BEFORE: When I was putting this year's romance chain together, and things just weren't all linked up yet, I did something that can be very hard to do - I looked at the list and thought, "What's missing?" Sometimes you can't see the things that aren't there, if you know what I mean. When I was a kid I read the book "The Phantom Tollbooth", and at one key point in the narrative the traveling heroes get delayed by someone who directs them to make a list of all the books they've read, and then a list of all the books they haven't read, and I thought that was weird - who could possibly keep track of all the books they haven't read? But now I'm an adult, and I do almost exactly that, keep track of all the movies I haven't seen. OK, not ALL, but the ones that I think might be relevant or I might enjoy.
So I thought about romances and remembered this trilogy, which I'd heard about off and on over the years, and put it on the wish list. I figured that by the time February rolled around some channel might run them all, and if not, well, there's always iTunes. They're available right now on my cable's OnDemand, for $2.99 apiece, and since I didn't bother to change my chain around, now I'm kind of stuck, I have to pay for them to proceed, or else re-work my list at the last minute. Let's get them out of the way so I can move on. Adam Goldberg carries over from "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days", today (according to IMDB) he's got an uncredited role as a man sleeping on a train. But that still counts for me.
Here's tomorrow's TCM "31 Days of Oscar" (aka counter-programming for the SuperBowl) schedule. The main topic is "Romance", and then the two head-to-head battles are "Hepburn vs. Streisand" and "Best Way to Take on Political Corruption":
5:00 am "Camille" (1937)
7:00 am "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964)
8:45 am "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945)
10:30 am "Marty" (1955)
12:15 pm "Wuthering Heights" (1939)
2:15 pm "The Way We Were" (1973)
4:30 pm "Doctor Zhivago" (1965)
8:00 pm "The Lion in Winter" (1968)
10:30 pm "Funny Girl" (1968)
1:15 am "All the King's Men" (1949)
3:15 am "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939)
Really, TCM? "Romance"? Try programming a whole freakin' month of those films, then come back and talk to me. And stop copying me, while I'm at it. I've seen "Marty", plus "The Way We Were" and then everything else on tomorrow's list, so that's another 7 out of 11 I don't have to worry about, so I'm at 21 out of 34, up to almost 62%.
THE PLOT: A young man and woman meet on a train in Europe, and spend one evening together in Vienna, both knowing that this will probably be their only night together.
AFTER: My own romance chain rolls on, so maybe this film is no "Doctor Zhivago", but then, how many films are? Once again, I feel I should be paying more attention to who directs what, because I didn't realize how much Richard Linklater I'd been programming - he also directed "Last Flag Flying", which I just watched a few days ago, and also "Everybody Wants Some!!", which I watched last year at back-to-school time. And the year before that, I think I watched "Boyhood" and "Bernie" and maybe even "Tape", I'll have to check my notes. (No, I'm wrong, "Boyhood" and "Bernie" were in 2016.).
Anyway, you can kind of see the same progression that he later used in "Boyhood", following a young boy through his childhood and teen years, watching the actor age in something close to real time by filming over a long period. The "Before" trilogy uses the same idea, following the course of a relationship, checking in with them every few years. Right? And we can watch these two characters age over an 18-year period.
It's definitely a change from your typical Hollywood romance, since it's an indie film "Before Sunrise" isn't bound by the same rules, there doesn't have to be a wedding ceremony where everything that can go wrong will, or two people who are goaded into making some unlikely bet with their boss, where they'll be awarded the new accounts if they can make a woman fall in love or drive a man away with abhorrent behavior. (Seriously, in what workplaces is this likely to happen?). This is just a simple film about two people having conversations, trying to determine if they share the same worldview, the same feelings and desires, to determine if they're a good match. It's the awkward part of the "getting to know you" phase of a relationship, but it's an important one. No American man wants to get into a relationship with a Communist or a Socialist or a French woman who doesn't shave her legs, and no French woman wants to get into a relationship with an American who's rude or boorish or an Evangelical Republican.
It's funny, right before watching this my wife and I were out having dinner at one of our regular Queens diners, and in the booth next to us was an elderly couple, and the old man just seemed like he complained all the time and was very nasty to his wife. She raised her voice once or twice during the meal, but we found them fascinating on a couple of levels. First off, the old man ate an order of French fries with a side of toast (who DOES that?) and she had a frittata or something, and stopped when she had about five bites left, and got the rest to go. I wish I could have heard more of their conversation, I only heard him barking "No!" and "I don't know!" and "You don't know what you're talking about!". The lovers in "Before Sunrise" get together because of an arguing German couple on their train, which forces Celine to go find another empty seat, across from Jesse. And later they mention the couple, and the fact that older men and women lose certain frequencies in their hearing, which causes them to be unable to hear each other in old age, which can maybe prevent them from killing each other. Whatever, we just don't ever want to get to a point in our lives where we can't stand each other's company.
Here it's knowing that their relationship is destined to end at sunrise, when Jesse has to go to the airport to fly home, that sort of defines and shapes it from the start. If you found someone you were a good match with, and you knew it had to end, and when, how would that affect the course of the night? What if your first night with someone was also your last, and you knew that going in? Would you constantly be thinking of the future, like how you're going to look back on this night someday, and what it all meant? How can you possibly live in the present if you know the relationship has no future? Is it possible to feel nostalgic for something that hasn't happened yet? And if you're loving but always thinking about what it means for the future, are you really present in the present? It's a simple idea with a lot of deep ramifications.
Or, you know, it just two people telling each other stories from their past and trying to kill time until the next opportunity to kiss. Whichever. They do make plans to get together again at a point in the future, but it's important to remember that before this was a trilogy, it was just one film, and for years their next meeting was not a guarantee, so the conclusion was a lot more open-ended. You could look at that either way, if you wanted.
Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Julie Delpy (last seen in "The Hoax"), Andrea Eckert, Hanno Poschl, Karl Bruckschwaiger, Tex Rubinowitz, Erni Mangold, Dominik Castell, Haymon Maria Buttinger, Bilge Jeschim, with a cameo from indie producing legend John Sloss.
RATING: 5 out of 10 vinyl records
No comments:
Post a Comment