《爱在午夜降临前》：时间的艺术（9/10)# LeisureTime - 读书听歌看电影
d*d
1 楼
Before Midnight（2013）is not a single film, but an organic part of a "grand
film." Also comprising Before Sunrise(1995) and Before Sunset(2004), this "
grand film" could continue endlessly, and the later serial can be added
effortlessly to this organic whole, just as life goes on, and each unique
stage of it partakes its wholeness. The film is not just about love, but
offers a deep reflection on time: the time of an image, of a film, and, of
life.
Featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as two lovers from their romantic 20s,
to their rational 30s and bored 40s, the "grand film" spans an astonishing
18 years, both in film diegetic time and in real time. The director Richard
Linklater could have finished these three small-budget films within three
years, but he insisted on being faithful to the real time passing through,
for the protagonists and for the actor/actress as well. Such faithfulness
seems cruel to the audiences, who have been accustomed to escaping into the
safe haven of the eternity of love. The film, however, tries to foreground
the mark of time in love, in image, and in the film itself. There seems an
irretrievable point that human can never go back, as love ages and is no
longer as fresh as that in the good old days. Sadly, time is the ultimate
obstacle and human beings are tossed into death in the unstoppable flow of
time.
Deleuze distinguishes two types of images: movement-image and time-image.
The movement-image based on sensory-motor schema is the dominant mode
for Hollywood films, which use different narrative tricks (such as flashback
and flashforward) to subordinate "time" for the purpose of smooth plot
construction. Time-image, on the contrary, presents time itself and uses
action to emphasize the being of time. I think Before Midnight is as good as
Yasujiro Ozu's films (Deleuze's favourite) to exemplify the power of time-
image. In the film, action is less important than time，and human being's
attempt to stop the flow of time through the idealized eternity of love is
doomed to fail.
film." Also comprising Before Sunrise(1995) and Before Sunset(2004), this "
grand film" could continue endlessly, and the later serial can be added
effortlessly to this organic whole, just as life goes on, and each unique
stage of it partakes its wholeness. The film is not just about love, but
offers a deep reflection on time: the time of an image, of a film, and, of
life.
Featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as two lovers from their romantic 20s,
to their rational 30s and bored 40s, the "grand film" spans an astonishing
18 years, both in film diegetic time and in real time. The director Richard
Linklater could have finished these three small-budget films within three
years, but he insisted on being faithful to the real time passing through,
for the protagonists and for the actor/actress as well. Such faithfulness
seems cruel to the audiences, who have been accustomed to escaping into the
safe haven of the eternity of love. The film, however, tries to foreground
the mark of time in love, in image, and in the film itself. There seems an
irretrievable point that human can never go back, as love ages and is no
longer as fresh as that in the good old days. Sadly, time is the ultimate
obstacle and human beings are tossed into death in the unstoppable flow of
time.
Deleuze distinguishes two types of images: movement-image and time-image.
The movement-image based on sensory-motor schema is the dominant mode
for Hollywood films, which use different narrative tricks (such as flashback
and flashforward) to subordinate "time" for the purpose of smooth plot
construction. Time-image, on the contrary, presents time itself and uses
action to emphasize the being of time. I think Before Midnight is as good as
Yasujiro Ozu's films (Deleuze's favourite) to exemplify the power of time-
image. In the film, action is less important than time，and human being's
attempt to stop the flow of time through the idealized eternity of love is
doomed to fail.
