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.
