The cornerstone of the career-long exploration of cinematic time
by director Richard
Linklater, this celebrated three-part romance captures a
relationship as it begins, begins
again, deepens, strains, and settles over the course of almost
two decades. Chronicling the
love of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), from their
first meeting as idealistic twentysomethings to the
disillusionment they face together in middle age, The Before
Trilogy also serves as a document of a boundary-pushing and
extraordinarily collaboration between director and
actors, as Delpy and Hawke, who co-wrote two of the films, imbue
their characters with a sense of raw, lived-in experience, and as
they age on-screen along with them. Attuned to the sweeping
grandeur of time’s passage as well as the evanescence of
individual moments, the Before films chart the progress of
romantic destiny as it navigates the vicissitudes of ordinary
life.
BEFORE SUNRISE
An exquisitely understated ode to the thrill of romantic
possibility, the inaugural instalment of The Before Trilogy opens
with a chance encounter between two solitary young strangers.
After they hit it off on a train bound for Vienna, the Paris
university student Celine and the scrappy American tourist Jesse
impulsively decide to spend a day together before he returns to
the U.S. the next morning. As the pair roam the streets of the
stately city, Linklater’s tenderly observant gaze captures the
uncertainty and intoxication of young love, from the first
awkward stirrings of attraction to the hopeful promise that
Celine and Jesse make upon their inevitable parting.
BEFORE SUNSET
In the breathtaking follow-up to Before Sunrise, Celine tracks
down Jesse, now a newly minted author, at the tail end of his
book tour in Paris, with only a few hours left before his flight
back home to the States. Meeting almost a decade after their
short-lived romance in Vienna, the pair find their chemistry
rekindled by increasingly candid exchanges about professional
setbacks, marital disappointments, and the compromises of
adulthood. Impelled by an urgent sense of the transience of human
connection, Before Sunset remains Linklater’s most seductive
experiment with time’s inexorable passage and the way love can
seem to stop it in its tracks.
BEFORE MIDNIGHT
The bittersweet conclusion of The Before Trilogy finds Celine and
Jesse several years into a relationship and in the midst of a
sun-dappled Greek retreat with their twin daughters and a group
of friends. The couple soon find their vacation upended, however,
by the aggravations of committed monogamy, which have long since
suped the initial jolt of their mutual seduction. Marked by
the emotional depth, piercing wit, and conversational exuberance
that Linklater and his actors had honed over two decades of
abiding with these characters, Before Midnight grapples with the
complexities of long-term intimacy, and asks what becomes of love
when it no longer has recourse to past illusions.
DIRECTOR APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* New, restored 2K digital transfers of Before Sunrise and Before
Sunset and a 2K digital master of Before Midnight, approved by
director Richard Linklater, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio
soundtrack on the Before Sunrise Blu-ray and 5.1 surround DTS-HD
Master Audio soundtracks on the Before Sunset and Before Midnight
Blu-rays
* New discussion featuring Linklater and actors Julie Delpy and
Ethan Hawke, moderated by critic Kent Jones
* Behind-the-scenes footage and interviews from the productions
of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
* Audio commentary on Before Midnight by Delpy, Linklater, and
Hawke
* Dream Is Destiny, a 2016 feature-length documentary about
Linklater by Louis Black and Karen Bernstein
* New documentary about the making of Before Midnight in Greece
by filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari
* 3x2, a new conversation between scholars Dave Johnson and Rob
Stone about Linklater’s work
* Linklater // On Cinema & Time, a video essay by filmmaker “::
kogonada”
* PLUS: An essay on the trilogy by critic Dennis Lim