Stories, it is commonly believed, all have a beginning, a middle and an ending. So stretching a particularly long story into three parts makes perfect dramatic sense, leading to what we call “trilogies.” And although the dramatic concept of a trilogy is thousands of years old, the franchise-obsessed film industry has latched onto the concept of a trilogy as a marketing ploy, leading to a series of popular three-part motion picture series that engage and sometimes divide audiences.
Star Wars, The Matrix, The Godfather, The Lord of the Rings and now The Hobbit are all motion picture trilogies that struck a chord with audiences, but… what’s The Best Movie Trilogy Ever? That’s what we’re here to find out. We challenged CraveOnline’s critics – William Bibbiani, Witney Seibold and Brian Formo – to scour their extensive knowledge of motion picture history to come up with their picks for the best trilogy of movies ever produced, and their picks… well, they’re a little arty.
Read on to find out more about the movie trilogies they picked, let us know what your favorites are in the comments, and come back every week for an all-new installment of The Best Movie Ever!
Check Out: The Best Movie Ever: Biblical Epics
Witney Seibold’s Pick: The Silence of God Trilogy (1961-1963)
“Trilogy” is a word. “Quadrilogy” isn’t. The word comes from the ancient Greek theatrical tradition of staging three vaguely connected dramatic plays in a row at theater festivals, then following them with a light comedy. Aeschylus’ The Oresteia is the oldest complete trilogy known to man. The word escaped scholarly circles in the 1980s, when people began referring to the only three Star Wars movies to date as a trilogy. Now that there are eight theatrical films (with more on the way) and three TV movies, does it still even count as a trilogy?
My favorite trilogies are the ones that are more thematically linked than dramatically linked. Fassbinder’s BRD trilogy, for instance. Or Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors, which took each color of the French flag – along with their corresponding patriotic notions of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity – and made each one into a feature film suffused with that color and themed with the color’s notion. Jean Cocteau’s Orphic trilogy is also an amazing feat, using surrealism, Greek myth, and artistic ambition to link up the filmmaker’s entire career.
But when it comes to thematically linked trilogies, the most powerful, and the most overall strong, is probably Ingmar Bergman’s stirring and dreary Silence of God Trilogy. Bergman had a definite ambivalence toward God and religion, having been raised by an abusive pastor, and he openly wrestled with that ambivalence in most of his movies, sometimes being a placid and open-minded deist, and just as often declaring a bitter atheism. The Silence of God trilogy consists of Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), and The Silence (1963). The first deals with mental illness. The second deals with direct theology, and there’s a lot of talk of Kierkegaard. The third deals with familial distance between sisters. Bergman said that these films all deal with reduction and certainty. When one is certain and when one is uncertain. About life. About prayer. And what happens when that certainty or uncertainty clashes with people. The films are depressing, slow, and unceasingly dour. But they are also artistic and profound.
Brian Formo’s Pick: The Mick Travis Trilogy (1968-1982)
I’ve got some explaining to do. The reason why I’m choosing the Mick Travis Trilogy for the best trilogy ever has to do with a European literary movement that flourished in the 18th and 19th century: the picaresque novel. This movement focused on a rascally man from a lower class who nonetheless lives a full, adventurous life; he even brushes elbows with the elite. Generally the picaresque hero advances up societal ranks by holding steadfast to his wit. And generally, they fall once they can no longer keep their fraudulent ways hidden from the more discernible eye. The picaresque hero is always in good spirits and exposes societal class distinctions to be inherently fraudulent.
Okay, preamble over. Who is Mick Travis? Well he’s many a thing. Chiefly he’s a character who’s performed by Malcolm McDowell in three Lindsay Anderson films. But these Micks are never the exact same character. Travis is an everyman shapeshifter. Anderson (who began as a documentary filmmaker) and screenwriter David Sherwin use Travis to document the hypocrisies of Western society.
We first meet a Mick Travis in If… He’s a school boy who starts a rebellion. If… was released in 1968 and features a militaristic takeover of the school. But his isn’t a revolution of ideas, it’s a revolution for the sake of fun. To feel alive. To be aroused by power. It’s a combination of liberalism and anarchism that is indeed fun… as long as you’re the one calling the shots. And that sort of fun can quickly turn from poking and prodding, to coups and murderous rage when the person in power is countered.
Travis then appears in a musical, O Lucky Man!, and he’s a traveling salesman who sells coffee. O Lucky Man! is a delightful – yet brutal – commentary on the new system of global capitalism. Though the West pats itself on the back for stepping out of the colonialism age, it still reaps the benefits of the places where powers had recently withdrawn their flags from. They never removed their hand from pockets. Nor stopped cupping them to whisper to figurehead dictators to keep their influence. Travis’ picaresque journey concludes as a reporter in Britannia Hospital. He’s documenting the poor health care in Britain, and stumbles upon a doctor who seeks to murder a patient so that he can wire their brain to a computer and create the perfect man.
All three of these films are just as relevant today for the ideas they tackle: proper channels for revolutionary energy, the horrors and hypocrisy of globalization, and modern mankind viewing human perfection as a synergy with their invented machinery. But despite the heady subjects, they’re great fun to watch because Anderson, Sherwin, and McDowell take the picaresque, adventurous approach to Travis’ journeys.
William Bibbiani’s Pick: The Before Trilogy (1995-2013)
Jesus Christ, Witney and Brian got artsy with their picks. And to think I almost picked the Star Wars trilogy. Yeesh. That would have been embarrassing. But the fun and games of George Lucas’s sci-fi/fantasy romp pale in comparison to dramatically sound, thematically rich explorations that are possible in the best motion picture trilogies. The ability to illustrate the growth of characters and ideas over time, indeed over many years, is one that most movies and franchises deny themselves. The Man with No Name doesn’t evolve from film to film, and Ash only finds himself in one crazier, Three Stooge-inspired horror scenario after another. The best movie trilogy ever needs to take advantage of the chance to explore the evolution of its protagonists and ideas, not just shove them into new situations and niftier zombie fights.
So allow me to praise Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy, consisting of Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). Each film follows two lovers, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) over just a brief span of time, as they connect, reconnect and eventually re-evaluate their relationship between films. In Before Sunrise they are engrossed in each other for the first time, spending a single romantic evening together before going their separate ways. In Before Sunset they meet again for the first time in years and realize that a single chance encounter permanently changed their lives. And in Before Midnight they are living together, not married but with children, and thinking about the ways that familiarity has both strengthened and weakened the bond they romanticized for most of their lives.
Richard Linklater received a lot of praise for this year’s Boyhood, a single film that spans the life of a child from pre-pubescence to the start of adulthood, but after watching the Before Trilogy I found the film a little lacking. The immediacy of Boyhood doesn’t stand up to the mature and thoughtful trilogy of films that preceded it, capturing the passion of youth, the regrets of adulthood and the uncertainty of age. Hawke and Delpy give two of the most believable performances in cinema throughout these films, powerful individuals with their own thoughts and failings, coming together with all the eagerness and trepidation found in real life. And in a single film their journey would never have had the same impact.
Before the Before Trilogy continued, Before Sunrise was considered by many to be one of the great romances. As it continued, the description only proved to be more true, but in the sense that idealized romance eventually transforms into something more complicated, humdrum and frustrating. Each film in this series changes the films that came before it, and for the better, setting the stage for a more interesting examination of these engrossing characters and their relationship in the future. If it ends with Before Midnight, I’ll be happy, but if it continues in another nine years I’m sure I’ll discover something new about Jesse, Celine and love itself. But I’ll have to find a new Best Movie Trilogy ever, of course.
