Before Midnight

actual plot (truly the meat and sauce of this movie): the part that really did it for me was when jesse says the following: i love the way you sing. okay? i fucked up my whole life because of the way you sing. all right? if you took one-eighth of the energy you spend on bitching, whining, and worrying — if you put that energy into playing scales, you’d be like fucking django reinhardt (the universe is speaking to me). celine just listens quietly with anger, resentment, confusion, grief, and unfulfilled, grabs her purse and leaves the hotel room. AND THEN, she vents and it becomes the most honest to god’s green earth conversation they’ve had the whole movie…and it FUCKING CRUMBLES. HER VULNERABILITY SPEAKS VOLUMES! she says this: you think you’re winning? very few people realize what it’s like for an active or passionate woman to have a child. some friends told me “you’ll see him and you’ll wanna throw him out the window”. okay, but the truth is, i never wanted to hurt them once, but i thought about ending it all for myself 100 times. i was so confused and you were always away on a stupid book tour or because of henry’s custody shit, and i didn’t want to be a burden. now, i know why sylvia plath put her head in a toaster. jesse: it was an oven. celine: don’t play with words, you know what i mean. toaster, oven, same thing. you know how many times i was alone with the girls with no clue what to do? do you know the guilt a mother feels when she doesn’t know what to do? jesse: do you think you have sole ownership over that feeling? celine: i don’t think you understand. he literally jokes and she doubles down. we truly get to see how she felt during this time. celine: i don’t think i’ve recovered since giving birth. when they were born, i had no idea what to do. people expect women to have this instinct that kicks in like a female baboon. but i had no idea how to do anything. i loved them so much and i was doing everything wrong. and you were away so often, calling me and asking me how my day went, and i couldn’t even say it to you because i felt so ashamed to be so clueless. i’m actively rolling in disappointment and THEN, later he says this. after she’s like “i don’t love you anymore” and it’s over, he does his dance to win her over. years, years, years, and years of resentment don’t just go away. years of feeling unseen and having to do everything alone with no one to hold your hand haunts you even if you try to overcome the thoughts. her face says it all when he says: yes, i heard you. what, that you don’t love me anymore? i figured you didn’t mean it, but if you did, then, uh… oh, fuck it. know something? you’re just like the little girls and everybody else. you wanna live inside some fairytale. i’m just trying to make things better. i tell you that i love you unconditionally, i tell you that you’re beautiful. i tell you that your ass looks great when you’re 80. i’m just trying to make you laugh. all right, i put up with plenty of your shit and if you think i’m just some dog who’s gonna keep coming back, then you’re wrong. but if you want true love, then this is it. this is real life. it’s not perfect, but it’s real. and if you can’t see it, then you’re blind, alright, and i give up. honest thoughts: GOD, LOVE FEELS SO NIHILISTIC WHEN YOU’RE OLDER. the lost of whimsy due to years of suffering. these movies just encapsulate the maturity and wisdom you hold at different stages of your life and realization you have to make when you commit to someone. it can be sunshine and rainbows if you chose it to be. it doesn’t mean life will always be a treat but the difficult experiences shape you and how you decide to overcome them dictate how you show up for the people you love. the ending can be interpreted in a couple ways but i can’t tell if she’s resigning to a reality she never truly wanted. celine is idealistic in her own right as much as jesse is. jesse knows what reality is like and likes to live out the dream he always envisioned even if it doesn’t amount to exact thing he’s written in his books because he always wanted celine to be his endgame. celine wants to be with jesse but she’s so individualistic, her goals, her dreams, literally get in the way of how she views herself and her relationships. she fell in love with the idea of romance and it’s so sad to see the progression of her heading towards the bitter path we see in the third movie (glimpse of it in the second movie). she truly just doesn’t want to be alone and jesse isn’t always the most serious guy to make her feel seen in the reality she lives. i enjoy movies that are relatable and this is a different level of relatable. i don’t know. i stand by what i said. love is what you want it to be. you can dream, hope, and envision many things and those can become a reality but you have to work with what is real. compromise when needed and not let the past get in the way, otherwise there will never be a light out of the tunnel. movies and books are the best form of therapy. now, let me practice what i learned and preached.