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Before Sunrise (1995) - Directed by Richard Linklater
“It's like our time together is just ours."
After watching so many horror movies, I needed some downtime and relaxation. So for the first time in my life I am in a romance mood. I started with romantic comedies like Trouble in Paradise and decided to stick with the light-hearted stuff for a while. One of the early decisions was a movie that's been on my to-do list for ages but I never got around to because I'm not into the genre of romance: Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.
Not your typical romance movie, Before Sunrise is about the 24 hours spent in one vacationing day in Vienna by an American guy and a French girl who meet on a train, need to catch a new train the next day, and roam around Vienna exchanging philosophies of life, love and philosophy. Eventually they realize that they have a lot in common and enjoy each other's company a lot, but will they ever see each other again after this one day?
What stuck out like a really pretty sore thumb was how the movie bases itself on the polar opposite of the typical romance structure that makes so many of them fail: cheesiness, love at first sight, a random sex scene to secure their relationship, yadda-yadda whoop-dee-doo. This movie is one where you could easily say nothing's happening. It's literally 90 minutes of a guy and a girl talking with each other. However, these conversations are not only realistic, but meaningful. There are a lot of strong points about love and life spoken between these two characters, and it makes you think more than some of those psychological rt movies like Tarkovsky's Nostalghia. What is real love? Where does sex play out? Does philosophy have a lot to do with it? Is love a righteous thing or a selfish thing? These are serious questions being asked in a way that never gets too artsy-fartsy for the typical audience but are still the many chunks that form the structure and basis of the story.
It really helps that the charisma and love shown between the main two actors, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, is so real that I would go as far as to say that this is one of the most realistic films I've ever seen. That's a rare trait for romance movies because most of the ones I've seen go straight to the cheesy basis for "romance" which is really just sex and first-sightedness. But with this film, when the sex scene was being built up the two characters were discussing whether or not they should because it should not be the ending of a great night but it could also be a symbol of how they really did fall in love based on their time together. And the sex scene cuts off before anything really happens, anyway.
Before Sunrise is by no means a movie made for a great adventure or over-the-top drama. It's about a slice of life everybody goes through at some point, but this kind of day is often ignored for the rest of our lives because it's a one-time thing and we end up taking something that could be so meaningful for granted. Before Sunrise proves to us it is not something to be taken for granted. One may say the film isn't ambitious because "nothing happens," but to make such a realistic film where philosophy is so heavy in a role for character development, isn't the courage to undertake such a unique film and make it so good a form of ambition? Since the movie is so different from the typical romance movie but far more heartfelt and realistic in part due to the simple behavior, I will say "yes." Besides, Richard Linklater filmed a coming-of-age movie over the course of 12 years as the main cast aged. I can't believe Linklater isn't ambitious. It spawned two critically-lauded sequels, so there's something to consider.
“It's like our time together is just ours."
After watching so many horror movies, I needed some downtime and relaxation. So for the first time in my life I am in a romance mood. I started with romantic comedies like Trouble in Paradise and decided to stick with the light-hearted stuff for a while. One of the early decisions was a movie that's been on my to-do list for ages but I never got around to because I'm not into the genre of romance: Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.
Not your typical romance movie, Before Sunrise is about the 24 hours spent in one vacationing day in Vienna by an American guy and a French girl who meet on a train, need to catch a new train the next day, and roam around Vienna exchanging philosophies of life, love and philosophy. Eventually they realize that they have a lot in common and enjoy each other's company a lot, but will they ever see each other again after this one day?
What stuck out like a really pretty sore thumb was how the movie bases itself on the polar opposite of the typical romance structure that makes so many of them fail: cheesiness, love at first sight, a random sex scene to secure their relationship, yadda-yadda whoop-dee-doo. This movie is one where you could easily say nothing's happening. It's literally 90 minutes of a guy and a girl talking with each other. However, these conversations are not only realistic, but meaningful. There are a lot of strong points about love and life spoken between these two characters, and it makes you think more than some of those psychological rt movies like Tarkovsky's Nostalghia. What is real love? Where does sex play out? Does philosophy have a lot to do with it? Is love a righteous thing or a selfish thing? These are serious questions being asked in a way that never gets too artsy-fartsy for the typical audience but are still the many chunks that form the structure and basis of the story.
It really helps that the charisma and love shown between the main two actors, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, is so real that I would go as far as to say that this is one of the most realistic films I've ever seen. That's a rare trait for romance movies because most of the ones I've seen go straight to the cheesy basis for "romance" which is really just sex and first-sightedness. But with this film, when the sex scene was being built up the two characters were discussing whether or not they should because it should not be the ending of a great night but it could also be a symbol of how they really did fall in love based on their time together. And the sex scene cuts off before anything really happens, anyway.
Before Sunrise is by no means a movie made for a great adventure or over-the-top drama. It's about a slice of life everybody goes through at some point, but this kind of day is often ignored for the rest of our lives because it's a one-time thing and we end up taking something that could be so meaningful for granted. Before Sunrise proves to us it is not something to be taken for granted. One may say the film isn't ambitious because "nothing happens," but to make such a realistic film where philosophy is so heavy in a role for character development, isn't the courage to undertake such a unique film and make it so good a form of ambition? Since the movie is so different from the typical romance movie but far more heartfelt and realistic in part due to the simple behavior, I will say "yes." Besides, Richard Linklater filmed a coming-of-age movie over the course of 12 years as the main cast aged. I can't believe Linklater isn't ambitious. It spawned two critically-lauded sequels, so there's something to consider.