Before Midnight is going to probably end up being the best-reviewed
and most beloved movie of 2013. There’s almost no way anything is beating it on
those fronts. It's an instant classic and a true masterpiece. Which leads to an obvious question: why aren’t more movies like
Before Midnight? To get such a rapturous response from such a simple, inexpensive,
seemingly easy-to-make movie, why can I not think of a single recent mainstream
movie I could compare it to? Any two-character purely dialogue driven movies I
think of from recent years are either alienating-ly artistic, have an incredibly
narrow focus (usually hyper-intelligent twenty-something New Yorkers), or are
depressingly dramatic awards-bait. In the 90’s indie scene that Richard
Linklater came up in, literate dialogue-driven character studies were
everywhere. But it’s fitting that Frances Ha would come out the same day as
Before Midnight because now its just Linklater and Noah Baumbach left from
those halcyon days of dialogue and flannel. And it’s worth asking why.
I get that practically speaking it’s largely an issue of
economics. Before Midnight probably won’t crack $20 million at the box office.
But it also only cost $3 million to make and just 15 days to shoot. It’s definitely making
that investment back. And anyway, a billion dollars isn’t cool; you know
what’s cool – a million dollars and something that lasts. Isn’t that why
filmmakers got involved in this business in the first place?
And that’s what’s so maddeningly inexplicable about the
dearth of Before Midnight-like movies – they’re seemingly so simple to make
that it's hard to tell what’s holding filmmakers back from attempting them.
They’re movies that are just people talking. That’s it. You don’t need much
money, or big effects, or big stars. Because of their minimalist nature you can
take as much time as you need to finish them. You can work on other more
lucrative projects while they gestate. It doesn’t seem that hard. If a song is
supposed to be three chords and the truth, then shouldn’t film just be a
camera, two people, and the truth? If so, why does the truth always seem grafted onto
movies after the fact? Instead of always needing Batman to symbolize the human
conscience, why cant the human conscience for once just play itself? Cut
out the middle-men, as it were, and just mainline us the good stuff. The pure uncut ideas and emotions. After all,
most of us will never travel through space; all of us will always talk.
In fact many of the greatest moments in all of our lives are evenings with friends or lovers or family simply talking the night away
– laughing, sharing, discussing, arguing. Nights where dramatic moments yield the biggest laughs and humorous jibes contain the most dramatic of truths.
Nights with beautiful backdrops and long walks. Nights you never want to
end and always long to revisit. So instead of always trying to give us an escape
from real life why don’t filmmakers try creating a real life no one would
want to escape from. Instead of struggling to come up with a high concept for
your film why not just turn to the highest concept of all – daily existence.
And instead of worrying about hitting all four quadrants with your film, just
worry about one - the human condition. If you show it, I promise they will
come. If not at first, they probably will eventually. And if not, well you’re
not out much more than pride. But with so little risk and so much to gain why
does Before Midnight feel like a such a rare precious gem when it should be the
baseline, not the exception? It should be all that film aspires to.
Otherwise,
you’re just passing through.
