You Can’t Aim at Love—Thoughts on “The Before Trilogy” by Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is arguably the most romantic or the most unromantic film series ever made, depending on which aspect you focus on. Either way, it raises profound questions about love. The first installment, Before Sunrise, is “romantic” in the conventional sense: a chance encounter between a handsome American man and a beautiful French woman. He’s an aspiring writer; she’s an environmental activist. You couldn’t pick bigger clichés for a love story. Although it takes place in Vienna, it might as well have been Paris, just to underscore that the film is exploring the cliché, not mindlessly embracing or rejecting it. The central question becomes: What is this thing we call “love”? To dig deeper, we need to set the table with a working, shared definition; only then can we critically examine the Hollywood ideal.

Both Céline and Jesse are somewhat aware that their excitement stems from the fact that their interaction feels like a fantasy they are writing in their minds, which is why they’re unsure whether they should meet again. If they do, the demands of reality may destroy the illusion. By not meeting again, they could preserve the fantasy indefinitely, entertaining themselves with what-if scenarios. In this way, the characters are aware of their own predicament being fictitious, which makes it feel more real, blurring the line between fiction and reality. 

Nine years later, in Before Sunset, we find them successful in their respective fields: he’s now a bestselling novelist, and she remains an environmental activist. The actors have aged in real time, and the film unfolds in real time, again erasing the distinction between reality and fiction. In conventional films, we suspend disbelief when actors “age” via makeup. The makeup signifies aging; we aren’t actually fooled. But seeing them age organically, juxtaposed with scenes from Before Sunrise, hits us with the gravity of time in a way symbolism cannot.

We learn that both characters have, in some way, clung to the fantasy they created in the first film, using it to make their ordinary lives more tolerable. Now the question is: Should they turn that fantasy into reality? What would that mean, practically? And is it even morally permissible?

In the first two films, the excitement comes from transgression. The contradictions between individual desire and societal expectations generate a need for fantasy, something to sublimate their frustrations. Transgression is thrilling precisely because those contradictions are inescapable. But this excitement cannot sustain itself indefinitely. Films like Sid and Nancy or 9½ Weeks show where unchecked transgression leads: beautiful stories, perhaps, but ones you’d prefer to observe from an audience seat.

Assuming we don’t want to be self-destructive, what can come next in a love relationship? That’s the question Before Midnight attempts to answer. And this is where it turns starkly unromantic because it offers no answer we don’t already know: the inevitability of the mundane. Jesse and Céline, now living together, do what all couples do: manage chores, juggle parenting and personal needs, fight and make up, and escape occasionally into nature just to recharge so the whole mundane cycle can begin again. Even Céline’s toplessness is depicted as something we have already seen enough of. At one point, while they’re making out in bed, the phone rings. She answers it still topless, leading into a bitter argument, as if her nudity is no longer even registered.

The film gives us no glimpse beyond the tedium of ordinary life. It’s practically staged for future affairs to reignite lost excitement. The trilogy dismantles the fantasy that makes ordinary life tolerable, and, according to Wikipedia, the director and actors have failed to find a worthwhile reason to make a fourth film. In other words, they don’t see any hope beyond the mundane either. The trilogy succeeds in portraying the pain of melancholia: it gives us a reason to mourn youth, to replay the first film in our minds the way the characters do in theirs.

The ultimate question the trilogy raises, for me, is this: Is love even worth pursuing? Is there more to love than what Linklater depicts? I think there is. In fact, many films depict it, though they’re rarely categorized as “romance” because they’re about something greater; something in which love merely plays a supporting role.

The most famous example that comes to mind is the relationship between Princess Leia and Han Solo. Although Solo is fiercely independent, they collaborate anyway. Love becomes the foundation for their shared goals, not the goal itself.

Shall We Dance? (I’ve only seen the original Japanese version) is technically a romantic comedy, but the relationship between the salaryman and his dance instructor is never formalized as “love.” Initially, he’s drawn to her to escape the tedium of family life, but to his surprise, he becomes obsessed with dancing. His respect for her as a serious dancer ultimately outweighs the initial fantasy, because by then, he no longer needs fantasy to escape boredom.

In many of Miyazaki’s films, like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Spirited Away, romantic tensions remain unresolved because his female protagonists are too preoccupied with larger goals. What we see instead is mutual admiration rooted in shared purpose. Love functions as a source of inspiration, not possession.

In fact, it’s not just love; all human relationships begin to collapse when we turn inward and make the relationship itself the focus. Take the extreme example of befriending someone simply for the sake of “having a friend.” What can you possibly expect from that?

We could think of love and friendship as side effects or emergent phenomena. If you strike two keys on a piano, you hear harmony, even though neither note intends to harmonize. It just happens. Likewise, a flock of birds appears to move with a unified purpose, even though each bird is simply responding to its immediate surroundings. If you aim directly at love or friendship, it collapses under its own weight. Even if you begin by aiming at a specific person, your attention eventually needs to shift outward.

But this raises a deeper question: What is out there to focus on, if not each other? That’s the existential weight we all carry: the search for meaning. How we find it is another matter entirely, but what Linklater’s trilogy made me realize is this: Love won’t save you if your raison d’être is unclear.