“Electric Shadows” Film Chat

We started Electric Shadows with the toughest film in the trilogy.Before Midnight is the third Linklater Before film — the one most people find difficult to sit with. Jesse and Céline are together now, in Greece, with kids and years of accumulated life between them. The romance of Before Sunrise is long gone. What's left is something more honest, and more uncomfortable to watch.We rewatched this one recently, both of us now married, which changes things. The first time we saw it we were single and found the hotel room fight almost unwatchable. This time we liked it more. That shift is most of what we talk about.Along the way: the nine-year structure of the trilogy and what it means that Linklater actually waited; the old woman's speech at dinner that sounds more like grief than love; whether Jesse and Céline's fight is a failure or just what long relationships look like when the protective mythology is gone; and a sentence from a Chinese celebrity that became a slogan for a generation of young people who have already given up: 反正最后结果都那样 — whatever you do, it all ends up the same way.We don't fully answer it. But we try.Electric Shadows is a film conversation between two people who take movies seriously and each other lightly.---我们用了三部曲里最难的一部开始了这个播客。《爱在午夜降临前》是林克莱特 Before 三部曲的第三部——也是大多数人觉得最坐立难安的一部。Jesse 和 Céline 在一起了，在希腊，带着两个孩子和许多年积累下来的生活。《爱在黎明破晓前》里的那种浪漫早就不见了。留下来的是更诚实的东西，也是更难理解的东西。我们最近重看了这部电影，两个人现在都已结婚，这件事改变了一些感受。第一次看的时候我们都还单身，酒店里那场大吵几乎让人坐不住。这次我们都更喜欢这部电影了。这个变化本身，就是我们这期聊的大部分内容。聊到的还有：三部曲每隔九年一部的结构，以及林克莱特真的等了意味着什么；晚餐上老奶奶那段话，听起来更像是在讲哀悼，而不是爱；Jesse 和 Céline 的争吵到底是一段关系的失败，还是只是当幻觉散尽之后，长久关系本来的样子；还有一句中国明星说的话，后来变成了一代对爱情脱敏的年轻人的口号——反正最后结果都那样。我们没有给出一个完整的答案。但我们试图去回答它。

For our first episode, we picked the movie that — between the two of us — has the strangest origin story.Night Is Short, Walk on Girl (Masaaki Yuasa, 2017) follows one unnamed girl through a single night in Kyoto — a drinking contest with a possibly immortal old man, a used book fair with a god who hates auction prices, a guerrilla theater with a playwright who won't change his pants, and a cold that takes down an entire city. The plot summary does it no justice. You have to see it.We go chapter by chapter: the drunken-flowers logic of Act 1, the serendipity-as-philosophy of the Book Fair, the genuinely unhinged finale of the School Festival, and what it means that the last scene looks like a completely different film. We also get into Yuasa's animation style, the Li Bai connection hiding in plain sight, and whether the whole night is best understood as a dream — or just what it feels like to be young and walking through a city with nowhere specific to be.𝙀𝙡𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙘 𝙎𝙝𝙖𝙙𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙖 𝙛𝙞𝙡𝙢 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙗𝙚𝙩𝙬𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙩𝙬𝙤 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙝 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙡𝙮. 𝙉𝙚𝙬 𝙚𝙥𝙞𝙨𝙤𝙙𝙚𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙚 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩.