The ‘Before Sunrise’ Movies Are a Rorschach Test For How You Think About Life (and Love)

Richard Linklater’s trilogy of Before movies are among the great miracles of modern cinema. Beginning with Before Sunrise in 1995, continuing with Before Sunset in 2004, and concluding with Before Midnight, released five years ago today in 2013 (we’re only four years away from Before Daylight Savings Time, and I am truly psyched), they’re the wordiest and possibly the wisest of all American trilogies, and their mere existence is a wonder. A talky mid-’90s movie about a gap-year American (Ethan Hawke) in Vienna who meets a beautiful French woman (Julie Delpy), and together they spend one long night together, flirting and sharing their outlooks on life and taking in the local color; a movie that hardly made any money and won no awards; that movie ended up spawning two sequels, each one better reviewed than the last, and creating one of the most cohesive, meaningful, and beloved movie trilogies in history.

How that happened has a lot to do with why the films are so beloved. Before Sunrise seemed like a typical mid-’90s meet-cute romantic comedy on the surface, but its secret weapon, that unapologetic talkiness, is pure Linklater. In all his best movies up to this point, from Slacker to Dazed and Confused, the best moments were these leisurely unfolding parking-lot symposiums where characters would banter about their theories of the world, their lives, their own humble experiences. These scenes always had the air of the college-sophomore to them, and Linklater knew it, but he also knew that the point was never whether the philosophies checked out but what they said about the characters who were espousing them. Enlightenment has never been the goal in Linklater’s films, even the heavily rambling ones like Waking Life. The joy is in the conversation, and in putting the audience in that after-midnight headspace where the world around you has quieted and you take a moment with a friend or a potential lover or an old flame or your longtime partner and talk about things that are bigger then yourselves.

Before Sunrise didn’t make much money — a shade over $5 million domestic — but it still managed to double its teensy budget while also riding the post-Reality Bites Ethan Hawke wave to some trend publicity. For a movie that opened so small, I remember seeing a lot of commercials for it on MTV, set to a Gen-X-friendly Lemonheads song. So for a movie that not many people actually saw (at least at first), it was sticky. Also the critics loved it, and thus when an unlikely sequel showed up in 2004, seemingly as a nostalgic lark for Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy, the critics were ready and waiting. It’s that critical response, and a determination to surface what is rare and special about these movies, that helped propel both Before Sunset and Before Midnight to Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominations.

With most trilogies, the hierarchies are easy to determine. Godfather and Godfather Part II jockey for the top slot, while Godfather Part III languishes far behind. The Star Wars movies are constantly being locked down into canonical rankings. What’s great about the Before films is that not only is there no clear hierarchy as to which one is the best/middle/worst, but your reasons for preferring one over the others end up saying a lot more about you than they do about the movies. It’s that Linklater thing again; it’s less about being right than about the conversation you’re having about it. I am a Sunrise guy. I am friends with many a Midnight partisan. Sunset narrowly won the straw poll I took while writing this paragraph, ten friends split almost evenly as to which of the three was their favorite. All three films are great, and all three have something real and true and resonant to say about life and relationships, but which one speaks to you most clearly I think says something about your own perspective.

Before Sunrise appeals to me for how much it evokes a kind of youth that’s fleeting and gone, and yet I’m desperate to recapture it, however briefly. Sunrise is the most ephemeral of the three, the one whose charms aren’t meant to last. This series benefits so much from not being a planned-out trilogy. Each film has been made as if it’s the last. The whole point of the end of Sunrise is that you’re supposed to wonder whether they ever met up again. There is no tomorrow to this movie, so all that matters is what happens in this one night. If Sunrise is your favorite, there’s something longing about that. A yearning for fleeting moments that are gone and won’t ever come back. Or else you’re just not ready to move on from mid-’90s Ethan Hawke, which: very fair.

Before Sunset is your favorite if you’re into the idea of second chances or recreating lost moments. Nine years later, Hawke’s character is on a book tour in Paris, selling a novel that is based seemingly on his one night in Vienna with Celine, who shows up at his reading, and they stroll around Paris, including one fairly magical boat ride down the Seine. Their conversation meanders much like in Sunrise, but there’s less airy weightlessness to it. They have history now, and regrets, and a few burgeoning resentments. Life has intervened in the past nine years, and all this conversation is no longer theoretical. Sunset appeals to you if that youthful naivete of Sunrise chafes just enough that the colder water of Sunset feels like sharp relief, which then lets you appreciate the incredibly, improbably romantic final twenty minutes from more solid ground. Sunset is also your fave if you’re into the happy medium between the fantasies of youth and the uglier realities of middle age. Which brings us to …

Before Midnight is your favorite if you strongly believe that these kids just don’t know. All of the romantic youthfulness of Sunrise at this point feels like a comforting story we’ve told about two completely different people. Jesse and Celine haven’t curdled, exactly, but the realities of marriage and kids and age and responsibility have chipped away at the romanticism that brought them together in 1995 and reunited them in 2004. Yet Linklater doesn’t have much interest in rubbing his characters’ or his audience’s noses in it. The message in Midnight isn’t that romance dies or that love curdles. It’s that relationships are work and that the stories we’ve always told about each other need checking. Before Midnight is the toughest of the three films, but coming through it feels the most rewarding in a way. It lets you look back on the previous two films with more perspective and a little bit of hard-won judgment.

Where to stream Before Sunrise

Where to stream Before Sunset

Where to stream Before Midnight