Before the 2021 HBO Max adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 Before Midnight and its prequels. Before a screening of the film in June 2013, Linklater, along with co-stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, discussed how Bergman’s miniseries was the standard by which the Before Trilogy should be judged. Along with starring in the film, Hawke and Delpy helped write the screenplay alongside Linklater.
Before Midnight is the final installment of Linklater's three-part film series, though a fourth Before movie has not been ruled out. Spanning 20 years, the series revolves around Jesse (Hawke) and Céline (Delpy), who meet as strangers on the Eurorail and stay up all night walking and talking in Vienna in 1994's Before Sunrise. Nine years later, the couple reunites in Paris in Before Sunset. Like Bergman's Scenes From A Marriage, Linklater's series centers on the long-time relationship between a couple who has gone through the various stages of love, dating, and marriage. But the influence of Bergman’s Scenes on Linklater’s Before Trilogy goes beyond the subject matter and themes they both share.
“Our bar (for Before Midnight) shouldn’t be Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, our bar should be Scenes From A Marriage,” said Hawke during the Richard Linklater agreed, and Bergman's influence on the Before Trilogy shows up in the three-part film series in several ways. Like Scenes, Linklater’s film series uses literary elements to elevate the dialogue and writing, focusing on the arc of the characters over plot. This is accomplished, in part, by focusing on great writing and acting first and foremost, rather than the visual elements of filmmaking that would normally be the focal point in this medium. While Bergman and Linklater also somehow manage to master the visual aspects of storytelling, it’s the way they utilize a literary approach to the visual medium that makes their work stand out.
In the original Scenes From A Marriage, Bergman pulled inspiration from real life to tell Marianne and Johan's story. Much like in the Before trilogy, which features one of the s Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delphy) in the Before movie trilogy — seem real.
They also have to be interesting enough that the audience wants to spend two hours listening to those characters talk. As with literary fiction, the emotional arc of the character thus becomes the focus of the story rather than the plot. This is the challenge Bergman first took on the original 1973 Scenes, and one that filmmakers like Linklater have pursued since then. To be successful, great acting is obviously a must — but it also comes down to whether or not there is chemistry between the performers. Like a symphony, the magic comes not from an individual's performance, but from how the individual players seamlessly blend together as one.
At one point in the Lincoln interview, HBO Max September 12, 2021.