Strangers On A Train- New Style-Timing Is Everything- Ethan Hawke And Julie Delpy’s Before Sunrise (1995)-Before Sunset (2004)-Before Midnight (2013)-Film Review 

DVD Review

By Alden Riley

Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), Before Midnight (2013), starring Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawkes, directed by master filmmaker of the long story line Richard Linklater

Finally I get an assignment that at least has some relevance to me this trifecta-trilogy under the banner of Before Midnight, Sunrise, Sunset it does not matter which goes first although Sunrise in 1995 when the star-crossed saga begins and set the stage for the sequels it is all the same story of mostly thwarted love between the same two characters and the same two actors, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke playing those characters. I will get to the relatively simple, if any human relationships which depend on time ever are simple but let me relate what has been going on to make me make the initial sentence to this piece.

This reprieve after a slew of turkeys blowing smoke over the remains of the sexploitation of the James Bond 007 series under either the Sean Connery regime or the Pierce Brosnan regime where Sandy Salmon and I had to stage a mock “fight” over who was more Bond-ish of the two contestants. Leslie Dumont who now is writing in this space after a long absence would call it the “good old boys” covering up for the bam-bam and eye candy of those mercilessly misanthropic films. Which both Sandy Salmon and I were lambasted for mercilessly by name-and maybe rightly. Then there was that unspeakable craziness around new site manager Greg Green’s ill-begotten attempts to be relevant to the younger crowd by digging down in the mud and going crazy over popcorn-drenched and soda-addled kids with a bunch of reviews on puffed up super-heroes like Batman, Superman, Ironman, Wonder Women and that clot of mutants. I barely made that assignment out alive. Made me wish for the days not so long ago when I was force-fed into an assignment, a documentary about Janis Joplin whom I had never heard of, and which at least did not leave me brain-dead although I still don’t know what the big deal was about her and her admittedly too short live. (That was before Greg’s time, a time when the previous site manager went crazy over his, and half the writers here, youthful excesses in commemorating the Summer of Love, 1967, and I, clueless made the mistake of publicly saying I didn’t know who Janis Joplin was and drew a biopic assignment over Sandy’s head from that guy. That event thereafter started the whole process of regime chance which we are just starting to stabilize now-not without blips like super-secret agents and mutant super-heroes.   

Back to the future now though, hopefully. These three films are really a departure since they start on a wicked premise. The two parties meet in Vienna on a train and before you know after hours of intense, witty and arch conversation they are bedded, well, not bedded but rolling in the grass before parting their separate ways. A one night stand when all was said and done with no regrets, a least not enough that they were not so sexually-frenzied that they “forgot” to get each other telephone numbers if not addresses. Frankly I was embarrassed, I blushed when that happened.  Even a holy goof of a high school student would know that was stupid and unheard of. Yeah, a strictly high school sophomore mistake, and maybe really a middle school mistake, which would put you on the dungheap of the school social pecking order.     

Story over, done. Well not quite since they just so happen to meet in New York City nine years later. Not by accident but because the guy had written a thinly-veiled account of their one night of love, one night of sin, shades of Elvis but even he had a hotter version of one night of sin which is the star this one should go under and she meets him at a book signing. They have had separate married lives and he a kid so this one day is fraught with all kinds of missed opportunities.

But there is hope. That wife of his is a bitch and so in the end they will be able to unite. The saga ends with them united but in a “normal” straight-laced “modern marriage” living together with two kids like everybody else in the world. Maybe they are happy, maybe not but throughout all three efforts they try to make all kinds of existential, witty, arch intellectual conversation which saves the story-line which at least has the virtue of making things interesting. The third part of the trilogy maybe did not have to be made but Linklatter (and Hawkes and Deply who co-write) liked to grab the long view. Well worth seeing, seeing in order so you want to view the next one, and the next one even if that last one didn’t have to be made.