Before Sunrise turns thirty, my theory about what happens

Showing all posts tagged: Richard Linklater

Before Sunrise turns thirty, my theory about what happens

20 June 2024

It’s a favourite around here. Because don’t we love meeting someone we connect with at first sight? But Sunday 16 June 2024, marked the thirtieth anniversary (Facebook link) of the premiere of Before Sunrise, directed by Richard Linklater, and starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Another two films followed, with about nine years separating each of the three stories.

Obviously the thirty-year anniversary has intensified speculation about a fourth movie. But that remains up in the air, apparently. In 2018, speaking at the SXSW Film Festival, Hawke, who played Jesse, said he thought the film series “felt complete”. By earlier this year though, he seemed to have changed tack, and said there were “ideas” for another instalment.

Delpy — who portrayed Celine — however, has declined to reprise her role. But I think the scene where Celine and Jesse meet on the train, in Before Sunrise, maps out their life together, and points to what eventually happens. In their carriage, we see a young couple, a middle-aged couple who argue incessantly (ah, Before Midnight), and an elderly couple, sitting contentedly, together.

I think, if ever an instalment of Celine and Jesse in old age were made (would Before Twilight be an apt name?), that’s where the story might ultimately end. And there we have it, the conclusion of the Before film series, without the need to make any more (yes: parting is such sweet sorrow) titles that risk compromising the integrity of the earlier instalments.

The best big screen stories of star-crossed lovers

24 April 2024

From Letterboxd: definitely there was love, oh but the circumstances… try Carol, Never Let Me Go, Brokeback Mountain, and Ammonite, on for size. Even the not so well received One Day, recently adapted as a TV series, makes the grade.

Let’s not forget Portrait of a Lady on Fire either. But what puzzles me is the inclusion of Before Sunrise. After all, did we not eventually change our memory of that day? Unless we’re looking at the story in isolation, and ignoring the sequels, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight.

On the subject of Before Midnight, it has been eleven years since its release. The Before films were coming along every nine years, but the main players, namely Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, and series director Richard Linklater, were unsure whether to proceed with a fourth instalment.

Delpy declined to take part in another film when asked by Linklater, but a bit later Hawke said there were still “ideas” for another story.

Will they, or won’t they? This sounds like a great premise for a love story to me.

Academy says Apollo 10 1/2 by Richard Linklater is animation

10 November 2022

American filmmaker Richard Linklater’s animated feature, Apollo 10 1/2, is free to be nominated for an Oscar award in the animation category, following a change of heart by the Oscar animation committee. Last month the Academy ruled the feature was based upon too much live-action footage, and accordingly was ineligible for nomination as animation.

According to the Oscars eligibility rules, an animated film is defined as a “motion picture in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, and usually falls into one of the two general fields of animation: narrative or abstract.”

While Apollo 10 1/2 certainly looks like animation, a technique called rotoscoping was used to make the live-action film used in production look so. The decision is good news for Linklater, and fans of the film. Even if Apollo 10 1/2 had missed out on an animation nomination, it’d doubtless prevail in any other award category it was nominated for, if you ask me.

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Apollo 10 1/2, a film by Richard Linklater

10 March 2022

Talk about the trip of a lifetime. American space agency NASA accidently builds an Apollo Moon lander that’s too small for adult astronauts. So the investment doesn’t go to waste, a young boy is clandestinely recruited to take the vessel to the lunar surface, in Apollo 10 1/2, trailer, an animated feature directed by Richard Linklater.

The story of the first moon landing in the summer of 1969 from two interwoven perspectives. It both captures the astronaut and mission control view of the triumphant moment, and the lesser-seen bottom up perspective of what it was like from an excited kid’s perspective, living near NASA but mostly watching it on TV like hundreds of millions of others. It’s ultimately both an exacting re-creation of this special moment in history and a kid’s fantasy about being plucked from his average life in suburbia to secretly train for a covert mission to the moon.

Apollo ten and a half, this is Houston. Do you read?

Trailer for Before Midnight, by Richard Linklater, with Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke

9 April 2013

Richard Linklater, director of Dazed and Confused, A Scanner Darkly, and Bernie, collaborates once more with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke to make Before Midnight, the third title in the Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, series of films.

No word of an Australian release as yet (I heard 13 June whispered as a suggestion), but in the meantime check out the trailer. I can’t say what piqued my interest in these films since first seeing them on DVD eight or nine years ago. Eurorail maybe? Peneda-Gerês? County Bondi?

It looks like he missed the flight…

Originally published Tuesday 9 April 2013.