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.”

On Before Sunrise: Hooked on a feeling

Jesse and Celine play a game of telephone in Before Sunrise

A couple of weeks ago the Criterion Collection released Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and July 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 beginning with a look at the fantasy of Before Sunrise.

"Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, y'know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me y'know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy." -Jesse

Before Sunrise is a film about a feeling. It’s the kind of feeling that one imagines half delirious at 1am while lying restless in bed; the feeling one imagines while slipping in and out of a sleepy daydream. It’s a feeling that only lasts a minute but in that minute feels endless. The feeling is warm and exhilarating at the same time. It provides at once a feeling of comfort while simultaneously provoking an excitement and optimism for the future ahead. It’s a feeling that feels inexplicable, but at the same time fundamentally dominates the human consciousness.

The feeling of human connection is one that has been kicked around since the dawn of time. Does it truly exist? Is it fundamental to the human experience? Romantics and cynics bandy back and forth endlessly on its true intention. Yet, if only even for a brief moment, most people experience the feeling of connection to someone else. Somehow, someway, a complete stranger in a matter of minutes, hours, or days becomes someone special.

Before Sunrise is maybe the closet any piece of filmmaking comes to capturing that specific moment. It is hard to explain why exactly Celine gets off the train with Jesse after just meeting him moments earlier, yet it feels right. There is no feeling of romantic contrivance or construction. Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy without making it overt, finds exactly what brings his characters together. It becomes clearer throughout their night in Vienna that for some reason, if only for the night, Jesse and Celine are meant to be with one another. Their conversations are fluid and nuanced, the two let their personalities flow out naturally throughout the night. The only flashes of awkwardness exist briefly and only when the most personal of moments are shared. Even through a variety of different contemplations, some simple, some wildly philosophical, their personalities blend without issue.

The film plays out like a youthful dream. There is a finite period of time for their adventure to play out, in the morning Jesse flies back to the US and Celine takes the train to Paris, yet the night seems wistful and endless in the moment. Their conversations are wrapped with anxiety of the future, and the uncertainty of the present. Jesse has been riding the train endlessly since breaking up with his girlfriend in Madrid, and Celine is looking for some sort of romantic connection, what exactly that is she can’t be sure. Celine is ambitious but is uncertain of her place in the world, while Jesse feels like a lost poet looking for answers of why things have not exactly gone the way he has expected them to. Both find solace in their sudden connection, and create together a romantic night that is straight out of the imagination of many a romantic person in their early 20s.

It is almost difficult to explain why the film, which is essentially a series of conversations between two people, has as magical an effect as it does. Yet there is something so gripping to the proceedings. The conversation feels as real as film conversation can. The dialogue is light and spontaneous; each individual conversation feels connected even as subject matter and tone vary from place to place, conversation to conversation. Moments stand out, there is a great exchange of silent looks in a listening room of a record shop, a contemplation of past relationships over a game of pinball, and the “telephone game.” Each moment adds layers of depth, and by the end one gets a stunning picture of two souls lost in the strange vast landscape of youth just trying to get out with some sort of connection at the end.

When Jesse and Celine depart without exchanging contact information at the end of the film, the dream comes to a sudden halt. Each return to their regularly scheduled places in life. Both vow to meet again six moths later, but the chances of it happening seem minuscule at best. Both leave though with that elusive feeling of connection. Wherever they end up going in the future they will always have the memories of that evening. Jesse and Celine will meet again nine years later at a book signing in Paris, but for the time being all they have is mental pictures of that moment and the knowledge that, for a fleeting romantic moment in time, they felt a connection.