Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight

A Philosophical Exploration

Hans Maes, Katrien Schaubroeck, Hans Maes, Katrien Schaubroeck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429537066
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Digital Media
• Index: Computer Science

Richard Linklater's celebrated Before trilogy chronicles the love of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) who first meet up in Before Sunrise, later reconnect in Before Sunset and finally experience a fall-out in Before Midnight. Not only do these films 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:

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• the nature of love, romanticism and marriage

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• the passage and experience of time

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• the meaning of life

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• the art of conversation

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• the narrative self

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• gender

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• death

Including an interview with Julie Delpy in which she discusses her involvement in the films 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 film studies.

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.

Soon after Jesse and Céline 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 documentary-makers around the world to film 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 fly-on-the-wall style, Linklater—or, better, the implied author of the Before trilogy (more on this presently)—himself explores aspects of 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 flies 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 first 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 find 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 figure 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 first 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-to-day 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 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 significant 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 find 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 find evidence in the artwork itself—and these interpretations are successful to 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 find 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 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 first 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 first 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 confirms 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 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 pre-written 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-to-heart 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, ...