Good morning 🐣

“Sealed Hearts,” a silent movie over 100 years old, was thought lost until recently discovered in a basement. Jason Koebler writes at 404 Media:

The American Film Institute notes that the film was shot in the Bronx in the summer of 1919. “Frank Prentiss, a multi-millionaire who hates and distrusts women, convinces his adopted son, Jack, that they are detrimental to a man’s success.” Jack eventually meets a woman, fights with his dad about it, etc. A review of the movie from 1919 says it’s “a colorful drama of youthful loves, elderly prejudices, and clashing natures that is rich in beauty, forceful in development, and thrilling in climax.”

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Cinescape’s been on what I guess I’ll call a holiday schedule, so please be sure to check your inboxes on Monday morning for next week’s edition. See you then!

A brief intermission 🍿

Now watch this 👀

And so we come to a close on the “Before” trilogy with “Before Midnight,” perhaps the funniest one yet, but also the saddest. Each film in the series was shot and set nine years apart, and since I love a good gimmick, it’s been nine issues since I wrote about “Before Sunset,” which was nine issues after I wrote about “Before Sunrise.” A quick recap if that means absolutely nothing to you…

Before “Before Midnight:” Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy), two twenty-somethings, meet on a train in Europe and spend the entire day together, talking about life, love, and everything in between before going their separate ways and continuing on with their travels. With no phone numbers or addresses, they spend the next nine years wondering what could have been. Jesse is so distraught over his missed connection that he ends up writing a bestselling novel that’s a thinly fictionalized account of their one night together. Céline tracks him down in Paris while Jesse’s on tour promoting his book, where they once again walk and talk and rekindle their simmering romance.

Flash forward another nine years and now they’re a couple with two young daughters spending a summer vacation in Greece. Jesse’s career as a novelist has taken off, while Céline’s life is in limbo.

There are the usual conversations (this time it even includes other people beyond the two stars), touching on humanity, our connection to technology, gender relations, and how two people in a relationship can “colonize” one another. They’re still the two people we met and fell in love with, but being as this is 18 years since they first met, they’re a little settled in their ways and even grow easily annoyed with each other.

The biggest topic they keep dancing around is his son from a previous marriage that ended poorly and how that interferes with their current relationship. Living abroad in Paris, Jesse has deep regrets about missing opportunities to be in his child’s life back in Chicago. Céline doesn’t help matters by pointing out that his son doesn’t need him the way he used to. Meanwhile she has fears of giving up everything to move to Chicago so they can be closer to his son. Her loss of control was already made manifest when Jesse wrote about her in his book without her input or permission. Previously in “Before Sunset,” she talked about reading his book and how weird it is to see yourself in someone else’s memory, seeing yourself through their eyes. Now she totally resents it.

They’re both bitter.

During an argument in the hotel room, she calls her new job opportunity her dream job and he calls her out on that, saying that she wasn’t even sure she wanted it earlier in the day. But rewind the movie to that earlier conversation and you’ll remember that she was adamant that it’s something she wants to do, while he kept trying to convince her that she would hate it. He’s just not listening to her. He even keeps correcting her factually rather than engaging with what she has to say. A whole lotta “Well actually 🤓” going on here.

It sounds at this point like these two don’t belong together anymore, if they ever did, but don’t count ’em out just yet! They reminisce about how they met and if he’d even convince her to get off the train with him if they’d met now at this age. Like the previous films, the concept of time is an important theme. In the first installment, it’s as if they are lost in a time vortex, where nothing matters beyond this newfound connection and they imagine alternative futures. In the second film, they imagine alternative pasts: What if they had never lost touch? Now they ponder the here and now; what are they even doing with their lives?

The only answer is perspective, a twin to time. Jesse describes the characters of his new novel to some friends, with each character experiencing time or memory differently. Later a dinner guest tells a story about a guy always worried about money who then finds out he has nine months to live and feels relieved because he has more than enough money for nine months. When Jesse tells Céline that he feels sad when he sees their daughters fighting because they’re embracing “the natural human state” of selfishness, Céline retorts: “I don’t think there’s one natural human state. The human state is multiple. If that’s what you see when you’re watching the girls play, that means you’re depressed.” What she sees are two strong women asserting themselves.

Each of these films has been an intimate window into a beautiful story about two people attempting over and over again to understand each other. As Céline tells him in the first film: “I believe if there’s any kind of god, it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me, but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed, but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.”

And boy do they attempt.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to check your email on Monday.

Until next time! 👋