Video: The “Before” Series: Inside Every Moment Is Another Moment
Last week, I posted this featuring the video: “Richard Linklater — The Works”. That prompted Joseph Brunetta to head to comments and provide a link to an excellent video he edited: The “Before” Series: Inside Every Moment Is Another Moment. Here it is:
If you check out the recent GITS Script Reading & Analysis series on Boyhood, you will see a discussion about a key theme in the movie. One of my comments in that conversation:
This is a movie about moments. The very last lines of the film lay that out on the line: How life is not about seizing the moment, but the moment seizing us.
In Joseph’s video of the “Before” series, we see this theme at work, too. Here are some thoughts in that regard from Joseph:
I sometimes wonder if Linklater making “Boyhood,” the “Before” films and “Dazed and Confused” from a distance is what gives him the grace and mastery to tell these stories. “Dazed” seems autobiographical because it takes place at a time when he himself would have been Mitch Kramer, but told over 17 years later, giving Linklater the time to consider being 14 and also of the perspectives of the people around him to inform his story, not just his experience. Linklater is 10 years older than Jesse and Celine in the “Before” series when he made those films, and 10 years older than Olivia and Mason Sr. in “Boyhood” as well.
Where some filmmakers tell personal stories about their lives around the time they make their films Linklater’s personal stories are never specifically about the time he’s making them. It’s funny since “Boyhood” and the “Before” series are often about being in the moment. Yet “Before Sunset” is partly about how it took years of writing on and off for Jesse to write the book of that one night with Celine. I suppose to Linklater one should always strive to live in the moment, and if one wants to tell the story of that moment then allow time to pass and illuminate the moment for all that it was.
To which I responded:
I think your analysis of Linklater in relation to his storytelling is spot-on. He seems to have the ability to both dwell in the moment of his stories, yet also have the requisite distance from them to give him a perspective on them, especially important when telling personal stories that reflect on his own life.
Which reminds me of that observation from author Anne Beattie: “People forget years and remember moments…”