other forms of love. I will assume that, all things being within the realm of the normal (by which I mean I leave out abusive or otherwise harmful relationships), it is better to go on loving than to stop loving, though I make no claim as to whether it is better to love one person all life long or 2 or 20 (although as the numbers grow, the ‘love’ label becomes questionable, if only because the demands love places on the lover curtail the possibility of it happening too many times in a lifetime). Certainly, the contemporary romantic ideal is that of one person till—what else?—death do us part. The philosophical literature on the relationship between love and death is practically nonexistent—perhaps it is too bizarre to put life’s greatest good together with life’s greatest evil in the same thought.6 Of course, literature itself—poems, plays, novels—has been pitting love against death since time immemorial, with death usually having the upper hand, to the cathartic sobs of spectators and readers. From Iphigenia to Romeo and Juliet, from Sappho’s sublime protestations to Poe’s popular Raven, either death tragically keeps lovers apart, or lovers moan that they would die without the beloved. But that is not what is happening in the Before trilogy. Here, death hovers but never arrives. Here, death is a warning that asks to be heeded—here, death, the ultimate evil, makes itself a good by calling on Jesse and Céline to learn how to live (before it is too late). And that is why the trilogy is a memento mori artwork: for it charges us to remember death and live well.

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Before Sunrise: love against time approaching Each of the Before movies plays out the memento mori theme in a different way, although all of them enjoin us to be ‘presentists’—to beat the temporal (and by extension, death) by staying in the now of love. But of all three, perhaps Before Sunrise is the best example of memento mori art, and a true vanitas work (sans the usual Christian overtones), for it displays for us spectators the three symbols typical of such works: the fower of youth, the passing of time as they wait for the morning to come (when they must part), and the hovering presence of death in their dialogue. And inasmuch as they seize the moment to be together and enjoy the little time that they have, the Sunrise response to the encroaching of time is clearly carpe diem, nunc est bibendum, gather ye rosebuds while ye may.Thus, in Sunrise, we see Jesse and Céline doing their utmost to ‘exchange time for eternity’ via the power of their budding love: here, now, and without concern for tomorrow. The youth of Jesse and Céline is of course easy to see, and, I would claim, also easy to hear.There is a sentimentality and artifciality in much of their dialogue. Part of the artifciality in Before Sunrise may be attributed to the eager awkwardness of two young people trying to impress one another with their deep and mature thoughts. At the pretend phone call in the café, Jesse confesses his fear: ‘I thought everything I said sounded so stupid’, only to be reassured by Céline that it was not (later on she, too, will claim she has ‘something stupid’ to say). Their youth also explains the occasional artifciality in their speech, in that they are discovering their thoughts as they try to articulate them. Finally, their youth is represented poetically when Jesse recites the frst line of a stanza from W.H. Auden’s ‘As I walked out one evening’: The years shall run like rabbits, For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages, And the frst love of the world. Besides appearing on the cover of Céline’s book, in Jesse’s description of his great-grandmother’s ghost, and in their visit to the graveyard, the topic of death emerges throughout their dialogue. Céline says ‘I think I’m afraid of death 24 hours a day. … It’s exhausting’ as she explains to Jesse that her phobia of air travel is the reason she was taking a train to

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Paris. Later, speaking of the Serbo-Croatian war happening at that time, she says, ‘I hate that three hundred kilometers away a war is going on. People are dying’. When they are having a drink in the boat-restaurant, Jesse tells the story of the friend who could only think of death as he witnessed the birth of his child. And later stanzas of Auden’s poem again give poetic expression to the inevitability of death: But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: ‘O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time … ‘In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day. Those are the facts: they are alive, they are young, they will someday die. What of it? It is also on the boat that we hear one of the main claims of the movie and the series, when Céline says: ‘I think that’s why life is so interesting—because it’s going to end’: JESSE: I know. Death ups the ante being alive. CÉLINE: It’s the same for us tonight, though. If we knew we were going to see each other next week, it would not be the same energy, no? JESSE: Yeah, I know. We have here an explicit statement of the goodness of death as the meaning-conferring factor on life. More generally, Céline offers the idea that having limits, times at which something will end, increases the value of that something (even if all too often that is only recognized retroactively). Death being the ultimate limit, the radical end time, increases the value of life and the incentives to get it right—as Jesse says, ‘death ups the ante’.They, too, up the ante of their meeting by agreeing, at frst, that their Vienna night will be their only night. It is here that love as the answer to death makes itself felt. In Before Sunrise, that answer comes in the form of a carpe diem: let’s get off the train,

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let’s fall in love, let’s live in the now. One hears echoes of Baudelaire’s poem ‘Get Drunk’ (1970: 74): Always be drunk. Nothing else matters; that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, never stop drinking. But what? Wine, poetry, virtue—the choice is yours. Whatever: get drunk. The idea is the same: lose yourself in the now, to avoid the inexorability of time’s passing. But in Jesse and Céline’s case, love is the inebriating means. Here is another piece of their dialogue: JESSE:

But being with you, it’s made me feel like I’m somebody else.The only other way to lose yourself like that is, you know, dancing or alcohol or drugs, you know, stuff like that. CÉLINE: Fucking? [laughter] JESSE: Fucking, yeah, that’s one way. Beyond the carpe diem and the gathering of roses, however, lies Linklater’s second deeper claim, namely, that love is life’s highest good. In one of Before Sunrise’s most famous scenes, we hear Céline say: CÉLINE:

You know I believe that if there’s any kind of god, he wouldn’t be in any of us—not you, not me—but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed. But who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.

This is of course a more complex notion of love than simply being inebriated in enamored moments under the Austrian stars. Understanding someone takes effort; sharing something takes an openness of heart and a willingness to be vulnerable. Both take time, perhaps a lifetime. In addition, both involve acts of the will, intentional acts that structure how we

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who love live our lives. As a response to death, love may start with falling in love, but it does not end there. After Sunrise, comes Sunset.

Before Sunset: love in spite of time lost Jesse and Céline meet again, but only nine years later, having not seen each other in the interim. He has written a book about their magical night together; she hears of it and appears at his book signing. They go out for a coffee and a walk around town. Their conversation resumes, and the connection they once had soon reveals itself to be still alive after the initial awkwardness that was to be expected.They are still young, but no longer in the fower of their youth. Life has happened—a marriage and a son for him, some failed relationships for her, a meaningful professional life for both. Before Sunset can no longer be a pure vanitas—the fower is beginning to lose its sweetness—but it is still a memento mori. It does not take long for Jesse and Céline to return to their old topics of time and death, and again, Linklater expresses the importance of being in the moment via his protagonists. Céline reveals that the death of her grandmother prevented her from making it to their six-month reunion in Vienna. At the café, they begin talking about getting older, and Jesse says how he enjoys getting older, how life now feels more immediate. He tells the story of the band he once was in, and how his bandmate was always focused on the future, wanting a record deal. Today, in retrospect, he would enjoy every minute of being in the band, even rehearsals. Céline in turn tells how in her feld people enjoy the goal of changing the world but not the process, whereas the little people who could really change the world ‘actually enjoy the process of helping others…they are in the moment’, to which Jesse responds: ‘Yeah but that’s so hard, to be in the moment’. Whereas in Vienna they simply threw themselves into the moment, now that no longer comes so easily. They knew it was good then, but perhaps only now do they realize that it is important—and that, as we go along, it becomes a willful act, and something we must remind ourselves to do. Their conversation moves to the topic of desires. The satisfaction of desires is of course also something that focuses our thoughts on the future and involves the workings of our will. But Jesse complains, ‘I satisfy one desire, it just agitates another’. There is a difference between focusing on the satisfaction of desires and having death as a future

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limiting point. Death is not a goal; its occurrence is not the satisfaction of a desire (with the possible exception of suicides). The problem with not staying in the moment is not a problem with focusing on the future per se but a problem with focusing on the constant satisfaction of desires, which detracts from the present, and distracts us from possible present enjoyments, ‘the little achievements of the day’, to use Céline’s phrase. Whereas Sunrise was a flm very much about the present—they had no past, and knew nothing of their future—in Sunset, the past emerges and begins to form, and memory, accordingly, becomes important. Memory, Céline says,‘is a wonderful thing if you don’t have to deal with the past’. The past, however, has come back to deal with them, and the fuidity of a memory’s signifcance and valence is brought to the fore when she notes that they can now change the memory of that December 16, for it no longer has the sad ending of never seeing each other again. Jesse agrees: ‘I guess a memory is never fnished so long as we are alive.’ Finally, the relation between the ‘magic’ of love and death emerges again. Recalling Einstein’s The World as I See It, Céline points out that he says (though not quite in these words) that ‘If you don’t believe in any kind of magic or mystery, you are basically as good as dead’. Jesse talks about how he does not feel any sense of permanence here, so this is it, ‘every day is our last’; she talks about how when she feels that way she calls her mom to tell her how much she loves her, and her mom asks, ‘Are you OK? Do you have cancer? Are you going to commit suicide?’ It is here that the certainty of death becomes a challenge front and center: ‘So what about us?’ Céline asks? ‘If we were going to die today, what would we talk about?’ What would we do? Another barrier in their conversation comes down, and after acknowledging that they would have as much sex as possible, their dialogue grows more serious, with both Jesse and Céline revealing that they have not connected with anyone the way they connected with one another, and that relationships as time-fllers (Céline) or that are commitment-based (Jesse) have left both ‘dying inside’. At last, Jesse concludes that ‘there’s got to be something more to love than commitment’—he has tested the idea that if you decide to be with someone and ‘work at it’, all will be well, and the idea has failed. She, too, has tried to be with men she did not love, but the choice has only engendered detachment.

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Having at last revealed their hearts to one another, as they slowly go up the stairs to her apartment, time, too, begins to slow down, and Céline’s little waltz seals Jesse’s decision to miss his fight back home.We are back in the now.

Before Midnight: love because of time past In Before Sunset, Jesse and Céline had to face the nervousness of the re-encounter and the anxiety over whether there would still be a connection, so some stiltedness and some showing off are still explainable by the circumstances. But in Before Midnight, they have been together for nine years, have two daughters, and are on the other side of 40. The source of their anxieties has shifted elsewhere. The space for the sentimental has shrunk, the need to impress has transmuted into a need to hold on (Jesse), the wide open hopes for the future have given way to fears that one’s life is slipping away without those hopes being fulflled (Céline). Appropriately, the sentimentality is left for others to express (at the dinner table), while the language of Jesse and Céline turns raw and confrontational, only occasional glimpses of the connection that brought them here coming through like a sigh of relief amidst the exchanged barbs that leave us cringing in our seats. There is a sense in which they have become slaves to the connection they so cherish—it is too important to leave behind now. In a secular and equitable world, connection is the only thing bringing and holding two people together, so it goes on the emptied pedestal. The memento mori theme is therefore now more pressing than ever. Death is closing in on them, the stakes are higher.Time has solidifed their love, but also worn it out. Importantly, time has given them both other sources of love. Jesse is conficted between his love for his son and his love for Céline, and she is conficted between her love for him and her love for herself—for the career she would still like to have, between her roles as a wife and mother and her role as a professional. Staying in the present has grown both harder and more pressing, love more of a willful act. Time and death are still themes explicit in the dialogue, but now the dialogue is between Jesse and the other men, while Céline is slicing tomatoes in the kitchen with the women. Speaking of a character in his new book, Jesse says that the concern is ‘Not so much death but

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transformation. He sees too far into the future’. His Greek friend notes that the characters are lost in time in various ways, and Jesse replies, ‘It’s not time they are lost in—it’s perception’, i.e., their unique points of view. At the dinner table, one of the guests speaks of her late husband Elias (and makes reference to the titles of the frst two movies in the process): The sun makes him disappear…he appears, and he disappears, like a sunrise or a sunset, or anything so ephemeral. Just like our life, hmm? We appear and we disappear, and we are so important to some, but we are just passing through. ‘To passing through’, offers Jesse, in a toast. Soon afterward, as they walk to the hotel, Jesse tells Céline that his grandmother died. She was 96. Céline notes she didn’t live much longer after Jesse’s grandfather died. A while later, Céline mentions her friend George, who fnds out he is going to die of leukemia in nine months, and how he felt relief, because he now knew he had enough money to live on for the rest of his life, he had ‘made it’, so now he could enjoy life. In other words, the absolute certainty of the future meant he could now enjoy the present. Jesse, naïvely hopeful for a turn of events, a happy ending, asks, ‘Then what happened to him?’ But Céline quickly disabuses him of false hopes: ‘What do you mean? He died. A long time ago’. No miracles here. He died. We die. Period. The 40-minute storm that follows in the hotel room leaves us with no doubt that love, too, has been shorn of its sweet illusions. Jesse calls Céline the mayor of Crazy town; she says he is no Henry Miller in bed. Each bolt of thunder leaves us feeling they must have reached a point of no return. Yet, Auden’s message comes back from the frst movie to tell us ‘You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart’: JESSE:

You’re fucking nuts. All right? You are. Good luck fnding somebody else to put up with your shit for more than like, six months, okay? But I accept the whole package— the crazy and the brilliant, all right? I know you’re not gonna change, and I don’t want you to. It’s called ‘accepting you for being you’.

One wonders why Céline is so distressed, but Before Sunset provides the answer: ‘sometimes I worry that I’ll get to the end of my life without

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doing all that I wanted to do’. Whereas in Sunset, we saw a Céline distressed about missing out on love, in Midnight, we see a Céline worried about missing out on herself. She sees her life fying by, and she has not done what she wants to do. While Jesse is busy thinking about his next book, which is about people stuck in the present in various pathological ways, she is attuned to the furious pace of time passing and the coming of death; she is worried ahead. Earlier, as they watched the sun set, it was Céline who pointed out, anxiously, that the sun was ‘still there. Still there. Still there. Gone’. Midnight ends with Jesse trying to get Céline to join him again in the present, and stay in love, rather than respond to death by worrying about it: that is focusing on the future, and the worst thing one can do in response to it. Bringing back the time-traveling trope that started their story in Sunrise, he says JESSE: I’ve come to save you just like I said I would. CÉLINE: Save me from what? JESSE: Save you from being blinded by all the little bullshit of life. The time traveling is required because death only clears the view if we return from our awareness of its future certainty to immerse ourselves fully in the now. ‘This is real love’, Jesse says; ‘it is not perfect but it is real’. At last, Céline breathes deeply and—as I interpret her action— decides to play along, return to the now, and stay in love. Now, love is not only a feeling that they open themselves to (Sunrise) or a connection they recover and a relationship they try to form (Sunset), but also a choice they voluntarily make. That choice comes at the very end, but it does come. In one of the extra features of the Criterion Collection set, we see the scene from his Waking Life (2001) in which Linklater’s cartoon version is playing pinball and telling his friend: “Life is this constantly saying to time ‘No, thank you, no, thank you’, until fnally you say ‘I give in, I accept, I embrace’”.

Romantic love as life’s summum bonum I have been arguing that, in each of his three Before movies, Linklater intimates that love is the only appropriate response to death: that love enables us to ‘exchange time for eternity’ by grounding us in the now.

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While death itself may be an evil, an awareness of it allows us to clear the debris of distractions and recognize life’s highest good. At least since Aristotle, philosophers have argued that something in life must have value in itself if anything else is going to have any value at all, and drawn a connection between that something—life’s highest good—and the ground of morality. Here is how Aristotle (1934: 1094a18–21) puts the matter: If therefore among the ends at which our actions aim there be one which we will for its own sake, while we will the others only for the sake of this, and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (which would obviously result in a process ad infnitum, so that all desire would be futile and vain), it is clear that this one ultimate End must be the Good, and indeed the Supreme Good. Thus far one can easily go with the aid of a little logic, but the connection from here to moral action is not obvious. I can agree that having a highest good confers meaning on life, but why should that enjoin me to act morally? Aristotle continues: Will not then a knowledge of this Supreme Good be also of great practical importance for the conduct of life? Will it not better enable us to attain our proper object, like archers having a target to aim at? It is certainly true that if you have a target, that tells you where you should aim your arrows. But it does not tell you, say, that you should be nice while you are shooting. In other words, there seems to be at least a conceptual difference between practical reasoning and moral reasoning. Aristotle will draw the link from one to the other by looking to our essence as rational beings and enjoining us to reason well by aiming for the golden mean. Still, there seems to remain a gap between the practical and the good or morally right. Mill makes the connection explicit at the opening of his Utilitarianism: ‘the question concerning the summum bonum, or, what is the same thing, concerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted the main problem in speculative thought’ (2001: 1), to which his answer is that “the creed which accepts as the foundation of morals ‘utility’ or the ‘greatest happiness principle’ holds that actions are right in proportion

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as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (2001: 7). For Mill, then, an action is morally right if it promotes our highest good, namely, happiness: the only thing, in his view, desirable for its own sake. Kant, too, recognizes the necessity of fnal ends when he says that ‘Rational nature separates itself out from all other things by the fact that it sets itself an end’ (1964: 105); moreover, ‘rational nature exists as an end in itself’ (1964: 96). And he draws a connection between fnal ends and the moral law when he writes that ‘morality is the only condition under which a rational being can be an end in himself’ (1964: 102).The will, which is ‘nothing but practical reason’, is ‘a power to choose only that which reason independently of inclination recognizes to be practically necessary, that is, to be good’ (1964: 80). Some recent philosophers have concurred with these giants in the history of philosophy that a fnal goal, something of inherent or absolute value, must exist to ground our actions, including our moral ones. But they have noticed a tension between the dictates of an impartial reason, or of an impersonal majority, and the motivating bonds of personal affection. At the end of ‘Persons, Character and Morality’, Bernard Williams notes that somewhere… one reaches the necessity that such things as deep attachments to other persons will express themselves in the world in ways which cannot at the same time embody the impartial view, and that they also run the risk of offending it. They run that risk if they exist at all: yet unless such things exist, there will not be enough substance or conviction in a man’s life to compel his allegiance to life itself. Life has to have substance if anything is to have sense, including adherence to the impartial system; but if it has substance, then it cannot grant supreme importance to the impartial system, and that system’s hold on it will be, at the limit, insecure. (Williams 1981: 18) For Williams, deep attachments (in this case, he was speaking of the attachment to one’s spouse) are what provides the necessary substance, or inherent value, to life, and without it, impartial morality is meaningless.The partial must ground the impartial.

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Following Williams’ lead, Harry Frankfurt develops this idea and gives ‘deep attachment’ the label we are more familiar with: love. ‘The origins of normativity’ he argues,‘do not lie … either in the transient incitements of personal feeling or in the severely anonymous requirements of eternal reason.They lie in the contingent necessities of love’ (2000: 7). It is love…that satisfes these requirements of practical reason. In loving we provide ourselves with ends that we care about for themselves rather than only as means. Love is the originating source of terminal value. If we loved nothing, then nothing would be inherently valuable, and there would be nothing that could serve us as a fnal end. …loving entails both that we regard its objects as valuable in themselves and that we adopt those objects as our fnal ends. Insofar as love is the creator of inherent or terminal value, then, it is the ultimate ground of practical rationality. (Frankfurt 2000: 10) For Frankfurt, Love is a disinterested concern for the fourishing of what is loved.That is, the lover desires the good of his beloved, and he desires it for its own sake, rather than for the sake of promoting any other interests. (2000: 5) Further, ‘Loving someone or something essentially means, among other things, taking its needs and interests as reasons for acting to serve those interests and needs. Love is itself…a source of reasons’ (2000: 3). Love is at bottom not about feelings or thoughts, but about the will: it guides our actions and orders our priorities. Moreover, not only is the object of love inherently valuable for its lover, but also ‘loving itself is inherently important to us’ (2000: 5–6). Indeed, it is only because loving itself is inherently important to us that the beloved has absolute value.‘Why’, Frankfurt asks,‘is a life in which a person loves something, regardless of what it is, better for him—other things being equal—than a life in which there is nothing he loves?’ (2000: 9) Because love provides him with the fnal goal, the highest good, the absolute value, without which life would be meaningless. We can agree that something of absolute value is required for life to be meaningful, and we can agree that love provides that terminal value.

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It is less clear how love can be a universal moral principle, insofar as moral principles are supposed to apply to all impartially, and love seems to imply favoritism. What do we use as our guide when no one we love is involved? Don’t the majority of our moral decisions involve those we do not love? Perhaps Frankfurt means to use love as a model, and is ultimately offering us a new version of the golden rule: Do unto others as you would your beloved: regard them as if you were concerned with their fourishing, recognize that they, too, are potential sources of terminal value. Closer to our concerns, what happens when one loves more than one object? Before Midnight brings these conficts to the fore, since here we see the tensions of equally demanding loves come to a boil. Jesse is torn between love for his child and love for his romantic partner, and Céline is torn between love for Jesse and love for herself and the life goals she holds dear. Something has to give, but how does one decide between two absolute values? Before Midnight ends on a note suggestive that a choice has been made, and that their love for one another will prevail. If this is true, then love as ‘the space in between’ two romantic partners is being presented here as the foundational love, the kind of love that is life’s summum bonum. This would put Linklater at odds with Frankfurt, according to whom romantic love often comes with ‘a number of distracting elements that do not belong to the essential nature of love…. among relationships between humans, the love of parents for their infants or small children comes closest to offering recognizably pure instances of love’ (Frankfurt 2000: 6).7 For Frankfurt, this is because early parental love is a love that is not based on reasons: it is not a response to the perceived value of the individual, since infants have not yet done anything to demonstrate what kind of person they will be. And yet such a love is a source of reasons to behave in various ways that promote the fourishing of the child.The child is not loved because it is valued; it is valued because it is loved, and it is loved because it is one’s child—indeed, Frankfurt notes, this is a love a parent cannot help feeling.8 For Frankfurt, love, though the ground zero and motivating force behind our choices, is not itself something we choose. There is something of this idea in the romantic notion of love at frst sight: the powerful motivational attraction felt before we know anything about the beloved.Yet, here the similarities end, and romantic love comes out ahead. One may rightly question whether love not freely entered is

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truly love. If, as Frankfurt has it, loving is what is of ultimate value, the foundation of practical reason, then a love one enters freely and willingly, and builds over time, would seem to be the kind of love most apt to satisfy the role of summum bonum. For romantic love is the only love that fully exercises our practical reason, our capacity to understand another and take its needs into consideration, to reach compromises between two ultimate motivational sources. We do not ask a child whether it wishes to move to Chicago, and especially not an infant; we simply do it. And we leave infants and small children behind, as Jesse did, for the sake of romantic love:‘I fucked up my whole life because of the way you sing’, he tells a distressed Céline. For the sake of romantic love, we compromise our personal goals, as Céline has. And love their children dearly as parents may, they will still want romantic love in their lives if they are without it, but not everyone happily paired up feels the need to exercise parental love (indeed, is the having of children late in life not sometimes a consolation prize for those despairing of ever fnding romantic love and eager to satisfy loving itself?). However Jesse and Céline’s predicament is ultimately resolved in the fctional world, in the Before trilogy Linklater is clearly trying to remind us of the inevitability of death and offering us romantic love as the way to ‘conquer’ it. His memento mori may thus be seen as a flmic defense of a revised version of the Williams–Frankfurt position that only love can ft the bill of life’s summum bonum. In this he, and they, echo what E.M. Forster said about a hundred years ago, via his character Helen in Howards End (1910: 222): ‘Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.’ Behind the coffns and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Death is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the thews of Love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no one who can stand against him.

Notes 1 I am grateful to the audience at Texas Tech University, where the frst version of this paper was presented, as well as to Mark Alford, Kathleen Higgins, Paisley Livingston, David Svolba, Palle Yourgrau, and the editors for their helpful comments.

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2 Although I do not claim that flm directors ‘do philosophy’ in the way that professional philosophers do, I here take it as a given that at least some directors make claims and provide evidence for those claims with their movies. See Wartenberg for discussion. 3 See e.g., Nagel (1979),Yourgrau (1987), Kagan (2012). 4 See e.g.,Taylor (1976),Velleman (1999), Frankfurt (1999), Kolodny (2003), Zangwill (2013), and Wolf (2015). 5 See Moller (2007). 6 The exception is Moller (2007). 7 For Frankfurt, ‘the object of love is often a concrete individual: for instance, a person or a country’, but ‘it may also be something more abstract: for instance, a tradition, or some moral or non-moral ideal’ (2000: 5). 8 Frankfurt does not address this, but one may presume the love of a child for her parents is similarly structured.

References Aristotle (1934) Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library XIX, Second edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Auden,W.H. (1989) As I Walked Out One Evening. Selected Poems. New Edition. Edited by Edward Mendelson. New York:Vintage Books. Baudelaire, C. (1970) Get Drunk (Enivrez-vous). Paris Spleen. Translated by Louise Varèse. New York: New Directions Books, p. 74. Forster, E.M. (1910) Howards End. With an Introduction and Notes by Mary Gordon. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003. Frankfurt, H. (1999) Necessity,Volition, and Love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, especially chapters 11, Autonomy, Necessity, and Love (pp. 129–141) and 14, On Caring (pp. 155–180). ——— (2000) Some Mysteries of Love. Lindley Lecture. Lawrence: University of Kansas, pp. 1–16. Published, with an addendum, as On Love, and Its Reasons, ch. 2 of The Reasons of Love. Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004, pp. 35–68. Kagan, S. (2012) Living in the Face of Death. Ch. 14 of his Death. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, pp. 282–317. Kant, I. (1964 [1785]). Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals.Translated and analysed by H.J. Paton. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Kolodny, N. (2003) Love as Valuing a Relationship. The Philosophical Review, 112 (2), pp. 135–189. Mill, J.S. (2001 [1861]) Utilitarianism. Second edition. Edited, with an Introduction, by George Sher. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Moller, D. (2007) Love and Death. The Journal of Philosophy, 104 (6), pp. 301–316. Nagel, T. (1979) Death. In his: Mortal Questions. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–10. Taylor, G. (1976) Love. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 76, pp. 147–164.

156 ANNA CHRISTINA RIBEIRO Velleman, D. (1999) Love as a Moral Emotion. Ethics 109 (2), pp. 338–374. Wartenberg, T. (2009) Film as Philosophy. In: C. Planting and P. Livingston, eds. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. New York: Routledge, pp. 549–559. Williams, B. (1981) Persons, Character and Morality. Ch. 1 of his Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–19. Wolf, S. (2015) The Variety of Values: Essays on Morality, Meaning, and Love. Oxford: Oxford University Press, especially chapters 9, One Thought Too Many: Love, Morality, and the Ordering of Commitment (pp. 143–162) and 11, The Importance of Love (pp. 181–195). Yourgrau, P. (1987) The Dead. The Journal of Philosophy, 84 (2), pp. 84–101. Zangwill, N. (2013) Love: Gloriously Amoral and Irrational. Philosophical Explorations 16 (3), pp. 209–314.

Chapter 9

Katrien Schaubroeck and Hans Maes FALLING IN LOVE WITH A FILM (SERIES)

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U D G I N G WO R K S O F A RT I S one thing. Loving a work of art is something else.When you visit a museum like the Louvre, you make hundreds of judgements in the space of just a couple of hours. But you may grow to love only one or a handful of works over the course of your entire life. Depending on the art form you are most aligned with, this can be a painting, a novel, a poem, a song, a work of architecture, or some other art object or performance. As it happens, however, both of us have fallen in love with a series of flms: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. But what does it mean to love a flm? What’s the difference between liking a flm, loving a flm, and being a flm lover? How rational or irrational is it to fall in love with a flm? What are the constitutive elements of such a love? These are the questions we’ll aim to address in this paper.

Truly, madly, deeply Most people will know what it’s like to fall madly in love with someone. You feel the proverbial butterfies when you catch a glimpse of your beloved in the street; you think about them constantly; you become interested in everything about them (where they live, what they do for work, where they were born, etc.) and the most banal items, say, a napkin or a pen they used, suddenly acquire a special signifcance. Something

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very similar happens when you fall in love with a work of art. Each time we see the opening sequence of Before Sunrise, set perfectly to the music of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the butterfies are there. We’ve caught ourselves thinking and talking about certain conversations in Before Sunset for days and weeks after we’ve seen the flm. We confess that we have visited Vienna and Paris just to retrace the footsteps of the main characters (and flm crew), and plans are underway to visit the Kardamyli residence where Before Midnight was shot. And, sure enough, if we could get hold of a prop that was used in either of these flms, no matter how banal the item, it would become one of our most prized possessions. Naturally, a state of infatuation can be short-lived and superfcial. But it need not be. You can grow to love a person, truly and deeply, and this often is a life-changing experience with a lasting impact on how you think and what you value. The same with art: falling in love with a painting or a novel may be the start of a relation that lasts for decades and that changes the very fabric of your mental and emotional life. It should be clear that this is very different from merely judging a painting or novel to be successful.You can judge a novel or a painting to be great and yet have no love for it (Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is our own go-to example here). Equally, you can fall in love with a work and at the same time acknowledge that some other work you don’t happen to love is more successful as a work of art. For instance, we have no diffculty in conceding that the Before flms are not as accomplished as, say, Mulholland Drive or Vertigo. But we love the former, while we only admire the latter. Falling in love with the Before flms, in our case, has been the start of a long-term relationship with real-life impact. The very fact that we are writing this essay and editing this book, so many years after we frst saw the flms, is testament to this. (Likewise, Jesse spending years of his life writing a novel about his one night with Céline indicates that it was much more than just a cheap fing.) But we are certainly not alone in loving these flms. Over the years, the flms have acquired a score of devoted fans for whom the trilogy is extremely close to their heart. There is Before Sunrise fan fction, there are multiple fan websites, there is a fan-made fourth instalment, entitled Before the End, there are artists like Rozette Rago whose work has been infuenced and inspired by the movies (Rago 2019). Film critics have picked up on this as well.

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Twenty-fve years ago this month, a modest flm was released in theaters across the United States, to little fanfare. Late January is traditionally a dumping ground for misbegotten movies and, though the flm debuted to respectful reviews, it ended up grossing an unspectacular $5.5 million. Yet those few who saw Before Sunrise fell in love with it, and it eventually developed a passionate cult following. (Luckard, 2020) Indeed, scholar and critic Robin Wood once admitted that Before Sunrise ‘was a flm for which I felt not only interest or admiration but love’ (1998: 318). And as a critic for The Guardian wrote more recently: When Before Sunset was released in 2004, its co-writer and co-star Julie Delpy mused on the popularity of the two sublimely romantic movies she and Ethan Hawke had made with director Richard Linklater: “It’s not like Star Wars, but in that small group of people, it really means something to them.” Which is to say that, for that small group of people, among whom I loudly and proudly count myself, awaiting a new instalment of the Before trilogy (as it stands, for now) is in fact exactly like Star Wars, just without the lightsabers. (Patterson, 2013) So, to many people, it seems only natural to describe their attitude towards a particular flm as an attitude of love.

Liking, loving, judging Curiously, in both the philosophy of art and the philosophy of love, the phenomenon of loving an art work has been largely ignored. There are a few exceptions (the topic is touched upon in recent essays by Jerrold Levinson, Sam Shpall, and in Alexander Nehamas’s Only a Promise of Happiness). But the phenomenon remains severely underexplored. Before we investigate why that is, it’s important to draw a few distinctions – because the word ‘love’ gets thrown around a lot. For instance, we love Before Sunrise, but we also love a cold beer on a hot summer’s day. There’s a difference between these two, obviously. In the latter case, what we

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mean is simply that we like drinking chilled beer when it’s hot outside. A Stella would be good, but a Jupiler, Vedett, Duvel, or Seefbier would do the trick just as well. When we profess our love for Before Sunrise however, we refer to something much more exclusive and much more profound and lasting, something that goes beyond a mere liking. As Céline herself formulates it in that frst instalment: “If you have a meaningful experience with someone else, a true communication, they are with you forever in a way”.This can be true of an encounter with a human being just as it can happen in an encounter with an art work such as a flm. Loving a particular flm is also different from loving flm in general. A flm lover, or cinephile, is someone who enjoys watching flms and has a passionate interest in cinema, just as an art lover, one could say, is someone who enjoys engaging with art. They value art in general and make art appreciation an integral part of their life. There may be a few works that the art lover cherishes especially, but then again, there may not be. Similarly, people who love particular works of art (or flms) will often be art lovers (or cinephiles), but they need not be. Loving a work of art or a flm should furthermore be distinguished from loving a fctional character. Not only because one can come to love artworks that are not fctional and don’t have characters (just think of music), but also because one can love a fctional character, or at least be infatuated with it, without loving the work that brought the character into being. (The immense popularity of Pride and Prejudice in the 1990s was in large part due to the mass-infatuation with Mr Darcy as played by Colin Firth in the BBC series, rather than to a genuine appreciation of the book as a work of literature.) Finally, to love a particular work of art is not the same thing as loving an artist. Of course, love for a painting or a flm might lead to a fascination for the artist who created the work. But one should not be confused with the other.We love the Before trilogy, but we don’t love Richard Linklater. So why has the phenomenon that we’re interested in been overlooked in the relevant literature? We suspect that this is in large part because of certain prevalent (pre)conceptions about love. For instance, if you believe that love must be mutual in order to really qualify as love, then paintings or novels are immediately disqualifed as love-objects. A painting or a novel will not love you back. Similarly, there can be no love for a work of art if you hold Kyla Ebels-Duggan’s ‘shared-ends view’ according to which love directs us to share in each other’s ends (Ebels-Duggan

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2008). For what would it mean for us to adopt Before Midnight’s ends? The movie doesn’t have ends or goals like we have. Alternatively, if one thinks of love as a response to the particularly human capacity for valuation, as David Velleman (1999) does, then only a person can be the proper object of love, not a work of art (or any other object for that matter). Unsurprisingly, each of these conceptions has met with sustained criticism, and anyone who thinks there can be unrequited love or that people can love their country or their pet should be inclined to reject them. The fact that views like this cannot account for the love of particular art works we consider to be just one more nail in their coffn. But if this isn’t the right way to think about love, what is? While we won’t attempt to formulate a full-blown theory here, we do want to put forward the following substantial claim: love always involves a complex of emotions and dispositions held together by a deep concern for the beloved and an intrinsic desire for interaction with the beloved. Not only does this conception of love allow for unrequited love as well as a wide range of love-objects, such as countries, animals, football teams, and works of art (hence, making it more plausible from a phenomenological point of view). It also acknowledges love’s forward-looking, openended character – a feature that is illustrated so well by the characters of the Before trilogy whose love manifests itself in a resilient and persistent desire for interaction with each other. The conception of love that we propose helps to highlight some of the most important differences between loving a work of art and making aesthetic judgements about works of art. To begin with, the judgement that a painting is skillfully executed does not necessarily presume an emotional involvement with the object – something that is characteristic of love. Secondly, such a judgement does not necessarily entail any deep concern for the work. There are probably tonnes of works that we have judged favourably in our lifetime and that we have now forgotten all about. Thirdly, even a very positive aesthetic judgement does not necessarily come with a desire to further interact with the object. You can acknowledge that a vase is beautiful and yet have no inclination to buy it or spend any more time looking at it. (Here, we take issue with Alexander Nehamas, one of the few contemporary philosophers who has tried to connect love and art, but who does not seem to make a distinction between judging a work of art beautiful and loving it. For him, judging a vase or a painting to be beautiful is identical with the spark of

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desire, the wish to engage more with the object.We believe this is much more typical of love and that, in fact, most judgements are not forward looking, but – like verdicts – backward looking.) Moreover, when we make an aesthetic judgement about a work of art, there is, at least according to many philosophers, a rational expectation that others will (on the whole) agree with us. Famously, Immanuel Kant held that a judgement of beauty demands agreement – a claim which has been interpreted by some as an ideal prediction: someone who judges an object to be beautiful is claiming that under ideal circumstances, everyone will share her pleasure.When we love a work of art, by contrast, there is no rational expectation that others will share our love, just like there is no such expectation when we love a person. For people who love the trilogy, it usually comes as a pleasant surprise when they do stumble upon someone who is equally enamoured with those flms – the surprise indicating that there was no real expectation that this would happen. Contrariwise, devoted fans might not entirely welcome it if, through some strange twist of fate, the flm series were to suddenly become the most popular franchise in the world and everyone were to fall in love with it. It might not be welcomed because their own special relationship with the flms will threaten to become less special as a result. (Likewise, it would perhaps not be ideal if everyone were to fall in love with the person you happen to love.) Again, this points to a fundamental difference between loving and judging works of art: the desired outcome of one’s aesthetic judgement – universal agreement – will likely be perceived as detrimental for one’s love.

Rationality, irrationality, contingency If, when we love a work of art, there is no rational expectation that others will share our love, does that mean that love is a-rational? Does it follow that our love for a work of art is not based on any reasons? Well, no. As rationalists about love in general, we also think that the love for a work of art will typically be based on (and hence justifed by) reasons (Schaubroeck, 2014). After all, when given the opportunity, people can talk endlessly about the works they love and will often try to make their deep involvement intelligible by citing reasons. Conversely, if someone could not mention a single positive reason for why she loves a flm, but just shrugs her shoulders when asked, we might rightly doubt whether

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she truly loves it. That is not to say, of course, that when people are in love they always act reasonably. Love may lead to all sorts of behaviour, going from reasonable to stupid to downright immoral. But that doesn’t mean that the love itself (defned as a complex of dispositions and emotions) is not responsive to reasons. But, the anti-rationalist might object, if you are justifed in loving the Before flms, if your reasons for loving the trilogy really are good reasons, then aren’t these reasons also going to hold for everyone else? So, if it is indeed reasonable for you to love Before Sunrise, then isn’t everyone rationally obliged to love the flm? This objection only makes sense if you assume that reasons must be deontic (that is, demanding a particular action unless there is a countervailing justifcation) and agent-neutral (what is a reason for X will automatically also be a reason for Y). But why assume that? Some reasons clearly are non-deontic. These are reasons that invite rather than require, that justify without ‘unjustifying’ doing something else. Such reasons, as Jonathan Dancy argues, are not ‘in the wrong-making business’ (Dancy, 2004). For example, Anne may have good reasons to get angry at Elizabeth, but if her good nature prevents her from becoming angry, then surely she’s not in the wrong. Furthermore, some reasons are agent-relative, namely when the reasongiving fact, or the formulation of the reason-giving consideration, includes a reference to the particular agent the reason applies to (Nagel, 1986). For example, Paul may love Phil because Phil helped him through a diffcult time and seems to understand him like no one else, and because Phil’s voice and demeanor has a calming effect on Paul. These are legitimate reasons for Paul to love Phil, but they are clearly agent-relative. The fact that Phil has this effect on Paul is not a reason for Jonathan or Michael to love Phil. Reasons for loving a particular work of art are very often agentrelative and almost always non-deontic. For example, one of the authors of this article has a longstanding love for the novella Titaantjes, written by the Dutch author Nescio.When he read Titaantjes for the frst time, he was about the same age as the main characters and struggling with the same issues as they are. The novella really spoke to him at the time and gave him the feeling of being understood. As he recalls it, the novella made him see how the abandonment of youthful ambitions is part and parcel of growing up and it did this in a way that flled him (and still flls him) with a benign and comforting sense of melancholy.

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These, we want to argue, are good reasons for Hans to love Titaantjes. Obviously, these are agent-relative and non-deontic reasons. Someone else is not required to love the novella simply because it manages to make Hans feel this way. They may recognise the features Hans cites but not appreciate them in the same way.These reasons are also non-deontic in that they help to justify Hans’s love for the book without making it a requirement. If he comes across another story that flls him with a similar sense of melancholy but he does not grow to love it in the same way as he loves Titaantjes, that’s absolutely fne.There is nothing irrational about that (just as there is nothing irrational about not getting angry even if you have reason to). It’s precisely such agent-relative and non-deontic reasons – ‘because the poem helped me through a diffcult time’, ‘because I feel inspired every time I hear this song’, ‘because I am encouraged and reassured when I see this flm’ – that help to explain and make intelligible the deep concern, the emotional attachment, the desire for interaction – in short: the love that we feel for those works of art that come to occupy a special place in one’s life. And it is precisely such reasons that people tend to give when they try to describe their love for the Before flms. It is true that a profound connection of this sort may depend on a number of contingent factors – being in an emotionally vulnerable position when you frst come across these flms, sharing a predisposition for philosophical refection with its makers, or having exactly the right age to be able to relate to the depicted events. The latter is commented on by this critic: The flms have had an especially huge impact on those of us who were roughly the same age as Hawke and Delpy as each flm came out.We’ve watched romantic, idealistic twentysomethings grow into achingly lonely but passionately hopeful thirtysomethings, then into comfortably married fortysomethings struggling to reconnect with who they used to be, amidst the baggage of adult life. (Luckard, 2020) And he continues: Every fan of the flms feels a personal connection to them. I was on a high school class trip to Vienna during the summer of 1994

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when Before Sunrise was flming, though I had no idea a masterpiece was being created somewhere just blocks away. I was one of the fortunate few to see the flm in theaters in 1995, simply because I happened to recognize Vienna in the television commercials. Hawke and Delpy were a few years older than me, but I could relate to everything they went through. I could see moments I had felt and lived. There were fashes of people I knew in Céline and Jesse, as well as fashes of myself, at both my best and worst. (Luckard, 2020) But that such contingent factors can play a decisive role in whether or not you will fall in love is just a fact about love in general and one that is, for that matter, beautifully illustrated in the Before trilogy itself.

The tripartite view While we have not offered a fully developed theory of love, the substantive conception that we propose bears strong affnities with the full-fedged account developed by Sam Shpall. For Shpall, love has a fundamental role in making our existence meaningful (2017: 70). Love generates meaning in our lives, as Shpall illustrates with various examples: a mother taking care of her disabled child, a pious person committing herself to God, an artist devoting his entire life to writing a book. As the last example shows, and as we’ve indicated earlier, Shpall is one of the very few philosophers who makes room for love of art (2017, 2018). Looking more closely at his account may help to shed light on our love for the Before trilogy. But, as will become clear, looking carefully at the Before trilogy may also help us to point out a potential weakness of Shpall’s theory. Adopting a functionalist approach, Shpall takes it as a requirement for a defnition of love that it can explain the role that love plays in our lives. The central argument for his preferred view of love is that it can explain love’s role as a generator of meaning. As the examples of the mother, the pious person, and the artist are designed to illustrate, experiences of meaning in life have three features in common: the source of meaning gives structure to the lover’s life, it makes them susceptible to rich emotions and susceptible to pleasing states of affection. This is captured by Shpall’s so-called tripartite view: [l]ove is devotion

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that renders vulnerable and expresses liking (2018: 91). In structuring our lives, connecting us to a source of enjoyment, and making us vulnerable, love generates meaning.This view appears well equipped to explain certain features of love as they are represented in the Before movies and manifested in our particular attachment to the flms. Before considering the vulnerability and devotion that comes with love, let us say something about the ‘liking’ that is entailed by love, according to Shpall. As he points out, there is something unsettling and incongruous about someone who claims to love a person, but does not in any way enjoy their company and is only negatively affected when thinking of them. Loving and liking go together, as is also evident in the Before trilogy. Céline and Jesse clearly enjoy each other’s company. They instantly take to one another in Before Sunrise, they cannot tear themselves away from each other in Before Sunset, and even in Before Midnight, where their love is put to the test, they are drawn to each other in moments of firtatious intimacy and sparkling conversation. As Shpall goes on to explain, it is this aspect of liking that gives love the reputation of being not under our control. For our likes and dislikes are deeply contingent. They are not the outcomes of decisions or other volitional acts. Céline and Jesse cannot help liking each other, and there doesn’t seem to be an act of will involved in this element of their love. Likewise, we’ve taken to the Before movies without this being the result of a careful deliberation on our part. They struck a chord with us and the enjoyment we take in watching these flms has not left us since. At the same time, we acknowledge that other people may not like – or may even actively dislike – the flms and that there may not be much that can be done about that. For those people, the possibility of coming to love the trilogy will be very remote indeed. Loving and liking, while clearly linked, are also distinct. As we have argued in a previous section, love is more than a mere liking. There are people we like but do not love. Similarly, there are flms that we enjoy watching, but are not deeply attached to. And if Céline had not followed Jesse off the train in Vienna, their mutual liking would not have been able to develop into something more. According to Shpall, the something more that is required for love is devotion. He defnes devotion as being concerned about something and being disposed to act on this concern. There are three forms that devotion can take: concern for the wellbeing of the beloved, concern for being with the beloved, and

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concern for the satisfaction of the other’s ends. Sometimes, one form of concern is predominant in love. Other times, love incorporates all three concerns. We see this on display, for instance, in Before Sunset. Céline and Jesse do not just make polite enquiries about each other’s wellbeing, but when they sense distress and unhappiness, they try to console the other person. As the minutes tick away, they make it clear – both explicitly and implicitly – that they want to continue to spend time together. And they show a concern for the satisfaction of the other’s ends: Céline is happy with the success of Jesse’s book and writing career, while Jesse is thrilled to hear about Céline’s job and the way that she is helping to make the world a better place. Two brief asides here. First, when the object of love is inanimate, like a work of art, it is still apt to speak of devotion, Shpall thinks, but this evidently cannot show in a concern for the satisfaction of the beloved’s ends (as a work of art has no ends). In such a case, devotion will manifest itself, for example, in the desire to be with the work of art and to devote time to it. Second, devotion by itself is not suffcient for love.This is illustrated quite aptly by Jesse’s story of marriage. As he recounts, he saw marriage as the moral or adult thing to do. In the moment, I remember thinking it didn’t much matter, the who of it all. I mean, that nobody is gonna be everything to you and that it’s just the action of committing yourself, you know, meeting your responsibilities, that matters. But simply committing oneself is not enough for love, as he was bound to fnd out. “There is no joy or laughter in my home”, he complains. Husband and wife don’t seem to like each other very much anymore. Instead, Jesse says he feels like he’s running a nursery with somebody he used to date. A third aspect of love, as conceived by Shpall, is vulnerability. Unlike devoting oneself to someone, there is a strong element of passivity here. In the case of love to be vulnerable means to be affected by what happens to the beloved and by what the beloved does. Consequently, a lover’s vulnerability will manifest itself as a disposition to feel very strong emotions, like joy, pride, shame, anger, or sadness.There is in fact a broad consensus among philosophers of emotion that all emotions are concern-based. For example, it is only because I care about my garden

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that I fear its fate in the coming storm. And, conversely, all concerns imply investment and identifcation such that one becomes vulnerable to events that are not under one’s control. So, the aspects of devotion and vulnerability in love are essentially linked.When Hank says, at the airport in the opening scene of Before Midnight, that he does not want his father to attend his recital, Jesse feels hurt. Or to take another obvious example of a lover’s vulnerability: when Jesse arrives in Vienna on December 16 to fnd out that Céline is not there, his disappointment is immense (so he eventually reveals to Céline in Before Sunset). When one comes to truly love a flm, that, too, can engender a sense of vulnerability and leave one open to feeling strong emotions. If, for instance, your beloved flm is ridiculed in conversation, that will likely be experienced as hurtful. Or when a further instalment in the series is announced, that can be a source of joy and happiness. But equally, it can be a source of genuine anxiety (will this next instalment do justice to the characters? Will it not destroy the magic of the previous flms? Etc.).

Devotion, mourning, interaction According to Shpall, love is devotion that renders vulnerable and expresses liking. One advantage of his account is that it may help to dissolve conficting intuitions about the amount of control that people have over their loves. Some see it as “not a decision but a destiny” (Scruton cited in Shpall, 2018: 118), others see it as “an emotion of choice” (Solomon cited in Shpall, 2018: 118). Some hold us responsible for love, others think it befalls us. Here is the solution that the tripartite view offers: “Our intuitions are muddled because love is a composite psychological condition, whose component parts are very differently susceptible to control, and very differently amenable to normative assessment” (Shpall, 2018: 119). Our likings are hard to control or manipulate.The same might be said about our vulnerabilities (at least once we have them). But what we devote ourselves to is a matter of choice.Thus, offering a tripartite account of love allows Shpall to “grant that there is some sense of love that is not active” (2018: 108) while holding on to the idea that love is partly shaped by active choices we make concerning whom we want to spend time with, etc. The romance at the heart of the Before flms beautifully illustrates this mixture of active commitment, irrepressible attraction, and inevitable vulnerability.

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Emotions run quite high in the second half of Before Sunset, but we are not witnessing two human beings who are merely left at the mercy of their emotions. They also make important decisions as they go along. They gradually come to endorse some of their feelings (as they perhaps come to reject other feelings such as guilt and anger). And they decide to act in a certain way that unequivocally expresses their concern for the other person. It’s worth noting that there were also signifcant decisions and actions preceding their reencounter: Jesse writing his book, Céline deciding to come to the book presentation. And as the day progresses, they shift more and more towards a mutual commitment that is bound to have a great impact on both their lives. In Before Midnight, by contrast, we may observe a shift in the opposite direction. Devotion seems to crumble and doubts emerge about their commitment to each other. They can still take pleasure in conversation and there is no shortage of vulnerability, as the hurt, anger but also occasional tenderness show. But the question is whether they are still devoted to one another. Aligning their goals in life, it becomes apparent, will require more than a time machine game and a hot night in a hotel room. (Precisely because their sense of commitment, i.e., the ‘controllable’ part of love, is under threat, the hope remains that their love will survive and we are left with an open ending.They are still able to enjoy each other’s company, so if they don’t give up, if they persevere and make an effort, we are led to believe that their love may perhaps be healed and renewed.) As you may recall, in the formulation of our own view of love, we emphasised the desire for interaction, rather than the notion of devotion. The latter, according to Shpall, can manifest itself as a concern to be with someone, but it doesn’t need to manifest itself that way. There can be devotion that takes the form of a concern for the wellbeing of the other person or a concern for the satisfaction of their ends. Now, for all its explanatory power, it is here that a weakness in Shpall’s theory may become evident. Shpall seems to inherit the criticism that has been addressed to Frankfurt’s robust-concern view (to which the tripartite view is indebted). Frankfurt defnes love as robust concern, requiring no interaction whatsoever. Though the inclusivity of this conception of love is an appealing feature, the equation of love with a private state of concern might actually make it over-inclusive. The robust concern of a stalker who (falsely or rightly) believes he knows what is good for his object of devotion would count as love on this conception. Or,

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to make the same point with a less extreme example, Frankfurt does not see anything defective in a paternalistic concern that projects needs and interests on a beloved that the beloved does not have or that the beloved does not want the lover to interfere with (several people have formulated this criticism, among others Ebels-Duggan, 2008). Shpall’s understanding of ‘devotion’ is more fexible and versatile than Frankfurt’s robust concern, but still, it does not seem to require an active soliciting of input by the beloved and it does not seem at odds with a stalker’s troubling concern-at-a-distance. Adding interaction to the equation can help to circumvent some of these problems. Moreover, it can help to account for an aspect of love that the tripartite view cannot explain. On Shpall’s view, it is puzzling why someone would mourn after an unsolicited break-up with a romantic partner. After all, this person can still devote his or her life to the ex-partner, be concerned about his or her wellbeing, continue to be vulnerable and to like this person. Nevertheless, a response of mourning would be entirely understandable. Our view that places emphasis on interaction can account for this: although devotion, vulnerability, and liking from a distance in such a situation are possible, the desire for interaction will be frustrated, and that both explains and warrants the reaction of mourning, and the sense that something meaningful in one’s life has gone. What Céline and Jesse missed out on, after their failed reunion on December 16, is ongoing interaction with each other. And with this a source of meaning in their lives went missing. They both go through a very tough time after Before Sunrise and it seems ftting to say that they experienced some form of mourning. The notion of ‘mourning’ is at the centre of Tony Milligan’s view of love that is closely aligned with both Shpall’s and our own view. All three connect love’s value with its being a source of meaning. Hence, when that source dries up or disappears, it is natural to feel sad. Milligan delineates the objects of love as those objects whose loss can be cause for mourning and grief. “We can love anything that we can grieve over”, Milligan suggests (2011: 7). This approach allows for a wide scope. We can grieve over the loss of a person. But not just persons. Forests, familiar places, animals etc… clearly can be objects of love (Milligan, 2011: 123, 128). To the list of natural environments and non-human animals, we could (and should) add works of art. If a painting or a sculpture or a work of architecture that one truly loves is subsequently destroyed, the natural

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response will be to mourn the loss. Just think of the outpouring of grief after the 2019 fre in the Notre Dame (which is curiously foreshadowed in Before Sunset). With the advent of digital times, it is perhaps harder to imagine the loss of a flm. But if, say, all copies of the Before trilogy were to be destroyed or made inaccessible by some sort of superbug, this would no doubt cause distress to those who love the trilogy and leave a hole in their hearts. The flm critic Derek Malcolm once defned a great movie as any movie he could not bear the thought of never seeing again. We agree with Malcolm, be it with a small amendment: it may not be true of all movies one acknowledges to be great, but it is true of all movies that one comes to love deeply. We have described our love for the Before flms in terms of a desire for interaction with them. Shpall may prefer to speak of a concern ‘to be with’ the work of art that one loves. But while he might mean the same as we do, ‘being with’ really seems to underdescribe the relation that one seeks in regards to a work one loves. In loving the Before flms, for instance, we want to watch and re-watch them, discuss them, read and write about them. And, importantly, we wish to learn from them. We have let the flms inform our thinking and doing. A self-serving, sentimental interpretation of the movie would be the equivalent of the paternalistic one-sided concern that we criticised above. By contrast, the activity of engaging with a movie in order to understand it better and let it generate meaning is more typical of a truly loving relationship.

Conclusion Robin Wood, who shared our love for Before Sunrise, described the flm and the dynamic between its protagonists as follows: It is characterized by a complete openness within a closed and perfect classical form (…). The relationship shifts and fuctuates, every viewing revealing new aspects, further nuances, like turning a kaleidoscope, so the meaning shifts and fuctuates also. (…) [It] involves each individual spectator in a complex dialogue: Do you feel this, do you agree with that, how exactly does this affect you, your attitude to life, your ideas about relationships, the relationship you are in, the relationship you want? (1998: 324)

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For a flm to reveal new meanings, new layers, and new aspects, it is necessary that a viewer engages with the movie and let themselves be guided by what the movie offers. Relationships of love are like kaleidoscopes indeed, in that they keep generating new perspectives on the world. This is true both of the love between Céline and Jesse and our love for these flms. That is why we fnd it apt to characterise love in general as a practice of interaction and engagement. And when this practice results in a meaningful experience, a ‘true communication’, it is as Céline says: “it stays with you forever”. Shpall’s view and ours are in many respects closely aligned and they both leave room for a love that extends beyond the interpersonal realm and that can include the love of a flm (series).The difference lies in the characterisation of the relation between the lover and the love-object. This relation, we hold, is marked by a desire for interaction. When this desire is frustrated and made impossible, grief will be a natural response. When the desire is fulflled, the relation can take on certain qualities that make the love intelligible – in other words: it will produce non-deontic, agent-relative reasons. In this way, characterising love as an interaction helps to explain how the attitude of love is grounded in reasons that are themselves generated by qualities of the relationship. Like people, art works have the power to comfort, inspire, explain, and offer hope and consolation. In this capacity, they are capable of providing deep and meaningful experiences. It is these experiences, these relational features of a work of art, that we value and that do not only make us love it but also give us reasons for loving it.

Bibliography Dancy, J. (2004) Enticing Reasons. In: R. J. Wallace, P. Pettit, S. Scheffer and M. Smith, eds. Reason and Value:Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz. London: Clarendon Press, pp. 91–118. Ebels-Duggan, K. (2008) Against Benefcence: A Normative Account of Love. Ethics, 119 (1), pp. 142–170. Frankfurt, H. (2004) The Reasons of Love. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Luckard, J. (2020) Before Sunrise at 25 — A Look Back at Richard Linklater’s Modern Masterpiece. Medium, 28 January 2020. Maes, H. (2017) Truly, Madly, Deeply: On What It Is to Love a Work of Art. The Philosophers’ Magazine, 78, pp. 53–57. Milligan, T. (2011) Love. Basingstoke: Acumen Publishing.

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Nagel, T. (1986) The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press. Nehamas, A. (2010) Only a Promise of Happiness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Patterson, J. (2013) Before Midnight: ‘What Grown-up Romantics Have Instead of Lightsabers’. The Guardian, 17 June 2013. Rago, R. (2019) A Photographer Looks for Herself in the Movies She Loved. New York Times, 27 September 2019. Schaubroeck, K. (2014) Loving the Lovable. In: C. Maurer, T. Milligan and K. Pacovská, eds. Love and Its Objects. What Can We Care For? London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 108–124. Shpall, S. (2017) Love’s Objects. In: E. Kroeker and K. Schaubroeck, eds. Love, Reason, and Morality. New York: Routledge, pp. 57–74. Shpall, S. (2018) A Tripartite Theory of Love. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 13 (2), pp. 91–124. Velleman, D. (1999) Love as a Moral Emotion. Ethics, 109 (2), pp. 338–374. Wood, R. (1998) Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chapter 10

James MacDowell ROMANCE, NARRATIVE, AND THE SENSE OF A HAPPY ENDING IN THE BEFORE SERIES

Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw […] the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so. – Henry James (1934: 5) When one writes a novel about grown people, [one] knows exactly where to stop – that is, with a marriage. – Mark Twain (1946: 318)

T

H E F I L M S O F T H E B E F O R E series tend to be defned in contrast to conventional cinematic treatments of romance – especially Hollywood romantic comedies and melodramas. While I believe this may understate their aesthetic debts to such genres, in at least one respect they inarguably are unconventional: their endings. Appended by sequels every nine years, two of the Before flms’ ‘endings’ have become recast as ongoing ‘middles’ – thereby also placing in signifcant doubt the fnality of the third. Linklater’s series thus seems to challenge the familiar assumption invoked sardonically by Twain, above.1 Marriage, or romantic union, has long been treated as a ready solution to the ‘exquisite problem’ expressed famously by James. Via constant repetition in fctions of all kinds – none more so than Hollywood romances – this type of happy ending has come to represent, in flm scholar Rick

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Altman’s words, ‘by convention, […] that beyond which there is no more; it arrests discourse and projects narrative into an undifferentiated “happily ever after”’ (1981: 197). Although I maintain that in practice the convention of the ‘fnal couple’ is rather more fexible than this (MacDowell, 2013), its ability to signify and create narrative closure is unquestionably among its most important qualities. What, besides unconventionality, do the Before flms gain by refusing to ‘stop’ their story about grown people at this familiar point? We might instinctively be tempted to say it indicates an aspiration towards realism. Linklater has often encouraged this characterisation – speaking, for instance, of his desire to make the series ‘seem like an eloquent documentary’, or describing it as ‘romance for realists’ (Zacharek, 2004: 1). If it feels logical to associate the Before flms’ putative realism with their resistance to narrative closure, why should this be? Undoubtedly, the link between ‘open’ endings and realism has existed for some time.The intuition that ‘life has little to suggest in the way of plausible conclusions’ (Frye, 1963: 36) has led many artists and critics to something like the assumption James implies above. If ‘really, […] relations stop nowhere’, then surely ‘ending a story at all – […] tying up all the loose ends of the plot, settling the destinies of all the characters – [is] a falsifcation of reality’? (Lodge, 1982: 150) Iris Murdoch expresses this attitude towards narrative closure most succinctly: ‘since reality is incomplete, art must not be too afraid of incompleteness’ (1977: 31). There may, however, be some limitations to this plausible idea. ‘Closure’, writes Barbara Herrnstein Smith, ‘occurs when the concluding portion of a [work] creates […] a sense of appropriate cessation’ (1968: 36). Surely, even ostensibly unresolved conclusions can provide precisely this sense? As Paul Ricoeur notes, ‘an inconclusive ending suits a work that raises by design a problem the author considers to be unsolvable’ – making it no less ‘a deliberate and concerted ending’ (1985: 22). More signifcant still is what Frank Kermode (1967) memorably called our craving for ‘the sense of an ending’. In his book of that name, Kermode explores ‘what I crudely call the dilemma of fction and reality’ (1967: 131) – namely: however ‘endless’ reality may in fact be, the human mind nonetheless seems eternally committed to ‘mak[ing] considerable imaginative investments in coherent patterns which, by the provision of an end, make possible a satisfying consonance with the origins and with the middle’ (1967: 17). To this extent, Kermode

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argues, narratives and the accompanying sense of ‘appropriate cessation’ they afford are as prevalent in our everyday lives as in artworks, and they serve their purpose in each because ‘an end will bestow upon the whole duration and meaning’ (1967: 41). Furthermore, this ‘transformation of mere successiveness’, he writes, can be ‘likened […] to the experience of love […], which makes divinely satisfactory sense out of the commonplace person’ (1967: 41). In this use of romantic love as an exemplar of his thesis, we begin to see the relevance of Kermode’s perspective for the Before series.2 A great admirer of The Sense of an Ending, Ricoeur once correctly noted that Kermode’s book, ceaselessly oscillates between the inescapable suspicion that fctions lie and deceive, to the extent that they console us, and the equally invincible conviction that fctions are not simply arbitrary, inasmuch as they respond to a need over which we are not the masters. (Ricoeur, 1985: 27) I suggest the Before flms exhibit a similar ‘co-existence of naïve acceptance and scepticism’ (Kermode, 1967: 17) – perhaps towards narrative generally, but certainly towards romance narratives in particular.3 In both artistic and everyday contexts, a ‘romance’ (etymologically:‘story’) is among the most common narrative forms into which human action is organised. Sociologist and historian Anthony Giddens even claims that romantic love inevitably ‘introduce[s] the idea of a narrative into an individual’s life’ (Giddens, 1992: 39). In what follows, I will argue that the Before flms both dramatise via their characters, and express aesthetically through their form, an ambivalent meditation on this fact.To do so, I shall address their endings in turn, focusing especially on how these relatively ‘open’ – yet nonetheless ‘deliberate and concerted’ – conclusions navigate that conventional ‘end’ of romance: the fnal couple happy ending. I hope this may help us better understand how these flms conceptualise the role romantic fctions can play in organising both artworks and lives.

Ending Before Sunrise In cinema, no form of narrative closure tends to be regarded as more ‘closed’ than a ‘happy ending’ (Neupert, 1995: 71–73), and no type

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of happy ending more ‘closed’ than a fnal couple; Altman even calls this trope ‘the comic equivalent of apocalypse’ (1981: 197).Yet, despite that reputation, this convention in fact has a fairly self-evidently contradictory relationship to closure (MacDowell, 2013: 57–65). Put simply: a moment of romantic union is necessarily also an image of beginning – a hopeful projection towards a future still to come (the forthcoming romantic relationship) as much as a solution to all that came before. The way that romances – most ostentatiously romantic comedies – have tended to allay this fact is by using a mode of cinematic storytelling the flm theorist Richard Neupert (1995) calls ‘Closed Text’ narrative. Stereotypically associated with the established genres of classical Hollywood, a ‘Closed Text’ flm’s ‘story resolution demands the termination of […] action codes that propel and dominate the narrative events’ (1995: 18).The screenwriting guide Writing The Romantic Comedy expresses well how this logic can be applied to romance plotting: ‘Romantic comedy heroes and heroines are like questions waiting to be answered – because they are starring in stories in which love is the ultimate path to fulflment’ (Mernit, 2000: 17). If characters can be made to resemble walking ‘questions’, capable of being ‘answered’ via a fnal couple, then a romantic beginning can indeed be relied upon to appear to a meaningful degree like an ending – complete with a fulflled future that seems not so much elided as assured. If, by contrast, the characters in the frst flm in Linklater’s series, Before Sunrise (hereafter ‘Sunrise’), feel somewhat less like ‘questions waiting to be answered’, then this is partly because – at least at frst – it gives the appearance of being what Neupert calls an ‘Open Story’ flm. Associated especially with European ‘Art Cinema’, Open Story flms tend to be characterised by ‘irresolution and weakened unity of action’ (1995: 75). Such narratives are usually not simply unresolved, but also established as in some sense unresolvable, since they are not structured around the sorts of narrative questions that lend themselves to conclusive answers. For instance, speaking of the protagonist of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Neupert notes, ‘there is no single goal or quest in sight. There is not a special project brewing that can resolve his tensions at home and in school’ (1995: 88). To begin with, Sunrise likewise gives the impression of lacking an easily defned ‘goal or quest’. A contemporaneous review suggested that, ‘instead of entwining the characters in something like romantic destiny, [Céline and Jesse] more often seem to be playing out

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idle curiosity’ (Horton, 1995: 3). It is at least true that our protagonists appear primarily motivated, certainly initially, by the simple desire articulated by Jesse when convincing Céline to disembark their crossEurope train: ‘I wanna keep talking to you’. They seem simply to drift from the train into their directionless exploration of Vienna, sidling from tram to graveyard, to café, to bar, each scene consisting less of ‘plot points’ than merely digressive duologues, whose purpose is to deepen our understanding of characters as they begin to understand each other. Like the couple’s talk and their unfocused wanderings, the flm’s narrative structure too does thus feel decidedly meandering, episodic. After the pair have kissed, and particularly once they raise the issue of what might happen following this night, the flm could begin to resemble more closely a ‘romance’, thus potentially raising this genre’s perennial question: will this couple form a lasting relationship? Sunrise, at frst, tries to defuse this question’s signifcance. Agreeing ‘the longdistance thing never works’, Céline and Jesse decide to ‘try something different’. They make a pact that this will be their only night together – thus, ‘trad[ing] the idea of a “happily-ever-after” for the possibility of experiencing a moment together’ (Cenciarelli, 2018: 169). What happens in Sunrise’s fnal moments, however, is equally important.As they are about to part at the train station, the pained, panicked couple hastily hatch a plan to re-meet on this platform in six months’ time, agreeing not to exchange contact details or communicate in the interim.They bid each other ‘au revoir’ (and ‘later’), embrace, kiss, and depart their separate ways. This does two things. Firstly, it effectively creates an Open Story out of one that actually had the potential to be ‘closed’ – albeit unconventionally. According to conventional wisdom, this should ostensibly grant the flm greater aesthetic ‘realism’ – since, as in literature, cinematic Open Stories often ‘motivate and justify their failure to resolve by appealing to a realistic aesthetic’ (Neupert, 1995: 75).This motivation is also implied by the montage of shots depicting the now-empty Viennese locations previously inhabited by the couple, which suggests nothing less than ‘real life goes on’. At the same time, the pair’s parting plan to re-meet in Vienna also ensures that this particular Open Story now poses a very specifc narrative question: will they reunite? The fact that this question hangs so palpably in the air at the flm’s end distances Sunrise from the conventional operations of Open Story flms.

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Articulating the way genre can affect one’s experience of closure, Neupert writes, In certain genres […] the ‘value’ of the eventual resolution varies dramatically. It does not take a PhD in flm studies, for instance, to guess that Lucy Warriner in The Awful Truth [1937] will end up back with her nearly ex-husband Jerry […]. However, it would be nearly impossible to guess that Antoine Doinel will eventually run to the ocean at the end of The 400 Blows. Moreover, simply knowing the ending [of this flm] does not seem to provide us the same sort of satisfaction as in cause-effect ordered genre flms. (1995: 11) Sunrise’s ending is not quite like either of these, yet contains hints of both. While we may fnally ponder what might become of Antoine, we are unlikely to experience anything like the same need for answers about his future as Sunrise encourages us to feel towards Jesse and Céline’s.This is because The 400 Blows has ‘never present[ed] the story of Antoine as a simple progression toward any fnal completion point’ (1995: 88). By contrast, while Sunrise’s story arguably begins in a comparable fashion, it does not end this way. As Robin Wood put it in his essay on the flm (written before either of the sequels): ‘everyone with whom I have watched it immediately raises the question of whether or not Jesse and Céline will keep their six-months-ahead date’ (1998: 163). This is because Sunrise’s Open Story has effectively become (like The Awful Truth) a romance – a type of story with, generically, a potential answer – and it is very diffcult to consider a romance truly ‘concluded’ without knowing whether, bluntly, ‘boy gets girl’. In that sense, the very act of having this couple fall in love effectively recasts the characters of what easily could be a goal-less, Open Story ‘Art flm’ as, effectively, protagonists in an ‘unfnished’ Closed Text romance narrative. Their ‘happy ending’ may remain only a potentiality, but they have nonetheless to that extent been made to appear, after all, like ‘questions waiting to be answered’. The way Céline and Jesse make their plan, too, ties it to traditional percepts of romance narrative. Why is it that they do not exchange addresses or telephone numbers? The reason they give on the platform is that to ‘call or write’ would be ‘depressing’. I take this to mean it would

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represent too drearily commonplace an insurance measure – whereas romance relies precisely on ‘a conquest of mundane prescriptions and compromises’ (Giddens, 1992: 45).4 Denying themselves this safety net also transforms their planned reunion into a generically familiar romantic test for their love, by placing it in the hands of ‘fate’. This conficts interestingly with the sense of free-will and freedom from pre-determination celebrated by the rest of the flm – both via its initially free-wheeling and episodic narrative, and lines such as: ‘What’s so cool is that this whole night, all our time together, shouldn’t offcially be happening’ (Jesse); ‘Yeah, it’s like […] it’s our own creation’ (Céline). The six-month-ahead test expresses: ‘if this is right – if we are “meant to be” – we will receive our desired ending’. Crucially, it says this to the characters, but also to us. That is why, if we nonetheless predict they are unlikely to meet again – as Wood himself did – then, as he puts it, the verdict is always reached with great reluctance, testifying to the continuing pull, despite the battering it has received, of the romantic ideal as a powerful and seductive component of our ideology of love and sexuality. […] The tug of the longing for permanence is so powerful that one would love to see a sequel. (1998: 165) What is this longing that Wood, Jesse and Céline – and perhaps we – feel if not a desire for the inescapably ‘seductive’, traditional formal goal of romantic love: the fnal couple ‘happy ending’? Years later, of course, the flmmakers in fact would give us that longed-for sequel. However, rather than depicting the desired ‘ending’ in Vienna, Before Sunset (hereafter ‘Sunset’) instead shows us the fallout from that promised conclusion having failed to materialise.

Ending Before Sunset Nine years after Vienna, Jesse has authored a novel about that night (called This Time), which seemingly fnishes in the same manner as Sunrise. In Sunset’s frst scene, we fnd him concluding a Q&A in a Parisian librairie, facing precisely the question posed by Sunrise’s unresolved ending: ‘The book ends on an ambiguous note’, offers an inquisitive journalist: ‘Do you think they get back together in six months, like they promised?’

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Having thus re-established the desire for narrative resolution as among the series’ central concerns, the flm soon sees Jesse interrogated again about his novel’s conclusion – now by Céline, who has surprised him at the bookstore. After apologising for failing to keep their appointment (due to her grandmother’s funeral), Céline inquires why Jesse’s novel didn’t also end like this. He tells her he originally wrote a conclusion in which their characters did reunite; but then, JESSE:

It’s just, they get to know each other better and they realise that they don’t get along at all. CÉLINE: Oh, I like that. It’s more real. JESSE: Yeah, well, my editor didn’t think that way. CÉLINE: No, everyone wants to believe in love. It sells, right? This acknowledges, frst, the extent to which Sunrise’s ending, despite its ambiguity, did remain fundamentally romantic: its very openness is what allowed us the option of ‘believ[ing] in love’.5 By acknowledging how such a supposedly less ‘real’ conclusion might help ‘sell’ a fction, this exchange also seems to hint that Sunset may adopt a comparatively more sceptical attitude to romance – more sceptical, at least, than Jesse’s publisher. However, it comes to seem increasingly unlikely that it was commercial pressure alone that prompted Jesse to conclude his fctionalised retelling in the same tantalisingly romantic manner as Sunrise. The Jesse and Céline of Sunset utter some very disillusioned sentiments about romance: from Céline’s exclamation that ‘reality and love are almost contradictory to me’, to Jesse’s lament that he fears he ‘might have given up on the whole idea of romantic love’. Apparently then, as Celestino Deleyto writes of the flm, ‘a dynamic is established whereby reality and fction/fantasy are opposed as far as intimate relationships are concerned’ (2009: 160). The characters’ views clearly stem partly from Jesse’s having married a woman he does not love (because she became pregnant with their son), and Céline’s having become a serial monogamist, jettisoning relationships before she feels anything deeply. Yet, it gradually becomes clear their present outlooks have another source. On the sightseeing boat, Jesse sadly, tiredly, exasperatedly turns to Céline: JESSE: Oh God… Why weren’t you there in Vienna? CÉLINE: I told you why.

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I know why, I just – wish that you would’ve been. Our lives could’ve been so much different. CÉLINE: You really believe that? JESSE: I actually do.

JESSE:

Had they re-met, they would have had completely different lives – presumably, a more fulflled, shared life. This is what could – or should – have happened, if only that fateful date had been kept. It is summed up best when Jesse says that, when Céline didn’t show up, ‘it seemed like something was off…’The romantic ‘sense of an ending’ onto which they projected their love proved misplaced. Yet, rather than lose faith in its promise entirely, they instead allowed themselves to believe something somehow went wrong, missed a beat. This seems a central preoccupation of the entire second flm: ‘Now we’ve met again’, says Céline, ‘we can change our memory of that December 16th – it no longer has that sad ending of us never seeing each other again’. Writing a new ‘ending’ for their romance is Sunset’s aim as much as its characters’.The flm’s original poster asks, ‘What if you had a second chance with the one that got away?’ In its trailer, a voiceover tells us, ‘Now they have one afternoon to fgure out if they will spend the rest of their lives together’. Typically hyperbolic marketing this may be, but one nonetheless senses it does come close to capturing what is at stake – at least for the characters. ‘What if your grandmother passed away a week earlier’, Jesse asks, ‘a week later – days even? Things might’ve been different…’ And, just as the allure of a more happy ‘ending’ seems too strong for the characters to abandon, the flm too harbours at least some classically romantic impulses. Particularly pertinent are the invocations of romantic melodrama: Céline’s having been prevented from keeping their appointment due to a personal tragedy; Jesse’s marriage ensuring their potential union seems more romantically transgressive; the consistent reminders of a looming deadline via his impending fight home; and, especially, the revelation that for some time both had lived in New York concurrently, unbeknownst to each other. The exchange in which Jesse confesses he believed he glimpsed Céline on a street corner while driving to his wedding, and Céline confrms she did live near that spot, conjures precisely the sense of tragic fate so common to classic romantic melodramas – what Steve Neale (1986) refers to as that genre’s characteristic affective appeal of ‘if only…’

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For an audience, this classically melodramatic romantic affect is placed in careful tension with another, conficting set of desired responses. Assuming they have seen the frst flm, a sympathetic viewer is similarly likely to invest this ‘second chance’ with the hope that the couple might belatedly receive their ‘happy ending’. There is also, though, another affective steer towards the desire for more ‘romance for realists’ (Zacharek, 2004: 1) – something fostered by all those aesthetic strategies the sequel shares with its predecessor: the naturalistic, improvisatory acting style and dialogue; a reliance on (predominantly) natural light and sound; and frequently long but unobtrusive takes. These divergent spectatorial inducements create a poignant admixture: genuine investment in those aspects that evoke the illusion of watching an ‘eloquent documentary’ (2004: 1) about two credibly human people with whom we are merely catching up; and, equally strong, a longing for these characters to be granted a fttingly romantic resolution to what increasingly feels like their melodramatic love story.These tensions condense on Sunset’s handling of a fnal ‘realist’ formal conceit: its ‘real-time’ narrative structure. While certainly contributing to the flm’s sense of realism, the other key expressive function of this gesture is to emphasise that both couple and flm are fast running out of time, refexively encouraging a pervasive anxious suspense as to whether both can be maneuvered towards the desired conclusion in the time remaining. As with Sunrise’s ‘open’ ending, this thus sees a nominally ‘realist’ aesthetic being made to serve more classical, ‘romantic’ ends. Sunset also to some extent puts conventionally ‘romantic’ aesthetic forms to more ‘realistic’ purposes – especially in its fnal scene. One theme Jesse’s novel introduced towards the flm’s opening was the impulse to understand and narrativise one’s experience of love via the creation of artworks. Towards its conclusion, having invited Jesse up to her fat, Céline reveals that she too once committed their night to art in the form of a melancholy waltz – which she hasn’t played ‘in a while’, but now performs for him on guitar. Céline squirms with some embarrassment when required to sing lines like, ‘One single night with you, little Jesse / Is worth a thousand with anybody’ – understandably, given she previously critiqued Jesse’s novel on the grounds that he ‘idealised the night a bit’. Yet that is surely the purpose both these artworks perform: to provide them with the romantic structure, the sense of an ending, that their own experience of love in the real world so sorely

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lacked. For the audience, meanwhile, the inclusion of these artworks serves partly to highlight this sense-making function they serve for the characters.To some extent, this allows Sunset to refect upon the ‘idealised’ ways the lovers are conceptualising romantic love, without necessarily conceptualising love in such ways itself. In fact, however, these diegetic romantic artworks themselves play important roles in helping Sunset achieve its own ‘idealised’ sense of an ending. For instance, it emerges that a key motivation behind Jesse writing what he calls ‘that stupid book’ was his hope that, JESSE:

…you might come to a reading in Paris and I could walk up to you and ask, ‘Where the fuck were you’? […] I’m serious. I think I wrote it, in a way, to try to fnd you. CÉLINE: Okay – I know that’s not true, but that’s sweet of you to say. JESSE: I think it is true. We are given no reason to doubt this, as Céline claims to. We are also not encouraged to question the almost ludicrously convenient string of coincidences necessary for his scheme’s success: Jesse’s press tour happening to visit Céline’s favourite bookstore; her happening to see his photograph reproduced on the shop’s calendar (it’s also confrmed she didn’t know his surname), and so on. Jesse’s romance novel is thus crucial to providing the opportunity for the flm’s plot even to begin; the book’s ‘ambiguous’ ending, meanwhile, introduces the possibility that this sequel may be en route towards settling that irresolution. Céline’s song, too, becomes decisive for the flm arriving at a narratively satisfying conclusion. Having earlier worried, ‘It’s like I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel all that again’, Céline’s rendition of her own artwork about their Viennese encounter enables both her and the flm to revive some of her past romanticism, just in time for its imminent ending. And of course,‘Just in Time’ – as sung by Nina Simone – then becomes the fnal romantic artwork to assist Sunset in achieving a sense of optimistic closure. Having selected this song from Céline’s CD collection, as Jesse loads it into the stereo, he turns towards her with an ever-soslightly knowing, somewhat excited, glance – suggesting he may have

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chosen it so its lyrics might speak for him: ‘Just in time, / I found you just in time…’ Upon hearing it, Céline smiles, perhaps understanding what this music could mean in this context, and begins reciprocating by singing along: ‘Now I know where I’m going, / No more doubt or fear…’ She then starts her impersonation of Simone in concert – pouting her lips, dancing gently, speaking seductively: ‘Ooh, you’re cute… I love you too, baby’, she says, pointing playfully at Jesse. She culminates her performance by turning to him and, just partially in character, saying, ‘Baby, you are gonna miss that plane…’ ‘I know’, Jesse responds. We fnally fade to black, very slowly, on a shot of Céline continuing to dance, as the Simone song continues into the credits. A very delicate balance is again struck here. Lacking a concluding kiss, embrace, or even both lovers sharing the same frame, this is far from the clichéd image of a fnal couple happy ending. Nonetheless, it does rely heavily on that staple convention of romantic comedy: the jazz standard love song, which contributes greatly to the conclusion’s particular romantic mood.6 The couple’s fnal exchange forecasts only a pointedly short distance into the future – leaving long-term implications unanswered, and even hinting at diffcult times ahead: Jesse fngers his wedding ring after uttering ‘I know’. Likewise, the slowness of the fade-out and continuation of the diegetic music both rhetorically emphasise – like Sunrise’s concluding montage – that ‘life goes on’: this is an ellipsis, not a full-stop. And yet, as in so many romance narratives, we ultimately leave our protagonists at a moment charged with the promise of an imminent passionate union that we have anticipated since the flm’s opening. This ending certainly resists depicting its couple’s love in precisely the same terms as Simone’s song – offering nothing like the narrative certainty of, ‘Now I know where I’m going, / No more doubt or fear’. Nevertheless, while Céline and Jesse may not quite walk into the proverbial sunset, they are in the end provided here – fnally – with something we could legitimately call a happy ending.

Ending Before Midnight The arrival of Before Midnight (hereafter ‘Midnight’), of course, then retrospectively emphasised the fact that Sunset’s ‘ending’ too was always merely one more ‘beginning’.This in turn highlighted the extent to which both Sunrise and Sunset remained fundamentally courtship narratives, revolving

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around that central question: will this couple form a lasting relationship? By contrast, Midnight depicts a single day within that already-established, now-nine-year relationship. Specifcally, it represents a day towards the end of a holiday the couple have been taking with literary friends and acquaintances in the Southern Peloponnese. Concentrating a flm’s plot on a relationship’s ongoing ‘middle’, rather than its beginning, offers greater potential to defy the structuring principle of a clear and answerable question.This subject matter grants ample opportunity for an investigation of a relationship’s dynamics that is less goal-oriented than a courtship tale – ensuring ‘no ending can ever be assumed to be fnal’ (Shumway, 2003: 158). In other words: it lends itself to being told via an irresolvable ‘Open Story’. However, the particular day represented in Midnight turns out to be an especially dramatic one for Céline and Jesse – indeed, one during which their relationship could conceivably end. This thus creates the potential for another familiar sense of an ending: not that ‘comic equivalent of apocalypse’, the happy ending, but rather tragic closure in the form of romantic dissolution. Admittedly, that possibility is not equally palpable in all Midnight’s scenes – several of which again permit the pair largely amiable, meandering conversations on myriad topics. Nonetheless, this potential narrative trajectory subtly infuses even more genial moments, thanks to a comment Céline makes in their very frst scene together:‘This is how it ends… This is how people start breaking up’. She says this in response to Jesse implying he longs to move from Paris to Chicago, so he might live closer to his now-teenage son. As the day progresses, the pair’s escalating arguments – on interpersonal matters large and small – further heighten anticipation that this flm’s narrative could be brought to a close by the couple’s parting. Again, a potentially ‘Open Story’ conceit is thus crafted into something that is able to feel rather more like a ‘Closed Story’ – one potentially resolvable by an answer to another yes-or-no question: could this be the end of this relationship? The fact that this question haunts Midnight recalls faintly the alternative ending to Jesse’s novel – in which, after ‘get[ting] to know each other better’, the characters ‘realise they don’t get along at all’. In Sunset, Céline approvingly described such an outcome as ‘more real’. It has likewise become a critical commonplace to praise Midnight for being the series’ most ‘realistic’ entry. However, I have argued elsewhere (MacDowell, 2021) that Midnight may be more helpfully seen as continuing the

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series’ trajectory away from the tendencies of romantic comedy and towards melodrama. Romantic comedy usually focuses on courtship, whereas melodrama is the genre in which cinematic stories of longterm relationships have traditionally been told. Especially relevant here is marital melodrama: a once-common classical Hollywood sub-genre, whose central thematic concern has been aptly described as ‘the bloody aftermath of “the happy ending”’ (Britton, 2009: 31).7 A painful line in Midnight chimes perfectly with that concern: when Jesse exclaims, ‘I fucked up my whole life because of the way you sing’. With that, Sunset’s tenderly romantic happy ending is effectively rewritten as an inciting plot beat within an ongoing heartrending melodrama. Why has their relationship come to this? As in much marital melodrama, a major factor is a highly gendered antagonism – here stemming largely from what Céline calls Jesse’s ‘closet macho’ attitudes towards domestic and emotional labour (see MacDowell, 2021). Not unrelated, but closer to our immediate concerns, is another source of antagonism: the way the story of the couple’s romantic past haunts their comparatively disappointing present.This is represented most literally by (what we learn are by now) the two novels Jesse has dedicated to retelling their protracted courtship. In addition to This Time, he has since published That Time. The latter is based on the pair’s reunion in Sunset and also apparently takes its reader beyond that flm’s fade-toblack: ‘He misses the plane, they black out the windows’, goes one acquaintance’s description of the second novel’s ‘sexy’ plot: ‘they have sex for days like there’s no tomorrow…’ ‘It must be a little weird for Céline’, this character adds, ‘how she’s in the book like that’. Despite Jesse’s reassurance that ‘she’s got used to it’, this seems indeed to be the case. Note, for instance, Céline’s slightly irritated joke over lunch: ‘if you want to know exactly what it’s like to have sex with me, read away!’ Her ‘exactly’ here implies a degree of detail in Jesse’s narration to which she did not consent, which in turn helps contextualise her later angry proscription: ‘You may never, ever use me or anything I say or do in one of your fucking books again’. Part of Céline’s resentment, then, apparently stems from how Jesse has exerted control over both their story and, by extension, her. This is seldom clearer than when Jesse importunes Céline into signing a copy of his novel for a female fan in the hotel lobby: ‘I can’t sign a book I didn’t write’, she objects; ‘she’d be happy to’, responds Jesse.

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That scene also gestures towards another issue. Céline reacts dismissively to the fan’s presumption that she is ‘the real Madeleine’ – saying, ‘people assume it’s me [in the novels], but it’s not me at all. He’s got a big imagination’. This echoes an earlier exchange about not Jesse’s novels, but the couple’s romantic past itself. Over lunch, upon learning how Céline and Jesse met, another houseguest suggests that it sounds ‘pretty romantic’. Céline’s laughing retort – ‘Not really, not really’ – hints at battle-scars sustained while trying to build a practicable relationship in the shadow of a ‘love story’ that has proved diffcult to live up to. Already back in Sunset, she admitted she found reading Jesse’s frst novel ‘disturbing’, partly because ‘it reminded me how genuinely romantic I was’. This represents another reason it may have been ‘weird for Céline, how she’s in the book’. The resultant discomfort has apparently only increased over time, as she has weathered ever-deeper disappointments within a relationship that grew from such an uncommonly ‘romantic’ creation myth. It now perhaps seems easier to resist the idea that their origin story was ever so romantic – to imagine that was always a product of Jesse’s ‘big imagination’ – than confront the gulf between their courtship narrative and their relationship’s present reality. And, tellingly, Midnight is ultimately only saved from concluding with romantic dissolution thanks to the couple’s willingness, once more, to agree to reimagine their story’s beginning. By Midnight’s fnal scene, an attempted romantic evening has escalated into the bitterest of arguments, culminating in Céline storming from their hotel room with the words,‘I just don’t love you anymore’. Having pursued her out to a public veranda, Jesse seeks to transport them – and us – back to that moment he impishly persuaded Céline to depart the train with him in Vienna. At that moment, in Sunrise, he asked her to imagine remembering this moment ‘ten, twenty years’ in the future, when she would fnd herself in a marriage that ‘doesn’t have that same energy it used to’. Contemplating her disappointing husband, she might daydream about past missed romantic opportunities – of which this chance to disembark with Jesse could be one. ‘Think of this as time travel’, he urged then; now, in Midnight, he pretends he is the time-traveller. ‘We’ve met before’, Jesse claims, ‘Summer ’94’, explaining he has travelled via time-machine to bring a message from Céline’s 82-year-old self: please, let this fawed man be her ‘escort’. He initially succeeds surprisingly well in drawing Céline into this fction. However, having answered largely ‘in

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character’ for a few minutes, Céline snaps them out of it: ‘Jesse, can you stop this stupid game? We’re not in one of your stories’. Intriguingly, he responds by accusing her of desiring the impossible perfection of a romance narrative:‘You want to live inside some fairy tale’, he tells her.8 ‘But if you want true love, then this is it: it’s not perfect, but it’s real’. A few moments of mournful, nearly tearful, silence later, Céline belatedly responds to Jesse’s fnal ‘I give up’, by tentatively resuming their makebelieve: ‘So, what about this time-machine…’? This merciful gesture allows them to fall back into firtatious riffng on that premise: ‘Am I going to have to get naked to operate it?’ asks Céline faux-innocently; at this, the camera starts slowly backing away as the couple continue their playful mutual seduction, and we end. At this crucial moment for their relationship, Céline and Jesse thus fnd themselves oscillating between two poles: role-playing a fantastical fction, and each upbraiding the other for naïvely indulging in romantic illusion. Both apparently wish to resist comforting fantasies, yet both correctly diagnose something idealistic about the other’s outlook. Jesse is behaving like a character in one of his novels – which invariably involve some play on human conceptions of time.9 Céline, though, is also surely deluded if she believes their (or any) romantic relationship is likely to survive without any degree of such shared fction-making.The question thus comes to be how a couple tells a story together. What seems to have hastened Céline’s alienation from their courtship narrative is Jesse’s increasing monopoly over it. The ‘love story’ they originated together has gradually lost for her its romance, yes, but also its reciprocal nature – once evident in the way both had narrativised the events of Sunrise, he in prose, she in song. In Midnight’s closing scene, Jesse likewise inaugurates the drama they both enact. If, despite this, we still nonetheless hope for a lasting future, that fragile hope rests on the flm’s last seconds, when the couple resume the tender charade. Importantly, Céline leads this fnal back-and-forth. Modifying the imaginary scenario’s terms, she voluntarily introduces a new, explicitly sexual dimension to the conceit (‘Am I going to have to get naked…’?). She also speaks the flm’s fnal words: ‘It must have been one hell of a night we’re about to have’. Referencing a line from the fctional letter Jesse is meant to be delivering, via a complex use of tenses, Céline describes their forthcoming evening from the vantage point of a distant future that will regard the hours to come as a distant past. This imagined far-fung

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future is one in which Jesse and Céline are not only still a couple, but so invested in maintaining their relationship that they have resorted to time travel to ensure its survival. An especially fagrant fction, this merely exaggerates the acts of shared storytelling that helped bring closure to Sunrise and Sunset. In the frst flm, the pair spun a last-minute reunion tale that substituted their ‘rational, adult’ plan for an invented utopian future. Resembling Midnight more closely still, Sunset left its couple half-in and half-outside of a play-acted scenario, communicating about the imminent consummation of their deferred reunion. And, like Céline’s song in Sunset, the time-travel story that concludes Midnight also requires the couple to become re-enchanted by the memory of Vienna in order to make love. Resuming and then rekindling their romantic relationship thus requires them to re-enact the sense of magic they experienced at their relationship’s creation. If they are to remain in love, this is seemingly the role their courtship narrative must continually play. Furthermore, it will need always to be both comfortingly familiar and open to creative revision. In Vienna, it could serve for them the role of a fateful encounter that must, against all odds, be granted the chance of a future. In Paris, it became a ‘one that got away’ plot that retrospectively ‘[made] divinely satisfactory sense out of the commonplace person’ (Kermode, 1967: 41). Now, to serve its function, it apparently needs retelling as a moment when Jesse simultaneously embodies Céline’s disappointing future husband and a savior she might send to rescue her. Equipped with this telling of their story, at this moment, they can end this night by agreeing to try to begin again. If this is the sense of an ending Midnight provides its characters, what of its audience? While for Céline and Jesse it is simply the end of a night, for us it is the end of a flm – potentially a series. Does it depict ‘by design a problem the author considers to be unsolvable’ (Ricoeur, 1985: 22); or are these characters still somehow made to resemble ‘questions waiting to be answered’ (Mernit, 2000: 17)? Once again, the hope seems precisely to create a tension between the two – a ‘co-existence of naïve acceptance and scepticism’ (Kermode, 1967: 17). Clearly, Midnight does not have an entirely ‘open’ ending: leaving the couple at the moment they resolve an argument, it cannot help but reassure – about what will immediately follow this conversation, if nothing more.Yet, neither is the ending in any sense conclusive: we are designedly left far more uncertain about the more distant future.To an extent, that ‘openness’ was dictated by this flm’s focus on a long-term relationship: if we weren’t going to be presented with its

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defnite dissolution, we could only witness a day in its ongoing ‘middle’. So, perhaps, it is partly this that causes what I experience as the flm’s increased self-consciousness about the diffculty of concluding this entry in particular. The sheer elaborateness of the fctional scenario spun by the couple this time around; the tonal lurch required to reorient their conversation around it; the tortuous syntax of Céline’s last line – all feel just slightly forced, and that feeling seems only partially explainable by the characters’ own strained self-consciousness about their role-play.10 I suspect that what I also sense in this ending, though, is artists straining to resolve a project that has increasingly become about the nature of narrativising, and thus in part about the problem of endings. Nothing summons this feeling more than Midnight’s fnal shot. Another long take (it begins prior to their last argument), by its end, this concluding shot has come to resemble – far more than either of its predecessors’ – the fnal image of a more conventional romance flm. Not only does it feature both lovers in frame, in a beautiful setting, looking into each others’ eyes, soundtracked by a melodious score; it is also captured via a camera that begins steadily tracking away from the pair at precisely the moment the tone of their exchange fnally becomes playful. Uncharacteristically rhetorical for the series’ visual style, this last recessional image seems at once incongruous and apt. Encountering such a deeply conventional closural gesture in this context invites us to weigh what is both familiar and unfamiliar about this moment. We know that no happy ending is truly ‘closed’, that it can only ever ‘happily appear to [be] so’.We also know that withdrawing from a fnal couple and gradually fading-out is the cinema’s visual shorthand for resolution. Not least because we can plausibly imagine yet further instalments eventually following this ending, it thus seems ftting that Midnight’s last formal gesture is to conclude that graceful receding shot not with a slow-fade, but instead – just in time, while this moment still remains hopeful – a sudden cut-to-black. ‘Appropriate cessation’, indeed.

Notes 1 Or, strictly, Twain’s narrator at the conclusion of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. 2 See Cenciarelli (2018) for another valuable discussion of Before Sunrise that refers to Kermode’s study, focused primarily on this inaugural flm’s use of music. 3 To that extent, this represents one more way the Before series could be described as creating, in Robin Wood’s evocative words, a feeling of

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4 5

6 7 8

‘complete openness within a closed and perfect classical form’ (1998: 325). All my writings on these flms (MacDowell, 2013: 141–149, 2017, 2021) are in a sense attempts to capture different facets of this aesthetic quality. This is virtually confrmed in Sunset when Jesse says,‘we were both afraid that if we started writing and calling, that it would slowly, you know, fade out’. Writing of this moment, Celestino Deleyto suggests the fact that ‘Céline now takes this open ending as a fantasy of romantic love is […] illustrative of the age of diminishing expectations in which she lives’ (2009: 159). I think this may underestimate, however, the extent to which the very openness of Sunrise’s ending encourages the viewer to experience ‘the tug of the longing for permanence’ (Wood, 1998: 165). See Cenciarelli (2018) on the assistance music provides to Sunrise’s sense of closure, too. At least in its most Gothic-infected iterations, like Gaslight (1944), Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), or Undercurrent (1946). The full line is, ‘You’re just like the little girls and everybody else: you want to live inside some fairy tale’. This references an earlier exchange in Midnight that was explicitly about the conventionality, closural power, and infuence of fnal couple happy endings. Speaking of their daughters’ investment in the concept of marriage, Céline says, It’s just all those fairy tales they like so much, you know? Remember when they were little: at the end of every cartoon, they’d be like, “They’re getting married!” Even if it was Pinocchio and his dad, Donald Duck and his nephews.

9 In addition to the titles of his two ‘Madeleine’ books (This Time, That Time), see also: the conceit he divulges to the journalists in Sunset (for a novel whose action takes place within the span of a pop song and revolves around the revelation that ‘time is a lie’), as well as the sketch he gives in Midnight of an idea he’s currently working on (a multi-protagonist story about a collection of characters with ‘brain abnormalities’ that cause them to perceive time in highly unusual ways). 10 This chimes with something Hawke expresses in the flm’s DVD commentary track: whereas ‘the other two movies had a very clear end-note’, he says, this one – what is the tone of it? Is it too happy, is it too sad, does the tone of it tell you they’re gonna break up, does the tone of it tell you they’re gonna stay together? Is any one thing too clear? It was very diffcult for us to fnd that.

References Altman, R. (1981) Genre:The Musical. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Britton, A. (2009) Britton on Film:The Complete Film Criticism of Andrew Britton. Barry Keith Grant, ed. London: Wayne State University Press.

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Cenciarelli, C. (2018) The Sense of an Ending: Music, Time and Romance in Before Sunrise. In: Louis Bayman and Natália Pinazza, eds. Journeys on Screen:Theory, Ethics, Aesthetics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 167–182. Deleyto, C. (2009) The Secret Life of Romantic Comedy. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Frye, N. (1963) Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology. New York: Harcourt. Giddens, A. (1992) The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love & Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Horton, R. (1995) Offhand Enchantment. Film Comment, 31 (1), p. 4. James, H. (1934) The Art of the Novel. London: Charles Scribner. Kermode, F. (1967) The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lodge, D. (1982) Working with Structuralism. London: Routledge. MacDowell, J. (2013) Happy Endings in Hollywood Cinema: Cliché, Convention, and the Final Couple. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. _____ (2017) To Be in the Moment: On (Almost) Not Noticing Time Passing in Before Sunrise. In: John Gibbs and Douglas Pye, eds. The Long Take: Critical Approaches. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 147–61. _____ (2021) [forthcoming] Comedy and Melodrama from Sunrise to Midnight. In: Maria San Filippo, ed. After Happily Ever After: Romantic Comedy in the Post-Romantic Age. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, pp. 47–65. Mernit, B. (2000) Writing the Romantic Comedy, New York: Harpur Collins. Murdoch, I. (1977) Against Dryness: A Polemical Sketch. In: Malcolm Bradbury, ed. The Novel Today. London: Fontana/Collins, pp. 23–31. Neale, S. (1986) Melodrama and Tears. Screen, 27 (6), pp. 6–23. Neupert, R. (1995) The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Ricoeur, P. (1985) Time and Narrative,Volume 2. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Shumway, D. R. (2003) Modern Love: Romance, Intimacy and the Marriage Crisis. London: New York University Press. Smith, B. H. (1968) Poetic Closure. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Twain, M. (1946) [1876] The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: Grosset and Dunlap. Wood, R. (1998) Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond. New York: Columbia University Press. Zacharek, S. (2004) Love Has to Be about More than Commitment. Salon, online: www.salon.com/ent/movies/int/2004/07/02/linklater/index.html, accessed January 2020.

Julie Delpy, interviewed by Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck “WE ARE EVERYTHING AND WE ARE NOTHING”

How would you describe your relation to philosophy? Is it something you’re interested in or have been interested in? The last year of school in France you study philosophy. For me, it was fnally something I was interested in. I was interested in literature as well, but philosophy was my favorite subject matter, and actually, I got my Baccalaureate only because of philosophy. Every other matter was a disaster because I didn’t go to school in that last year. I didn’t have time. I was shooting movies, you know.The only subject matter that was going to save me was philosophy, because I had read tons of philosophers and I knew the program by heart. So, I got 20 over 20. That was unusual, unheard of even. It was in the newspapers! And then, I didn’t pursue it as a study just because I went into flm and had to make a living. I had no time to study or go to school and didn’t have the money anyway. I needed to make a living because I wasn’t living with my parents anymore from the age of 17. But I kept on reading quite a lot. I would say that philosophy, weirdly enough, is a state of mind. Some people are attuned to it and some people are not. Like I have a friend who’s very much into literature but not into philosophy. It’s a very different thing. I’m more interested in philosophy than literature. And within literature, what I like is philosophy-driven literature. Philosophy studies human behavior but it’s a little more scientifc than literature. And that is the part I loved about philosophy, basically.

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Is there one philosophical question or one particular philosopher that you often return to in life? No, not really. I remember reading a ton of different philosophers when I was in my teens and then in my early twenties. And you know what, it kind of became part of my thinking in a way. I read everything. From Plato to Marx to political philosophy to Alain. I just didn’t stop. I remember reading the entire encyclopedia of philosophy, which was like a 5,000 pages. But I don’t remember being into one philosopher in particular.Though, at one point, I was really into Cioran, a French philosopher who was very depressed. They’re not always happy, philosophers, you know… (laughs) When Céline and Jesse frst meet on the train in Before Sunrise, they are both reading a book. Interestingly, your character is reading a book by a philosopher: Georges Bataille’s Histoire de l’oeil (Story of the Eye).Was that your choice? Yes! And why that book? I don’t remember why exactly, but I think I was reading it at the time and I really enjoyed it.What is really interesting to me is that it is a book that translates poorly in English. Because sexual slang in French can be very poetic and it’s not super poetic in English. It’s like there is something very lovely in French with dirty words. You can have beautiful poetry in English, and everything. But within the sexual realm, poets like Rimbaud and Baudelaire created a beauty that just doesn’t translate in English. French has a dirty language that is very poetic. It comes from the gutter, the streets of Paris. Bataille connects love, sex, and death in several interesting ways. Eroticism, as he once put it, is assenting to life up to the point of death. Isn’t this idea – that one has to fully acknowledge death in order to live one’s life to the fullest extent – one of the key themes of Before Sunrise? You know, even though we were not credited for it, Ethan and I wrote most of that frst flm. And I was obsessed with death. I am still obsessed with it. Death is all around us. In my life, it has been a constant presence. I always make a joke that the frst word I learned was ‘dead’/‘mort,’ because I found a little cat in the garbage which my father had put to sleep without telling me. I spent my childhood exposed to really terrifying things, like kids dying, accidents, and stuff that’s really, really dark.

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So, I was raised with this constant fear and anxiety about death. But there was nothing about death in the original screenplay that Richard sent me. Ethan and I added a lot about transience and mortality. So, I would say it’s a little bit my fault that there’s so much about death in the frst flm, because that’s something I talk about quite constantly. When you made that frst flm, you couldn’t foresee that it would attract such a cult following. But many people have since fallen in love with the Before trilogy. You have fans who devote signifcant parts of their lives thinking about these flms, who write fan-fction, who retrace the footsteps of the main characters, etc. Has something similar ever happened to you? Have you ever fallen desperately in love with a flm? Or with some other work of art? No, I wouldn’t say so. I’ve been in love with people, but not with works of art. I’m in love with the creative process, I would say, more than the work of art itself. For me, when I worked on Before Sunrise, I felt that something was missing in terms of a young woman’s point of view.There are very few stories that tell the true story of a young woman falling in love. I stumbled into my journals of when I was 12, 15, 20 years old and, you know, half of it is in Before Sunrise. My feelings about love, about death, about falling in love for the frst time: I put it all in the flms. But I wouldn’t say I have ever fallen in love with a flm. I have a love of cinema in general. But this includes very many flms. Almost like a puzzle, but there is not one piece in particular that I love. I love a giant colorful puzzle of lots of different flms, from Kieslowski, to Hitchcock, to Spielberg, to Bergman, to Cassavetes. I am more into this giant patchwork puzzle of different flms. And I do love flm as a storytelling device. I love the flm medium. I think it is a great way to tell a story, because you have visuals, poetry, music, philosophy – I always say you can have philosophy in flms! It puts together everything, you know. As one of the writers of the Before flms, you have been crucial in ensuring that the flms strike a balance between the male and female perspective. Has this been a smooth process, or was it sometimes a struggle to get the balance right? They listen to me like I’m their boss (laughs). Because they know I am the only woman in the room, right? They are really smart guys.They know they have to pay attention. I think Richard immediately understood the minute he met Ethan and me, even at the audition, that the part of the woman was going to be very important. If there was no

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balance, if it was a male fantasy about falling in love with a woman – I even talk about this in the flm! – it was just going to be another boys flm. Richard understood that what was going to make this flm special was to listen to the female voice as well, such that it was balanced. So, every time I’m in the room with them, and we have done it three times now, I can tell that they are listening to everything I have to say. Even if I say bullshit, they listen. I know they will listen very carefully. But do all three flms succeed in giving equal weight to both perspectives? We’re asking because one of our contributors has argued that Before Midnight seems more closely aligned with Jesse than Céline.1 For instance, when they fght and Céline storms out of the hotel room, the camera stays with Jesse, not Céline. So, we don’t see Céline’s emotional turmoil. Instead, we are invited to take up Jesse’s perspective in a series of POV shots. Well, maybe that’s because in the end there are two men in the room? After all, Richard is the director, so he decides who he keeps the camera on. The writing is the writing, and then the directing is the directing. Even though we contribute to the locations, the rehearsals, how we should do this and that… Richard has the decision-making power. He decided to make it a little more Jesse, you know. Which is fne, he is the director. He chose to tell how Jesse feels about her storming out and not about how she feels about it. You can only balance as much as you can as a writer and actor. In light of this, we are wondering what your views on the so-called ‘auteur theory’ are.Would you say that the Before flms are the product of an auteur, that is, someone whose individual style and control over all elements of production give the flms their personal and unique stamp? Or are there rather multiple auteurs in this case? Those flms are really the creation of the three of us. Even Richard would say this. Because he makes different flms when he is on his own, I make different flms when I am on my own, Ethan does different things. But when we get together, it is like we are the Beatles (laughs). There were the Beatles, and then Paul went his way, George his way, John, Ringo… It is a silly comparison but it is funny. My son’s obsessed with them that’s why I’m mentioning, not comparing talent of course! When the Before flms are discussed, they are often compared to other Linklater flms, but much less often to other flms you have made, even though there are many interesting parallels between the

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Before flms and, say, Two Days in Paris (2007) and Two Days in New York (2012). How do you see the relation between these different flm projects of yours? To what extent were you inspired by the Before flms and in what respect did you want to do something very different? I didn’t want to do anything as romantic. Because I put all my romanticism in the Before flms. In Two Days, I wanted more the journey of a woman who cannot fnd love in a way, who cannot fnd peace, and who is not defned by one love. In the Before flms, you have a woman and a man who are defned by this one love. We see them in love at 20, reconnect at 30, and disconnect maybe at 40 (or at least, their relationship is challenged). In Two Days, it is more about the journey of one person. And it’s quirkier and funnier and sillier, and there is family and friends involved. I didn’t want to make it about the same two people. And I wasn’t really inspired by the Before flms, because they are very, very different. Céline and Jesse do seem to be defned by this one love, although other types of love are acknowledged, especially in Before Midnight: love for one’s children, love of a profession, the friendship around the table when they are having dinner. Do you think that romance or romantic love is overrated? Romance is a very small part of love. You have all sorts of love. My love for my son is as powerful as any love I’ve had for anyone, if not more powerful. But it’s not portrayed as often. People love to talk about romantic love. But the love for my son is a 1,000 times more powerful than any love story I have experienced. No one talks about it. I would give my kidneys, my liver, my brain to him, you know if he needed it. In a way, you did thematize this in your recent flm Lolo, right? Yes, but that is a comedy. It’s not a very serious flm. My next flm is more about the true madness that it is to feel love for a child. You are going through uncharted territory. To me, that’s the tough love. I didn’t know that until I had a son. Are you referring to the flm My Zoë? Yes. It took me forever (until I had my son at 39) to suddenly realize that being a mother might be as interesting as falling in love with a man. When I was young, I was extremely romantic. You know, Romeo and Juliet, impossible love, eternal love, blah blah blah. But the truth is, when you get older, you realize there are other kinds of love and, for me, the love for children tops everything… My husband knows this, he’s ok with it (laughs).

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You mention Romeo and Juliet and stories of eternal love. If you expect your life or your relationship to match such stories, you are asking for trouble. Most people know this. At the same time, we turn to stories because they help us to make sense of the world. That’s arguably why flmmakers like yourself make movies. That’s why the characters in the Before flms constantly tell each other stories, in an attempt to come to grips with reality. So, in your view, are stories mainly helpful or deceitful? And what about the story that you’ve helped to create, that of Céline and Jesse? Is that a helpful tale or a deceitful fancy?2 Well, we tried to make it real. We did not try to fool people. But it is a fantasy. It never happened to me, it never happened to Ethan. It sort of happened to Richard but it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t as romantic. Everybody has had one night stands, but they are not always super romantic. They can be very unromantic, too. That would be the 20-minute version of Before Sunrise: they fuck on the train, they are done, they leave. Boom. Get it over with. Do stories damage? Of course, it’s a little bit like – this may sound mundane and boring - Instagram. You look at pictures of friends on holiday. You are in Greece, the most beautiful place of the world, and your friend is in Italy and you see her pictures and you think: What the fuck am I doing in Greece when I could be in Italy? You feel miserable. And then you go home and you see that friend and she says: where we were in Italy was the worst, the food was disgusting, it was a flthy place… And you go: What?! What do you mean? It looked like it was heaven? It is all in the representation of things. And it does make people feel bad. It is like news about famous people. It makes you feel bad about your life. Or it makes you feel good when you hear they have a miserable life. It’s always this idea of representing something which is not real.That is storytelling. Instagram is another version of storytelling that people do now. A terrible one, but it exists. It’s part of our world now. What does storytelling do to people? It is making them dream, it is making them suffer as well. But can we stop storytelling? I don’t think so. People are living on it. They like it. They like being told a fantasy. Little girls dream about prince charming, they still do.Then, they end up with a fucking drunk or just a regular guy and they are miserable their whole life thinking they did not get the good guy. But the reality is very simple. It’s as good as it gets. Life is a very simple thing.There is nothing

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extraordinary usually in life. 99.99% of people have a very normal life. That is the way it is. Maybe Before Midnight is the closest thing to what life is. The frst and second flms are completely romantic fantasies, right? Connecting and reconnecting.The third one, which I like in part the best for that reason, is about the diffculties of being together. It is not as rosy. Some people were like: ‘Oh shit, why did you break the romance?’ But the truth is: how do you sustain a perfect romantic relationship of ten years? It becomes a whole other thing, you know? Some have argued that Before Midnight is actually a melodrama, whereas the other two flms are romantic comedies.3 After all, a romantic comedy typically deals with the promise of a couple, whereas a melodrama tends to depict the diffculties of a marriage or a long-term relationship. In a romantic comedy, love is depicted as liberating, but in the world of melodrama, love and desire tend to feel oppressive.What do you think of this idea that there’s actually a shift in genre in the trilogy? And did it ever give you pause that, in making the third flm, you might be changing the nature of the frst flm? Because what might have been a standalone romantic comedy has now been transformed into merely the frst act of an ongoing melodrama. Obviously, the last flm affects the two frst flms. It is a last chapter to the reality of love. It’s a bittersweet kind of thing. It’s not easy.To sustain romantic love is just impossible, actually. I mean, you can still connect with someone. But it is not as romantic. If we had done a fourth one, it might have affected it even more. So, maybe it’s better we stick to three. Because we don’t want to go into drama – not melodrama, but full-on drama.That would be too much of a shift in tone. But that’s the reality. Life unfolds and it gets harder. You get sicker and older and the reality is that people die. Do we want to go there? I don’t know. But people do die eventually, and that’s something that will happen to everyone. No matter how in love you were at 20, no matter how beautiful it was at 30, no matter how conficted you were at 40: you are going to die. This is the sad reality for all of us. It is revolting, it is upsetting, it is wrong, it is unfair. But it is the human condition. True. Céline and Jesse often refect on the human condition in their conversations and in that respect the flms address themes that are timeless. But in another respect they are also very much of their time. You mentioned Instagram just now: the internet and social media

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weren’t there when Before Sunrise was made. It was a different world. That you could lose track of someone for nine years, without any trace, might be hard to grasp for millennials with their smartphones and online profles. Or do you think that the twentysomethings of today will be able to relate to the flms in the way that we did? Céline and Jesse could have exchanged phone numbers, but they decided not to. If they had exchanged phone numbers, they could have at least warned each other if they weren’t able to show up. But they decide not to do that out of some completely impossible romantic idea – a Romeo and Juliet type of thing, you know. Of course, they didn’t meet up. This was a set-up for romantic ideas – impossible romantic ideas – which we picked up from the frst flm to put in the second flm. It was a good set-up to add some kind of fuel to an impossible love story. The thing is, you could still do it today. You could still say, we don’t exchange Instagram, etc. You could still set it up that way. But in a way, I don’t think it matters.You watch movies from the 80s and you’re still interested, even if the characters don’t have cell phones or internet and are not on Instagram. You still go for stories, you know? My son is 11, but he constantly watches flms from the 80s, from the 70s, from the 60s. He loves older flms, and he really doesn’t give a shit that there is not all this technology. He kind of likes it actually. He’d say ‘Mum, it was so cool back then.’ What about conversations? Céline and Jesse really master the art of conversation, but is that an art that will be lost now that everyone is on WhatsApp and Twitter? No, not necessarily. You know what the problem is right now? I’m afraid we are getting dumber. Because we’re only reading the headlines. At least in America right now. I don’t know how it is in Europe, but here, more and more people are just reading the headlines. We rarely read an article from beginning to end. And it becomes a problem because we do not have a deep knowledge of things. We have a lot of information, but it is superfcial. If you have a superfcial kind of knowledge, how deep can your conversation be? You should do a philosophical book on Idiocracy, you know, the Mike Judge movie? That’s the future of humanity. Even more so than 1984. Because I think we are getting dumber. I am not saying everyone, but I am talking about a good portion of the population. Lack of education is a real problem. And especially good free education for everyone. A lot of

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people in America think that Covid is a hoax, and that it is fake news. So, I think we need to be very, very careful, because if that number of people grows, we are fnished. Humanity is done for. We are not going to make it because our stupidity will bring us to destroy the planet completely. If you are not interested in the depth of things, you cannot have long conversations because you don’t have anything to say. You are like: oh let’s take a picture, let’s take a selfe. We can do the 2020 version of Before Sunrise: they meet on the train, they take a selfe, they fuck in the toilet (laughs). Only, I don’t think people will like that version. Because young people are still hungry for romance. It’s a natural need. People want to be in love. People don’t want superfcial stuff. But society is trying to drag us toward stupidity. Because it is easier to control stupid people than it is to control intelligent people who can think for themselves. I think it’s going to change because the younger generation – not the ‘inbetweeners’ who kind of got lost in the middle – but the youngest generation: they want social justice, they want to be heard. But people have to go deep into subject matters. They have to read philosophy, basically. Can we put this on the cover of our book? Sure! The truth is: education is everything, right? The fact that in France, in the last year of school, you have philosophy that makes all the difference. If you are poor and go to a public school, you have philosophy. I was raised with no money, I did not go to a private school, I went to the most basic public school you can imagine, but I had philosophy. I believe that if you have one year of philosophy in your teens, it will change you forever. It will change you into another person. Just that. It is funny, you know, because I agreed to do this interview because I am actually very adamant that philosophy should be mandatory in schools. Because it makes you think for yourself for the rest of your life. And America needs it more than any other country in the world. Every American should be exposed to philosophy, so they can think for themselves. The people that have the money to go to school, yes, they can study philosophy here. But it should be mandatory. When you are 15, you should study philosophy before you end school.4 They are trying to destroy that in France, too, you know? It is one of the most tragic things. They are trying to remove philosophy, whereas I think it’s what defnes French people. When I go to France, I feel that I

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am in a country with people who are thinking for themselves.That really is because most had to go through that one year of philosophy, whether you like it or not. You mentioned social justice and that brings us to another question we wanted to ask.What would you say to those who want to dismiss the Before trilogy as flms for privileged straight white people? Jesse and Céline are privileged, straight, and white, yes. But you can’t deny that such people exist, right? That would be ridiculous. And truly, I know a lot of people that are not straight, not white, not privileged who love the flms. Really, I think it is media bullshit. Because the media, who are 90% white and privileged and straight, are trying to put into people’s heads that it is a war between white and black. You know what, the streets have the true voice. And when you were on the streets during the demonstrations a few weeks ago, it was white, black, Asian, gay, straight, trans, young, and old. No age, no color, no nothing. The reality of people. People are people you know. And leaders and the media is something else. Making a flm about two people falling in love who happen to be white and straight … that’s our story. If someone wants to tell their story, they should tell their story, you know, and be given the chance to tell their story, obviously. Things are changing now. And I am happy to see a flm of two non-white, non-straight, non-privileged people falling in love. And I have seen some. But why shouldn’t we talk about what’s personal. For me, it’s easier to talk about a white woman falling in love. We want to end with a more existential question: What, for you, constitutes a meaningful life? Is it easy for you to experience life as meaningful, or does it often appear absurd and meaningless to you? We are everything and we are nothing. It is just the big paradox of being alive. We’re tiny details, yet we are details. Each life, you know? In the realm of the universe, we are absolutely nothing.Yet, we are so meaningful to some people. It’s a paradox. Sometimes, yes, it seems absurd. What is the most absurd to me is consciousness: the consciousness of being alive, the possibility of thinking, the complexity of thought. And all this is gone the minute you die – unless you live in Philip K Dick’s UBIK, where you can still talk to the dead a little bit because they are only semi-dead, never completely dead. But that is not the case. When you are done, you die, and your consciousness is gone. And the only thing that is left is basically your children and whatever trace you left. And, anyway, that trace then becomes someone else’s story because people

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will change what you said. People will make it their own. I was about to adapt the story of Janis Joplin – it’s not going to happen because the rights are blocked, but it was so interesting to fgure out. There are different versions of her death. No one knows what happened exactly. Some people said she OD’d, but others say that she didn’t OD, that she was sick. I heard many stories. What really happened? She was madly in love with a guy in Brazil, but some other people say that is bullshit and that she was in love with her drug dealer. So, you have all these different stories. And in the end, she is dead. She cannot tell us what her story is. So, when you die, you are done, and you are done with telling your story. Even if you’re not a public fgure, a family member may change the story of who you were. It’s kind of a second death, to me. Not only are you dead, but now people are telling your story from their point of view and it’s completely biased. There is something very absurd about all this. But that is the way it is, you know. And the best thing you can do is raise your children well and do some gardening. And that’s about it.

Notes 1 James MacDowell in ‘Before Sunrise after Before Midnight: genre and gender in the Before series’ (2013). 2 This question is inspired by Marya Schechtman’s chapter in this volume. 3 See MacDowell (2013). 4 In one of his last interviews, Arthur C. Danto made a very similar point: In France, when you fnish high school you have to do Philo-Lettres: that’s going to be your terminal class. It’s really important for French people and French culture that pupils have read Descartes, Kant, Comte and that they’ve thought philosophically. I also think that’s important.When you look at the politicians we have in this country right at the moment, they read the Bible! Which is OK, but there’s no discipline there.Whereas, in ‘la classe terminal’ in France it’s there. (Maes, 2017: 61)

References MacDowell, J. (2013) Before Sunrise after Before Midnight: Genre and Gender in the Before Series’. Alternate Takes, http://www.alternatetakes.co.uk/?2013,9,524 (accessed 01 May 2020). Maes, H. (2017) The Commonplace Raised to a Higher Power: A Conversation with Arthur Danto. In his: Conversations on Art and Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 49–81.

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Index

Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. absolute value 151–153 Ace, Goodman 121, 124 aesthetic experience 45, 61, 122–125, 128, 132 aesthetic melancholy 45, 61, 62 aesthetic perception 45 All I Need is Love (Kinski) 16, 139 allusive temporality 91–95 Alt & Neu 85–91 Annis, David 104 Antonioni, Michelangelo 93 Aristotle 105, 150 Arnheim, Rudolf 120 art, creating 16–23 Art as Experience (Dewey) 122 artistic narratives 85 ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ (Auden) 37, 99, 142 As Slow as Possible (Cage) 85, 86 Auden, W.H. 37, 46, 61, 142, 143; ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ 37, 99, 142 Austerlitz (Sebald) 53 auteur theory 197 The Awful Truth 179

Bataille, Georges 16, 138, 195–196; Story of the Eye 195 Baudelaire, C. 144; ‘Get Drunk’ 144 Bazin, André 88, 120 Before Midnight (Linklater) 1, 7, 12, 14–15, 17, 20, 22, 24, 25, 35, 41–64, 84, 95, 112–114, 139, 158, 197, 198, 200; happy ending 185–191; love because of time past 147–149; ‘relational vertigo’ in 65–82; situation of 66–68 Before Sunrise (Linklater) 1, 6, 7, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 32, 38, 39, 41–64, 84, 90–93, 95, 107–109, 158, 201; happy ending 176–180; love against time 142–145 Before Sunset (Linklater) 1, 7, 12, 15–18, 20, 25, 32, 38, 41–64, 84, 92, 93, 109–112, 158; happy ending 180–185; love in spite of time lost 145–147 Before the End 158 Before trilogy 2, 6–7, 13, 16, 19, 23, 28, 29, 32, 36, 42, 51, 58, 60,

206 INDEX 62, 88, 92, 98, 140, 159, 160, 196; aesthetics, conversation 121–125; cinematic conversations 134–136; faces of conversation 119–137; Before Midnight 131–134; Before Sunrise 125–128; Before Sunset 128–131; time and transcendence in 24–39 Benning, James 86, 87; One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later 87; 13 Lakes 87 Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron 111 Bergensbanen – minutt for minutt (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) 89 Bergman, Ingrid 95 Berlin: Symphony of a City (Ruttmann) 91 The Best Summer of My Life 51 biographical understanding 75 Bloom, Kath 54, 83; Come Here 54 Brady, E. 51 Brand, Steward 85 break-up 170 Brief Encounter (David Lean) 57 Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah) 57 Bring Me the Horns of Wilmington’s Cow 57 Cacoyannis, Michael: Zorba the Greek 57 Cage, John 85, 86; As Slow as Possible 85, 86 Casablanca (Curtiz) 57 Cavalcanti, Alberto 91; Rien que les heures 91 Chekhov, Anton 42, 45; The Lady with the Dog 42 child/children 63, 66, 67, 71–72, 77, 78, 111, 115, 139, 143, 153–154, 198, 203, 204 cinema 4, 120, 134, 135, 160, 176, 191, 196 cinephile 56, 58, 86, 87, 160 Come Here (Bloom) 54 communication 39, 67, 73, 114, 119, 121, 122, 125, 132, 136, 160 complexity: rational and moral 114–117

constitution 36–39 constructed narratives 25, 27–31, 33, 39 contingency 72, 162 conversation-centered flms 120, 126, 136 conversations 4, 13, 51, 119–136, 145, 201 Corinthians 1:13 141 Cowley, Christopher 65–82 creativity 10, 17, 18, 122, 134 Curtiz, Michael: Casablanca 57 Davidson, Donald 120–122 day-to-day life poetry 6–23 The Dead (Joyce) 44, 54, 58 death 4, 44, 52, 138–143, 145–147, 149, 154, 195, 196, 204 The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Tolstoy) 44 Delpy, Julie 1, 17, 52, 159; interview with 194–204 depression 70 devotion 165–170 Dewey, John 120, 122–124; Art as Experience 122 diachronic holism 36 diachronic shape, romances 29 dialogue 58, 59, 63, 66, 95, 97–99, 108, 139, 142, 144, 146, 147 Didion, Joan 34; ‘On Keeping a Notebook’ 34 Dido and Aeneas (Purcell) 15, 51, 158 diffuse mood 94 Double Play (Klinger) 86 Ebels-Duggan, Kyla 160 Einstein: The World as I See It 146 emotional experience 2 emotions 33, 34, 42–44, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 161, 163, 165, 167, 169 ending 134, 174–177, 179–187, 190, 191 epic intimacy 83–101; allusive temporality 91–95; Alt & Neu 85–91; flm as philosophy 96–99

INDEX

episodic character 126, 127, 135 episodic memories 33–35 experiential knowledge 105 expressiveness 58, 59 extrinsic luck 81n12 falling in love 106, 107, 109, 110, 157–159, 161, 163, 165, 167, 196–198, 203 fction 4, 23, 25, 26, 59, 175, 181, 188–190, 196 fctional romance 25 flm series, falling in love 157–172; devotion, mourning and interaction 168–171; liking, loving and judging 159–162; rationality, irrationality and contingency 162–165; tripartite view 165–168; truly, madly and deeply 157–159 Ford, Mary 34 Forster, E.M. 154; Howards End 154 The 400 Blows (Neupert) 177, 179 Frankfurt, Harry 69, 106, 152, 153, 169, 170 friendship 7–9, 23, 44, 86, 105, 106, 113, 198 Gabriel 44, 45 Gaut, Berys 134 ‘Get Drunk’ (Baudelaire) 144 Giddens, Anthony 176 Goldie, Peter 33 grandmother 48, 49, 51, 52, 55, 56, 108, 109, 139, 142, 145, 148, 181, 182 Gregory, André 126; My Dinner with André 126, 134 The Guardian (Wood) 159 Haapala, A. 51 happiness 23, 44, 48, 50, 106, 112, 113, 150, 151, 159, 168 Hawke, Ethan 1, 79, 159 Howards End (Forster) 154 Huston, John 54

207

idiocracy 201 imaginative understanding 68, 75–76 intelligibility 30 interpretation 9–12 interpretations 8, 9, 12, 32, 72, 140 intimacy 83–85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 113–117 intimate relationships 2, 68–69, 72–74, 77, 115, 181; ‘Darwinian’ conception of 74 intrinsic luck 81n12 Jeske, Diane 102–117 Joplin, Janis 204 Journey to Italy (Rossellini) 57, 58 Joyce, James 16, 44, 45, 54, 58, 91; The Dead 44; Ulysses 16, 91 justifcation 102–107, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117 Just in Time (Simone) 52 Kant, Immanuel 151, 162 Karenina, Anna 71–73 Kermode, Frank 175 Kinski, Klaus 16, 139; All I Need is Love 16, 139 Klinger, Gabe: Double Play 86 Kolodny, Niko 81n15 Kupfer, Joseph 104, 106 The Lady with the Dog (Chekhov) 42 Lassally, Walter 57 Lean, David: Brief Encounter 57 L’eclisse 94 Letter from an Unknown Woman 56, 92 Lewis, David 98; On the Plurality of Worlds? 98 Linklater, Richard 52, 78, 84, 87, 97–99, 102–104, 110, 114, 116, 119, 145, 160, 197–198; Before Midnight 1, 7, 12, 14–15, 17, 20, 22, 24, 25, 35, 41–64, 84, 95, 112–114, 139, 158, 197, 198, 200; Slacker 92; Before Sunrise 1, 6, 7, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 32, 38, 39, 41–64, 84, 90–93,

208 INDEX 95, 107–109, 158, 201; Before Sunset 1, 7, 12, 15–18, 20, 25, 32, 38, 41–64, 84, 92, 93, 109–112, 158; Waking Life 149 The Living Daylights 92 Living Life (McCarthy) 52 love 16–23, 104–107, 140 love stories 2, 24–26, 37, 188, 189, 198, 201 loving relationship 12, 76, 171 MacDowell, James 81n16, 174–192 Maes, Hans 1–5, 41–64, 157–172, 194–204; melancholy, trilogy of 41–64 Malcolm, Derek 171 Manhatta (Sheeler and Strand) 91 marriage 12–15, 18, 19, 66, 68, 77, 78, 95, 108, 110, 167, 174 Martin, Adrienne 114 McCarthy, Kathy 52; Living Life 52 meaning 4, 5, 31, 32, 72, 74, 121, 122, 140, 143, 165, 166, 170, 171 melancholy 2, 41–53, 55, 58–62; aesthetic 61; audience and 58–62; characters 46–51; flms and 51–58; trilogy 41–64 melodrama 182, 187, 200 memento mori 4, 28, 59, 138, 139, 141, 142, 145, 147, 154 memories 18, 29, 32–35, 132, 140, 146, 182, 190 mental time travel 34, 35 Mill, J.S. 150, 151 Milligan, Tony 170 Minnelli, Vincente 57 monolingualism 78 morality 23, 71, 140, 150, 151 moral luck 76 Moral Luck (Williams) 68 ‘Moral Luck’ (Williams) 71 multi-perspectivalism 33–36 Murdoch, Iris 81n14, 175

Murnau: Sunrise 57 mutual direction 9–12 My Dinner with André (Gregory and Stevens) 126, 134 narrative closure 4, 5, 175, 176 narratives 5, 7, 25–33, 36–37, 39, 85, 86, 174–192 Neale, Steve 182 Nedelsky, J. 68 neo-realist/neo-realism 88–91, 93, 95 Nescio: Titaantjes 163 Neupert, Richard 177, 179; The 400 Blows 177, 179 non-fction 91 Notre-Dame 61, 171 “An Ocean Apart” (Delpy) 17 An Ocean Apart (Delpy) 52 One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (Benning) 87 ‘On Keeping a Notebook’ (Didion) 34 On the Plurality of Worlds? (Lewis) 98 optimistic/optimism 23, 52, 81, 184 Ozu sequence 52–54 Paul, Les 34 Peckinpah, Sam 57; Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia 57 perfect vs. real 16–23 personal identity 27–28, 97 ‘Persons, Character and Morality’ (Williams) 151 philosophical conversation 1 philosophy 1, 4, 5, 74, 75, 96, 99, 159, 194–196, 202, 203 poem 6, 10, 12, 37, 46, 53, 61, 109, 143, 144, 157, 164 poetry 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 11–13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 195, 196 political philosophy 195 Puolakka, Kalle 119–137 Purcell: Dido and Aeneas 15, 51, 158

INDEX

radical contingency 72 rationality 3, 4, 103, 111, 115, 116, 152, 162 real-life relationships 2, 24–25, 30–32, 35 real-life romances 2, 24–26, 31, 37 relational autonomy 68–73, 76; Anna Karenina 71–73; flm and 76–79 relational vertigo 2, 65–82; love and understanding 73–76; relational autonomy and 68–73 Reynolds, Graham 51 Ribeiro, Anna Christina 138–155 Ricoeur, Paul 175 Rien que les heures (Cavalcanti) 91 Robinson, Jenefer 43, 58 Rolling Stone 26 romance 13, 31, 55, 103, 174–177, 179, 181, 183, 185, 189, 191, 198 romantic attraction 3, 102–117; love, romance, and justifcation 104–107; Before Midnight 112–114; rational and moral complexity 114–117; Before Sunrise 107–109; Before Sunset 109–112 romantic bullshit 109 romantic comedy 102, 177, 185, 187, 200 romantic love 3, 4, 102, 103, 106, 113, 139, 141, 153, 154, 176, 180, 181, 198; life’s summum bonum 149–154 romantic partners 115, 116, 153, 170 romantic relationships 2, 7–9, 12, 15, 16, 27–29, 32, 33, 36–38, 103, 114, 115, 189–190 Rossellini, Roberto 57, 95; Journey to Italy 57; Viaggio in Italia 95 Ruttmann, Walter 91; Berlin: Symphony of a City 91

209

Sanders, George 95 Schaubroeck, Katrien 1–5, 157–172, 194–204 Schechtman, Marya 24–39 Scorpio 92 Sebald, W.G. 53; Austerlitz 53 self-conception 105 self-consciousness 97 semantic memory 34 The Sense of an Ending 176 sense of happy ending 174–192 Seurat, George 127; Two Clowns 93 sex 11, 12, 15, 19, 20, 22, 108, 110, 113, 187, 195 sexual relationship 113 Sheeler, Charles 91; Manhatta 91 Shpall, Sam 165–172 Simone, Nina 17, 52, 184, 185; Just in Time 52 Slacker (Linklater) 92, 97, 98 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein 175 Smith, Michael 6–23 Smith, Murray 83–101 social justice 203 Solomon, Robert 111 Some Came Running 57 Stevens, Wallace 126; My Dinner with André 126, 134 story 2, 18, 19, 24–29, 39, 49–51, 177–179, 186, 188, 203, 204 Story of the Eye (Bataille) 195 storytelling 25, 199 Strand, Paul 91; Manhatta 91 Sunrise (Murnau) 57 temporal experience 27, 30, 32, 33, 36–38 temporality 2, 3, 25, 26, 33–36, 38, 85, 91 temporal structure, elements 27–32 The Third Man 56, 92 13 Lakes (Benning) 87 This Time 17–19 Thomas, Dylan 37

210 INDEX time 14, 21, 22, 25, 26, 33, 37, 39, 52, 84, 95, 97, 138–140, 142, 143, 147, 149, 188 Titaantjes (Nescio) 163 Tolstoy, Lev 42, 44, 45; The Death of Ivan Ilyich 44; War and Peace 42 transcendence 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35–39 trilogy 2–5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 24, 60, 61, 119, 120, 135, 136, 138, 139, 165; structure 26 tripartite view 165, 168–170 Truffaut, François 177 Tulving, Endel 34 Two Clowns (Seurat) 93 Two Days in New York 198 Two Days in Paris 198

Velleman, David 161 Viaggio in Italia (Rossellini) 95 vulnerability 12, 68, 69, 75, 166–170

Ulysses (Joyce) 16, 63, 91

Zorba the Greek (Cacoyannis) 57

Waking Life (Linklater) 7, 149 War and Peace (Tolstoy) 42 well-being 8, 166, 167, 169, 170 Wikipedia 79n1 Williams, Bernard 68, 71–73, 80n10, 80n11, 81n12, 115, 151, 152; Moral Luck 68; ‘Persons, Character and Morality’ 151 Wood, Robin 158, 171, 180; The Guardian 159 work of art 90, 157–162, 164, 167, 170–172, 196 The World as I See It (Einstein) 146