Do the names Jesse and Celine mean anything to you? Right now they mean a lot to me.
After years of putting it off, I finally binged Richard Linklater’s much-loved Before trilogy: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. The movies trace a single relationship between an American man and a French woman over three decades. They meet on a train in their early 20s, reunite surreptitiously (sort of) in their early 30s, and then we check in on them in their early 40s.
The same actors (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who also co-wrote the scripts) filmed their parts in three different locales, about 10 years apart. So no silly aging make-up required, just mortality itself on full display. The time-lapse continuity is something that Linklater would leverage to great acclaim in Boyhood, but I prefer these films, which are as affecting as anything I’ve seen in years.
Each installment has much to recommend it — my fave being Sunset, followed by Midnight and then Sunrise. How Linklater made what are essentially two-hour conversations between the same couple so watchable is a testament not only to the director’s skill, but the chemistry of the leads and the profundity of the material.
What comes across loud and clear in the trilogy is a truth that PZ’s Podcast listeners will be familiar with: the main thing going on in life is not work or politics or even art. It’s love. A single night in your early 20s can shape your (inner) life for the next ten or thirty years. That is, if the connection you experience is powerful enough. These kind of sparks are the closest we get to transcendence in this life. They are, by all accounts, the moments our minds return to on our death beds.
Indeed, we watch as Jesse and Celine negotiate three decades worth of careers and causes and children — all of which are important — but nevertheless serve as the backdrop of the real story. “Isn’t everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?” asks Celine in Sunrise.
All this reminds me of an interview I read recently with a now high-profile friend of mine from college. The subject was how he got where he is, namely, a relatively famous comedian. This is something I had the privilege of witnessing first hand.
Every detail he gave about his “journey” was accurate, as far as I knew. But it wasn’t the full truth or even close to it. I was there when he made the decision to bail on his day job and pursue his dream full-time. We talked about it a bunch — probably too much. The passion he felt for the art form, while not insignificant, was not what prompted the jump. Nor was his obvious talent.
The real story is that my friend had had his heart broken in a thousand pieces and desperately wanted to win back the girl in question, who had always loved his sense of humor. I didn’t blame him for not mentioning that (major) detail in the publication, but I walked away wondering how many other stories we tell are covers for the real ones.
Tim Kreider once characterized human beings as “sociopaths for love,” and I think that’s about right. The sooner we learn this lesson, the less confused we will be by other people and ourselves, to say nothing of God. The phrase goes a long way toward explaining the many life transitions prompted by COVID, e.g., divorces, proposals, infidelities, moves, babies, puppies. Confronted with our mortality, the true substance of life rises to the surface, and we act accordingly.
Kreider goes further in a passage from his essay “The Creature Walks Among Us”:
Whenever I overhear someone talking on a cell phone about an illicit affair or excruciating divorce, or read the anguished confessions on postsecret.com or the hopeless mash notes in the “missed connections” ads, it feels like a glimpse into the secret history of the world. It belies the consensual pretense that the main thing going on in this life is work and the making of money. I love it when passion rips open that dull nine-to-five facade and bares the writhing orgy of need underneath…
My friend Lauren once told me that she could totally understand those losers who kill their exes and/or their exes’ new lovers, that black, annihilating If-I-can’t-have-her-no-one-else-will impulse, because it’s so painful to know that the person you love is still out there in the world, living her life, going to work and laughing with friends and drinking margaritas. It’s a lesser hurt than grief, but, in a way, crueler — it’s more like being dead yourself, and having to watch life go on without you.
I loved her for owning up to this. Not that Lauren or I — or you — would ever do any such thing ourselves. But I sometimes wonder whether the line between those of us who don’t do such things and the few who do is as impermeable as we like to think.
Anytime I hear about another one of us gone berserk… the question I always ask is not, like every other tongue-clicking pundit in the country, how could this have happened? but why doesn’t this happen every day?
Love is the drug, to quote Roxy Music, and Lord knows there’s none stronger. It’ll teach you who you really are, for both better and worse.
One response to Kreider’s rhetorical question at the end would have to do with Providence. That’s where my mind goes at least. And yet, what is Providence if not another word for the God of Love, whose actions in the world often look like that of a deranged lover, willing to risk it all to win back those who’ve rejected him?
There’s monumental risk involved in that kind of love — or any kind really — which is scary. It could go terribly wrong. You could get hurt, bad. You can’t control what happens any more than you can control your own feelings. Or other people’s. This is why we use the word “fall” in conjunction with love.
I suppose I can understand, then, why people would bail on love as an answer to the world’s ills. It’s too inefficient, too unwieldy, too close to madness — and we have enough of that right now, thank you very much. So no wonder a religion of love would suffer debasement in a time marked by such thorough-going vindictiveness. There are simply too many broken hearts out there.
I won’t tell you what happens with Celine and Jesse. You’ll have to sit through the brilliant yet uncomfortable third act of Before Midnight to find out. But I will tell you that their relationship stays true to the logic of love, which is no logic at all but a path of breakdown and breakthrough, darkness and dawn, death and resurrection.
It mirrors, you might say, the actual secret history of the world. Nothing fairy tale about it.
COMMENTS
6 responses to “We Are All Sociopaths (for Love)”
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I think this is an absolutely superb piece.
The only problem — and it is big one — is getting it across to people for their own sake or best interest.
It is a huge homiletical/pastoral issue because in general, for reasons I have never been able to understand,
most people DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT. They seem to close their ears, like the people who heard St. Stephen on Boxing Day.
Preaching this (to-me) obvious empirical fact of human experience seems to elicit a very hard resistance,
or at least in my experience it has. Which always touched within me the sense that my sermon must have hit a little too close to home.
I could honestly name about 25 occasions during one’s parish ministry when I touched on this sobering (and somewhat uplifting, if you let it be that for a minute) truth of human relations, but received almost physical blow-back from my words.
(And then you see the kind of money that “Love Story” (1970) made during my college era — the kind of unbeLIEVEable popular resonance it had with all sorts and conditions then — or the resonance that “Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964) had in its day — and not to mention, well, Shakespeare’s famous play on the subject — and you realize that people are (on the surface, in their spoken words) kidding themselves about what really matters — to them!.)
Anyway, to call a spade a spade in the pulpit on this front took all the (little enough) courage I had over the years, and most of the time I failed completely.
Thank You for this enduringly important — nay, decisive — piece.
Oh, and do consult — everyone, I mean — Pastor Paula’s faith-response to this issue. It is the theme of about 30% of her memes, and I think she knows what she’s talking about. In my experience, PP is the only preacher I know who gets away with saying what DZ is observing here. That is probably because (a) she admits to it, and as a woman; and (b) because she sees the Hand of God in it providentially! That last is probably the key thing.
I love the many insights of this piece—especially the image of God as a deranged lover—and can’t wait to watch these films. PZ, I wonder if the blowback comes from a generation (generations?) making a false idol of romance. In a world of super-glossed social media and films, it feels like news when people announce that romantic relationships can be actually very difficult and/or not fulfilling. As powerful as those early (or late) sparks can be, there are also myriad underreported betrayals and confusions. I think this is why Alain de Botton’s claim that “you will marry the wrong person” resonated so widely. While I sense (from personal experience!!) the supernatural power of romantic love, that may not be an access point for everyone for whom romance has failed. As Dave writes, “There are simply too many broken hearts out there.” But God’s love never fails (or, I believe it doesn’t)
I havent even read the post yet, but just from the name I know I agree…….and I knew PZ would agree. I dont have the words but it has something to do with why I hang on to PZ’s words ( written and spoken)…..
go figure
Love this post!!
Thank you S!
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