An American man meets a French woman on a train in Europe. They connect and get off together in Vienna where they spend the night walking around the city and talking, making love hours before each is scheduled to depart for home. With that framework, and the pitch-perfect script he wrote with Kim Krizan, director Richard Linklater made one of the most poignant romantic films of all time. For, despite its seeming simplicity, Before Sunrise contains real depth and insights into the elusive magic of chemistry, romantic expectations and impermanence. As the young lovers and kindred spirits Céline and Jesse, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke offer finely tuned and nuanced performances, the dialogue flowing between them with the ease and chemistry of two jazz musicians playing off each other on a single theme.
Linklater has said he knew he wanted to write with Krizan because he “loved the way her mind worked – a constant stream of confident and intelligent ideas.” The two spent months talking about the story and 11 days writing the script. The result is dialogue with depth and spontaneity and a film that is unusual in its respect for both of its main characters; Jesse and Céline are given space to be romantic, angry, self-conscious, tender and foolish, they feel fleshed out and real. Romantic films, particularly rom-coms, are often deeply cynical. We are given ridiculously good-looking opposites (who live in fabulous apartments in big cities) — these days a plucky, slightly unhinged career-driven woman and a likeable slacker — and asked to believe that the manic sparring between them is chemistry. They fall in love in montages and we rarely get to see anything that looks like our actual lives. Linklater knows that we bring this stable of expectations to the cinema with us and the relationship between Jesse and Céline feels amazingly refreshing because it both confirms and subverts what we know about romance and romantic films. Letting the characters get to know each other through the gentle pacing of the movie and naturalistic dialogue allows the audience to be complicit in their affair. Our experience mirrors the lovers — the audience gets to know and fall in love with Jesse and Céline while they get to know and fall in love with each other. As they ride in the bus or stand in the listening booth in the record store, their eyes lingering on each other when they think the other isn’t looking, the heat between them is palpable. In one of the film’s best scenes — one that is only good because it was handled with nuance and sensitivity — Jesse and Celine confess their feelings for each other by pretending to call their friends at home. In this scene it is clear that the intellectual aspect of their connection — their love of talking to each other — is the basis of an attraction that is multi-dimensional.
The setting of the film is also significant. Vienna is neutral ground, foreign land for both characters. Love is like that, it brings us out of our comfort zones and into a new landscape of possibility where everything feels fresh and, for a time, we may see everything with new eyes. Yet the connection between Jesse and Céline is also comfortable, easy from the start — they are making a new place together where both feel at home. For the viewer, Vienna is both familiar — a gorgeous European city filled with grand buildings and marble sculptures — but unfamiliar, unlike cities such as New York or Paris, where literally hundreds of movies have been filmed. Again, the audience’s experience parallels the lovers’.
From their visit to the Friedhof der Namenlosen, a graveyard filled with Viennese suicide and plague victims, many of them resting for eternity in anonymity, to Celine’s assertion that she “is afraid of death 24-7” or Jesse’s story about finding out his father didn’t want him and his sense that life is “a place where I wasn’t meant to be” where he is “crashing some big party,” the film is pre-occupied with death and the fleeting nature of time. Of course, the main conceit of the film — that the characters have less than 24 hours together — makes it impossible for either of them to forget that their relationship will end. As their time together comes to a close, Jesse quotes one of the later stanzas of the W.H. Auden poem “As I Walked Out One Evening,” “And Time will have his fancy/ To-morrow or to-day.”
The poem’s first five stanzas depict lovers proclaiming their undying affection, only to hear the chimes of the clocks of the city and a growing awareness that “you cannot conquer time.” Midway through the film, Jesse and Céline decide that they will accept this fact and be rational, not attempting to extend their affair beyond the moment. This awareness allows them to take the risk of being together and also opens them to the experience of staying in the present and connecting more fully. In the end, it is the fullness of their connection, the promise of their chemistry that makes it impossible for them to walk away. They agree to meet again and the movie ends with a question mark, leaving the viewer to wonder whether they will keep their promises.
As a viewer, it is easy to distance ourselves from this element of the film. We identify with their chemistry, their longing for each other and connection, but we avoid the knowledge that relationships, whether they last one night or 50 years, will end. However, I believe that it is this awareness that makes Before Sunrise resonate in a way that transcends the genre of romantic films or other dialogue-laden indie films. Life is impermanent and Linklater never shrinks from this fact. Instead, he lets us feel it fully, in all its bittersweet beauty. Jesse and Céline find something beautiful and unique that is not really theirs to keep. But, like the speaker in Auden’s poem, they find that:
“Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.”
Next week, Heidi will be back to tackle Before Sunset, the sequel to Before Sunrise, which takes place nine years later.
Taken together, these two movies (Before Sunrise & Before Sunset) are on a very short list of movies (and books, and other art) that have affected me in a very fundamental way, particularly the second installment (and I don’t think I’m alone). Romantic love, time, the tension between the obligation of living a predictable life constrained by social norms and the expectations of others, and the allure of a more authentic self-directed life that may or may not be real, regret, honesty, getting older, etc. I thought these movies were a beautiful accident (they couldn’t possibly have planned to do both–that far apart, and with the same actors, right?). I’ve thought about watching them again several times, but for me they aren’t light or fun–and when I’ve thought about watching them, the idea of the emotional and philosophical heavy lifting that might be required makes me hesitate. I haven’t watched them again for the same reason I’ve only see Schindler’s List once.
I’ve seen them both probably a dozen times, but I agree, despite the fact that they are very beautiful, they are not easy lifting. They’ve resonated with me in a very fundamental way as well, in part because of when they came into my life. I saw Before Sunrise in the theater my senior year of high school. By the time, Before Sunset came out, nine years later, I was married and had children, so both films came at times when the themes and questions raised in each film felt like they were the questions and themes of my life.
A dozen times? I love this level of commitment to a film! :) Seriously though: we read poems again and again, and they form a life narrative with us… films should surely do the same.
Well, Before Sunrise came at a time when I watched a few of the same movies over and over. :) I rarely watch movies more than once these days. Not enough time in the day.
I’m the same way… but then, that’s the good thing about nights, right? :) There are many hours before morning!
Looking forward to your review of the sequel.
I have been wanting to see this film for a few years now, and it was finally on our Independent Film Channel a couple of months ago. What a pleasure to watch! I thought it was beautiful and so well-cast. It reminded me of being younger and unattached and finding new possibilities for long-term relationships. I still haven’t gotten my hands on Before Sunset, but I hope to soon. I just barely got Lost Highway from Netflix yesterday. (We’ve been hooked on The Wire!)
Helen and I just finished watching this – the first time either of us had seen it, and a poignant and beautiful way to spend the evening of our fifth wedding anniversary! :) I’ve loved ‘Waking Life’ for years, and enjoyed the narrative connection with this film – that a similar approach to a conversational, idea-based style is impressed onto a single landscape, as you say in your review.
One of my favourite moments is the dual poetic narrative injections of the palmreader and the street poet. They both seem to ‘punch’ through to the characters in opposing ways, opening up different kinds of thought: but also skepticism, for Jesse, especially. I think these poetic injections emphasise the reality that we need a special way of talking to get through the difficulty of achieving really intimate dialogue. The pretend phone calls are a way to accomplish this: they work! It is a brilliant scene.
Lots more thinking to be done on this one, I’m sure… and I hope to watch it many more times! Helen just suggested we watch ‘Before Sunset’ now! :) Thanks so much for the review, Heidi!
The scenes with the palm reader and the poet are great. I think they both illuminate the on-going subtext of the film — romantic realities vs. romantic expectations. In those examples, Celine voices our hopes and Jesse voices our doubts. And — yet — there is some kind of magic between them, something special about the poem and the palm reader.
Loved Before Sunrise, not so much Before Sunset. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say, Heidi, maybe you can help me pin down why the second put me off. By the way, Before Sunrise just hit the Netflix instant play library! :)
I love this film. What woman doesn’t love a movie where a man wants to spend a whole night talking? And a man who is witty and sharp and smart? And what man, doesn’t fall instantly in love with Julie Delpy, her accent, her transparency? There is so much depth in the dialogue…
My only problem with the film is I just didn’t quite understand why she loves him.. I guess because I didn’t find him that smart, or maybe it’s just because I liked her a lot more.
It might just be a matter of taste, Ethan Hawke doesn’t do it for everyone, but I have a theory about this. I think we are very used to seeing dynamic, interesting men on screen, but not so much women, who are usually relegated to the beautiful wives and girlfriends category. Celine is beautiful (luminous, really, but so is he — I read a review that said they were both in such full-flower here that it hurts a little to watch them), but she is also so intelligent and passionate. I know lots of women like that in real life, but I am hard pressed to think of many movie characters like that and so I think we really notice her.
It took me a few viewings to appreciate him (partly because of Hawke’s performance in Reality Bites around the same time — super pretentious Gen X guy). There are a lot of lovely moments — when he talks about seeing his grandmother in the hose, when he talks about life being a party he’s crashing and the speech he gives when he “convinces” her to get off the train. She is more intense and sophisticated, but I find them well-matched.
I like this theory. I’m going to go and give it another watch. And then see Before Sunset for the first time!
Cool! Please return and report. :)
We’ve been watching the HBO show Bored to Death (I love it, BTW) and there was a line the other night that made me think of Julie Delpy’s character. Ted Danson’s character is talking about his “best ex-wife” and how she “made everything seem intimate” he says,”I’ve never really gotten over it.”
Missed this review until now. Well said, as usual, Heidi.
I’ve seen Before Sunrise at least a dozen times, and Before Sunset at least three times. I saw Before Sunrise in the theater when I was 25, just after graduating from college and before the realities of adult life had begun to temper my then rampant romanticism. No movie could have more deeply tapped into my id at the time — my ultimate desire then being to run off to “Vienna” (meaning, of course, any distant, romantic place; but also, or maybe even more so, “Vienna” as an idea or state of mind) to ponder the meaning of life and find my “Celine.”
Likewise, I saw Before Sunset a decade later after being married for 5 years. Jesse and Celine’s maturity, cynicism, and re-calibrated hope again seemed to mirror my own.
Few films about love/relationships/life have ever rung my head, heart, and soul with such precision. They belong in my pantheon with A Room With A View and Eternal Sunshine.
Yep. Of course, I wanted to be Celine (or myself, but Celine-like) and find my Jesse. One question this movie always raises for me is whether these kinds of moments are possible in ordinary life. Vienna may be a metaphorical location — a place where you are slighly off-balance, more open to experience and the moment — but maybe falling in love always makes you feel that way?
There’s a neat story in one of Roger Ebert’s books about the storyline from Before Sunrise coming to life. I wrote about it here:
http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/08/awesome-thing-of-day-before-sunrise.html