Before Midnight is the final part as far as we know to this series. Richard Linklater has created a series that leaves viewers wondering for more. In this edition of the series we start off with Jesse dropping his teenage son off at an airport in Greece to fly back to Chicago. He is flying to Chicago because that's where his mother lives. Nearly another ten years have passed since we last saw the pair and even more has changed since then. Celine and Jesse are now married and have twin girls. They live in Europe and Jesse is still a successful writer and Celine is considering a government job. Clearly a lot has changed once again and that's the general theme with these movies because it leaves the viewer hanging and asking for more. The aspect of time seems way less prominent in this film compared to the others. We meet with the family as they are about to leave on a vacation and all we know is they will be at the vacation spot for a little while. While watching I couldn't help but lose track of what the time frame was or how long it had been since the last major event in the film. I think since they are much older and have two kids now that are living a slower paced life so there was no need to emphasis on time.
Comparing Jesse and Celine now reveals a different outcome compared to the last time we saw them together. Jesse seems to be the one thats troubled this time around, he is caught between his son and his now new family. And during the end he seems to be tired of Celine and her nagging, which changes the way we look at Jesse. We also discover that Jesse had an affair with another woman while he was on a trip for his book. That really changes the way we look at him. He used to be this dreamy man for Celine now suddenly he isn't. This series of films was a great way to look at the difference between time in reality and time in a film. The way these were film really makes you believe that something like this actually happened and we are watching it from the stands. The character development was a major aspect of this series as well because, this series of filmed over a span of nearly 20 years. The development and changes in the characters were not only physical but mental and emotional. This was a huge part of the movie and it was well worth the 9 years.
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Before Sunset by Richard Linklater picks up where Before Sunrise left us. Jesse and Celine have been apart for nine years and they have a lot to catch up on and they cant get to it soon enough. Celine discovers Jesse was waiting for her at the train station when she couldn't make it to the date they were set to meet again. She feel extremely bad for Jesse but her grandmother had passed away days prior to the meeting date and she could not make it. But they soon get past that and start to discuss the changes in their lives in the past nine years. Jesse has gotten married and has one child, as well as wrote a book. They book describes the magical 24 hours he and Celine had spent together nine years prior. Celine on the other hand hasn't done too much in terms of starting a family. We discover she has dated a few other men and nothing has worked in her favor. But regardless this was the start to another in depth movie. We also get to look at how the two characters have changed as people. Based off of the first film the viewer would have thought that Jesse was never the type to settle down and get married as well as have a child. But he felt that was expected of an american man and he went ahead and did it, he never forgot about Celine though. The two characters seemed to have switched places in this aspect. Celine is the one I would have expected to get married first and it hasn't worked out for her. She goes on a rant about how she never forgot about Jesse and no matter who she sees they aren't the same as him. This was a shocking moment for me during the film because she did not appear to be this troubled in the beginning of the film.
"They walk out of the bookstore and around the corner and walk, and talk, and the director Richard Linklater films them in long, uninterrupted takes, so that the film feels like it exists in real time" (Ebert). This was a big factor that I noticed heavily in this film. I felt that the long takes were really testing my patience, I was constantly wondering whether the scene was going to end rather than focusing on the context of the scene. This feature adds to the matter of making it feel like we are apart of the film but I cant see it continuing to other films. I think this film was better than the first because it emphasizes the reason that Before Sunrise was made. While watching Before Sunrise I didn't really understand what the point of having long scenes and such a close look at two people's lives was but once I realized that this was part of a very long experimental series and the idea immediately grew on me. This is a series of movies that is all about time and how to bring it to light. We begin with a man and a woman on a train by the names of Jesse and Celine. They dont know each other yet, but the next 24 hours has much in store for them. They are brought together by a woman who is speaking very loudly and the book Celine is reading. They make their way to the cafe car of the train and exchange information about each other and their short relationship snowballs from there. The film really focuses on the advancement of the two main characters as they progress through the 24 hours that will change their lives forever. We as the audience get to see this well constructed view of how these two build the foundation for the next two films that are to come. Linklater used many different aspects to portray the timeline of Jesse and Celine. Time for example is the biggest factor, and very important one to continue with these films. One of the best ways was the use of the sky. Many movies have attempted to use daylight to show that time has passed but Before Sunrise was the first movie that I have seen that actually stayed true to the time compared to daylight. When the film starts, it was a sunny morning and when it ends they are advancing to the next morning. This was a big element in making this film more believable and Linklater hit the nail on the head. "The European exoticism helps give Before Sunrise a time-capsule feel" (Sims). I think this is what Linklater was trying to accomplish with this series of films. The view the audience has on these two is hard to describe. Everything flows perfectly, there are no hiccups in the script, and no flaws in the timeline. We seamlessly follow these two through the beautiful city of Vienna, without a hitch. This part of the movie seemed to perfect to me but I guess the next two films have many problems which affected the parts of the film that we dont see and the parts of the movie that we do see. "You couldn't make the same movie today without feeling shamelessly twee" (Sims). I highly agree with this because the time period that this was filmed in allows for strangers to meet and develop a relationship. In present time this movie would have felt too artificial and constructed. But Linklater found a way to make this series very natural and flow extremely well.
The Virgin Suicides is a film that takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions. Directed by Sofia Coppola, the film goes into the lives of the Lisbon family and find out what happened. The film starts out with Cecilia, the youngest of the five sisters in a bathtub. It appears that she is dead from cutting her wrist but the ambulance comes and saves her. After that the doctor recommends that Cecilia become more social. Now this was a great feat to overcome because Mrs. Lisbon was like a prison warden. During the film I actually wondered if prison would be better that living in that house. But surprisingly Mrs. Lisbon let the girls have a party in the basement. The party started off very awkward but it soon began to pick up and when it did Cecilia asked to be excused. It was easy to see that she did not want this party and non of her emotions had changed. So, she left the party and walked upstairs. Shortly after there was a loud thud sound from outside. Cecilia had jumped out a window onto one of the spikes of a fence in their front yard. The neighborhood tries to help the family by sending flowered and ripping out the fence that Cecilia landed on.Everyone in the family tries to get back into their normal lives and forget about what happened to their sister. Mr. Lisbon jumps back into his job as a school math teacher and the rest of the girls try and forget but everyone at school knows what happened. But the prettiest sister Lux, meets the most desirable guy in the school and he invites himself over to their house to watch T.V. with the family. Trip Fontaine spent the night awkwardly sitting next to Mrs. Lisbon and only occasionally got a glimpse of Lux's feet. The night ended and Trip sat in his car reviewing the night failure but Lux's ran out and started kissing him. Trip really liked Lux and wanted to ask her to homecoming, so he asked Mr. Lisbon for approval. But he denies and says it would be unfair to change the rules because the older girls had to follow them. So Trip comes up with the idea to take all of the sisters, the football team is going to take them. This idea gets approved by Mrs. Lisbon surprisingly given her dictator ways. the night comes and the girls are all ready for their night. The three boys from the football team that Trip and chosen are seemingly respectable kids. The night progresses and Trip and Lux are voted king and queen after that they are nowhere to be found. They made their way to the football field and got a little handsy. The first of the Lisbon girls were taken home by their dates and Lux was nowhere to be found. She woke up on the field and Trip was nowhere to be found and by this time it was early morning. So Lux took a cab home and was yelled at by Mrs. Lisbon. After that whole incident the girls were taken out of school and put on house arrest. Over the next few months the Lisbon house deteriorates and not a single person is seen leaving the house. But as spring comes around a few men come to cut down a tree in their front yard and all the girls come running out and circle around the tree. This was the first time anyone had seen them in months. The boys who are the ones telling this story start receiving notes from the girls and engage in phone calls in which they exchange music. The boys received one final note, the note asked for their help. When they got to the Lisbon house Lux was smoking in the living room and instructed the boys to wait there for the other girls as she walked into the garage and started the car. The boys get suspicious and start exploring the house and discover that all the girls had killed themselves. The character development throughout this film was pretty obvious, at the beginning of the film it was Cecilia because she tried to kill herself twice and succeeded on the second attempt. The other sisters were not as pretty or as outgoing as Lux so she was seemingly the next main focus of the film. Lux seemed to be the most interesting of the five sister, she was always getting attention from boys, always trying new things, and she was the most outgoing of the bunch. I think that one of the biggest factors in the film was color. Throughout there was always a somewhat darker color scheme that set the mood for what was about to come. Even when you look at all the girls dresses from the homecoming dance. They all wore white, I think that represents that they are pure. Once thing I noticed was that whenever something bad was going to happen the lighting of the scenes beforehand got really dark, foreshadowing what was about to come. "Sofia Coppola’s slim but remarkably cohesive five-feature filmography has established a signature shot: the window gaze" (Koski). This shot was used many times throughout the film. It shows a sense of entrapment, which is what happened to these girls. Their mother trapped them under many rules and they just watched the world outside through the glass window. Another use of the camera that I believed was amazing, was the still shots that were used. They really helped the view understand the timeframe of this situation because you could see the house and yard deteriorate. I think this was a good film overall because it wasn't your conventional film. It was told from the people who saw things happen first hand and were actually somewhat involved in these girls lives. I think that the root cause was Mrs. Lisbon, she was crazy and controlling. the girls might as well have been in a prison. I would definitely watch another film like this.
Affliction by Paul Schrader is nothing short of a roller coaster of events. This is a movie that only Schrader could pull off because of its strange story-line, crazy acting, and in my opinion crazy ending. It all starts off with a police officer of a small town named Wade and his daughter driving to a Halloween party at the local school. Wades daughter is visiting him as he is divorced and she lives with her mother. We quickly find out that she is not very fond of her father and wants to go home. So, while inside she calls her mother to come pick her up from the party. When Wade finds out he becomes angry and you start to question if Wade is right in the head because he starts acting like a child in a way. In his anger he goes outside and hops in a car with a few acquaintances, they smoke a little weed and start talking about a man from the city. The man wants to shoot a buck and has hired a local hunter names jack to show him the ways. This seems like an irrelevant detail but it lays the track for the rest of the movie. After he gets back to the school where his daughter is waiting for her mother, he creates a scene in front of all the parents and kids. After this he decides that he wants to gain custody of his daughter and swears to himself he is going to get a lawyer. His girlfriend Margie seems to think this is a bad idea because his daughter is happy living with her mother. Which the viewer can clearly tell she is not very fond of her father. But Wade quickly gets side tracked by a situation that has just happened. Jack and the man from the city went hunting in the woods and only one of them made it back alive. Jack claimed that he was about to shoot a buck when he heard the man fall and the gun went off. Everyone besides Wade believes this story, he thinks there is more to this story. But in the mean time he takes his girlfriend to go visit his parents, who are very old at this point in Wades life. Throughout the film we see flashbacks of Wades abusive father and its clear to see that he hasn't changed his ways at all. But when they go upstairs to see his mother they discover that she died. After that Wades brothers and sister come to the wake and mourn in the death of their mother. But Wade and his brother have a conversation about what they think happened with Jack and the man who shot himself. Both seem to think there is reason to believe that Jack shot the man. So Wade tries to connect the dots but just ends up with a gun pointed to him and at the other end of the gun is Jack. He soon begins to act more violently and is not the same Jack at the beginning of the movie. Even Margie has had enough of him and decides to leave him and take his daughter who is visiting again back to her mothers house. The film ends with him unintentionally killing his father and Wade watching the barn that he set on fire with his fathers body in it. Schrader uses the technique of frame within frames throughout the film in many places. Using this technique allows the shot to have more depth and context. By holding one frame and having the objects move within it, it adds more focus to the object or person. This was used within the final scene of the movie where Wade gets into a argument with his father and unintentionally kills him and lights the barn on fire. He watches the burning barn from the kitchen table looking through a window while drinking just like his father would have done. This shot in my opinion was one of the best in the film because it incorporated the depth of the barn, and seriousness of the situation, and the fact that Wade seemed to not care anymore.
Wade starts to experience pain from a tooth about halfway though the movie. I think that this is linked his actions but as I was watching it I never noticed. Wades action throughout the film were always rash and quickly made, he never thought about anything, he just did it. A perfect example is when he pulled out his tooth, he didnt think about what could happen he just did it. The more I think about it the more I realize how much Wade angers me. He thinks and acts like a child, he never thinks about the consequences. Wade almost seemed like he had a mental disorder with how he acted. At the beginning of the movie when he was angry with his daughter for call her mom, he seemed to change emotion really fast. This kind of led me to think that there was something wrong with him. I think that this movie was interesting but nothing more than that. The storyline really had no point because in the end Wade never finds out if he was right or wrong. His daughter does not like him and his girlfriend leaves him, so what was the overall point of the movie. In my opinion this movie was more of a visually and appealing movie to watch rather than watching for the story. I would probably not watch this movie again, but I can completely understand why someone would watch it. |
AuthorI normally only watch comedies and action movies so this should be an interesting change. Archives
May 2017
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