On Before Sunset: In real time

Jesse and Celine back together again in Before Sunset

A couple of weeks ago the Criterion Collection released Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy’s incredible series of films “The Before Trilogy” together on Blu-Ray for the first time. I take a small amount time to reflect upon three of my all time favorite films and what they mean to me throughout the week continuing with a look at the urgency of time in Before Sunset.

Only in the final scene of Before Sunset does the film return to the wistful tone of Before Sunrise. For the hour and ten minutes that proceed it Jesse and Celine spend their brief time together under the pressure of the hand of time. Like in Sunrise the clock is ticking on the amount of time they have together, but unlike the first film the romantic projections of youth are gone. As the minutes tick by in Before Sunset there is a true feeling of now or never. There is no imaginary six months later in Vienna, if Jesse gets onto that plain and returns to his wife in Chicago it is all over.

As such Before Sunset transforms from the examination of the feeling of connection found in Before Sunrise into an examination of the urgency of time. Life has caught up to Jesse and Celine since the last time they met 9 years earlier. Jesse has become a published author but is caught in a marriage he wants no part of. Celine has become a successful political activist but has had troubles fully committing romantically. Both are older and have been through exponentially more emotionally. They are hardly the same two wandering souls who met in Vienna, time is running out on these versions of Jesse and Celine and both need to know if their connection still exists immediately.

To show this urgency director Richard Linklater shoots Before Sunset in a way to resemble real time. Jesse and Celine’s conversations no longer have wistful, almost timeless feelings to them. Instead they now carry with them the responsibility of catching up on 9 years of lost time. Each individual conversation has emotional steaks attached to it and the emotional pressure between them builds and builds throughout the film. When they are walking through the streets of Paris there is no longer a sense of wandering. There are no street poets to bump into, nor Farris Wheels to kiss near, it is now all about Jessie and Celine.

The steaks of the film continue to build until each exploding emotionally during the car ride back to Celine’s apartment. Jesse has a meltdown about being unable to feel romantic love for his wife. Celine has a meltdown about how reading his book made her unable to let go of their connection. Being together in that moment allows each to reach rock bottom emotionally. For the first time it seems each is now able to reflect on their unhappiness and let all their feelings of regret loose. It feels like in the back of the car both get the chance to start fresh; to rebuild their lives into the ones they were dreaming of at the end of Before Sunrise. It is finally the time for them to fully reconnect the way they thought they would six moths after their fateful first walk through Vienna.

That leads us back to the final scene. Celine brings Jessie into her apartment to sing him a waltz she wrote many years ago. After, when he asks for one more song, she responds “it was our deal one song, no you are going to have your tea and then…” but never finishes the sentence. All of a sudden the pressures of time have finally evaporated. Both Jessie and Celine finally get to take a deep breath and fully rekindle the connection both knew was there all along. Jesse puts Nina Simone’s “Right on Time” on the stereo and their conversation becomes lighter and more fanciful. Both cannot stop giggling. They have returned to the fantasy of Before Sunrise. Celine begins to dance, impersonating Simone gracefully and hope enters Jesse’s eyes fully for the first time in the film.

“Baby… you are going to miss that plane.”
 

“I know.”