I've been waiting months to see "Before Midnight," so excited that Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater were ready to share another chapter in the now-decades-long story of Jesse and Celine. The movie went into wide release today and I went this afternoon, and walked out.
I haven't walked out of many movies, I've actually sat through some really terrible movies, but a few minutes into the epic third-act hotel fight scene, I couldn't stand it anymore and left the theater. I understand that "Before Midnight," and the two movies that preceded it, are about two people talking every aspect of life and relationships nearly to death, but I didn't care enough about these two people, their fights and their circumstances to stick around.
I'm a member of Generation X, we're navel-gazers, we over-analyze and over-share. It started in the confessionals on the first seasons of "The Real World" and has found its way into social media, our need to tell everyone who we are, how we feel, what we're thinking about. That compulsion has lead to some great art and important revelations, but today, in that movie theater, it was just annoying. As the small child told his warring parents in the commercial for Dr. Marvin Monroe's therapy practice on "The Simpsons," "Why don't you both shut up?!"
Jesse and Celine are awful people, or at least at a point in their lives where they're acting awfully. I couldn't pick a side; I had no one to root for because they were both so selfish and ridiculous. Even when they're not fighting, they're constantly picking at each other. Why should I care if their relationship falls apart when I don't even understand why they're in a relationship in the first place?
The hook of these three movies is that the audience wants to know what happens to Jesse and Celine. Did they meet six months later? Did they spend the night together? I wanted to know the answers to those questions, but I've lost interest in the answers to any new questions posed by "Before Midnight."
