Linklater's Before Trilogy: The Sense of a Happy Ending [Video Essay]
22.8 هزار بار بازدید -
3 سال پیش
-
A video essay adaptation of
A video essay adaptation of my chapter 'Romance, Narrative and the Sense of an Ending in the Before Series'. From the edited collection Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight: A Philosophical Exploration (2021), edited by Hans Maes and Katrien Schaubroeck.
ABSTRACT:
One of the most pervasive themes of the Before series is the organisation of time. By offering a structure that ‘humanises’ time, a narrative can transform isolated moments into – in Frank Kermode’s words – ‘a point in time filled with significance, charged with meaning derived from its relation to an end’. The deep-seated human desire to organise experience in this way has thus been called ‘the sense of an ending’ (Kermode). Another of the Before series' central themes is romantic love and, in both art and life, a romance (etymologically: ‘story’) is one of the commonest forms into which we organise time. This essay argues that the Before films offer ambivalent meditations on this fact, dramatising and expressing aesthetically a co-existence of naïve acceptance and skepticism towards the desire for narrative and romantic closure.
END 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 film’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 ‘complete openness within a closed and perfect classical form’ (1998: 325).
(4) This is virtually confirmed in Sunset when Jesse says, ‘we were both afraid that if we started writing and calling, that it would slowly, you know, fade out’.
(5) 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).
(6) See Cenciarelli (2018) on the assistance music provides to Sunrise’s sense of closure, too.
(7) 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 influence of final 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.'
(8) 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).
(9) This chimes with something Hawke expresses in the film’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 difficult for us to find that.'
*For bibliography see end of video.
Keywords: Before trilogy; video essay; Richard Linklater; film studies; narrative theory; Julie Delpy; Ethan Hawke; Kim Krizan; closure; aesthetics; philosophy; audiovisual essay
ABSTRACT:
One of the most pervasive themes of the Before series is the organisation of time. By offering a structure that ‘humanises’ time, a narrative can transform isolated moments into – in Frank Kermode’s words – ‘a point in time filled with significance, charged with meaning derived from its relation to an end’. The deep-seated human desire to organise experience in this way has thus been called ‘the sense of an ending’ (Kermode). Another of the Before series' central themes is romantic love and, in both art and life, a romance (etymologically: ‘story’) is one of the commonest forms into which we organise time. This essay argues that the Before films offer ambivalent meditations on this fact, dramatising and expressing aesthetically a co-existence of naïve acceptance and skepticism towards the desire for narrative and romantic closure.
END 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 film’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 ‘complete openness within a closed and perfect classical form’ (1998: 325).
(4) This is virtually confirmed in Sunset when Jesse says, ‘we were both afraid that if we started writing and calling, that it would slowly, you know, fade out’.
(5) 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).
(6) See Cenciarelli (2018) on the assistance music provides to Sunrise’s sense of closure, too.
(7) 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 influence of final 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.'
(8) 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).
(9) This chimes with something Hawke expresses in the film’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 difficult for us to find that.'
*For bibliography see end of video.
Keywords: Before trilogy; video essay; Richard Linklater; film studies; narrative theory; Julie Delpy; Ethan Hawke; Kim Krizan; closure; aesthetics; philosophy; audiovisual essay
3 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1400/04/02 منتشر شده
است.
22,823
بـار بازدید شده