Classic Movie Review : Before Sunrise (1995)

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I don’t know what to make of Richard Linklater’s filmmaking career. Part of me enjoys the way he unceremoniously celebrates “normal moments” and “life as-it-is”. Part of me is annoyed at how he disguises nostalgia and sappy romanticism as deep conversations, but I mostly enjoy his films. I think. He’s great, but just not as great as he believes. His movie Before Sunrise is a great example of how he can be both smart and a little full of himself.

Before Sunrise tells the story of Jesse (a young, dreamy-eyed Ethan Hawke), an American student who meets a lovely French girl named Céline (Julie Delpy) on a train going from Budapest to Paris. If you’re thinking “oh, I know where this is going”, you’re right. They talk, quickly develop a connection and Jesse convince Céline to spend the night with him in Vienna instead of going back home, so it’s exactly what she does. But not like you think, you freak.

A film about two people talking

I know what you’re thinking: “Ben, this poster looks like the cover art for a Goo Goo Dolls record. Why are you wasting our time and attention weirdo 90s shit?” Well, yes and no. Some of you know my lifelong fascination with romantic movies. My thesis is that American romantic movies aren’t about love, but desire. They end whenever the protagonist kissed his/her love interest for the first time an this is why our generation doesn’t know how to love properly.

What makes Before Sunrise interesting is that it has both elements: desire and love. It is even more impressing because the event of the film happen over the span of one night. Richard Linklater and his co-writer Kim Krizan worked a simple, but beautiful and eloquent idea into their screenplay : that you can only truly see and understand yourself through the eyes of someone else. That love is a cornerstone to self-actualization, which is pretty true.

Jesse and Céline don’t have a self in Before Sunrise. They meet in between destinations, with no idea of who each other are outside of the details they deliberately choose to share. They kiss not even one third into the movie and fully assume the latent sexual nature of their relationship. But they don’t choose to fuck like rabbits in a hotel room for twelve hours. What they want is to validate and/or reconstruct their own worldview through an interested perspective.

I’ve been madly in love with the same woman for fourteen years now and I know what Before Sunrise claims is true: having someone who sees the magic in you for how you choose to present yourself is one of the greatest things that can happen to you. I come from a small place where you who were as a kid more or less dictates the course of your whole life and moments of pure self-definition like this are immensely healing. They can change your life.

Only in a Richard Linklater movie horny strangers would stop by a fucking vinyl shop while in Vienna for twelve hours.

….but it’s still a sexual fantasy

But c’mon. Let’s be serious now. Meeting a complete stranger on a train, developing a spiritual bond in a swanky European city and having awkward outdoor sex with them at the end of the night is what happens in Leonard Cohen songs. It is not real. There is no reason why Jesse and Céline consciously decide to be a romantic memory to one another outside of that it would be neat for the movie to do so. They have literally nothing to come back home to.

I mean, Richard Linklater claims Before Sunrise was inspired by something that happened to him and it might be true. By any means, Jesse seems like a stand-in for him. But doesn’t it make Before Sunrise more of a sexual or psychosexual fantasy then? I’m just really struggling with the : you’re awesome, no you’re awesome/let’s not have sex/let’s totally have sex and walk away to our respective lives angle of this movie. It is ridiculously convenient.

My viewing of Before Sunrise was very much a reflection of my relationship to Richard Linklater movies. It has an intellectual honesty and a hopefulness that few directors can combine so swiftly, but it is also a little full of itself. Sometimes it feels extremely real and sometimes it feels like just a witty, deadpan romantic comedy that Jim Jarmusch would’ve done better. Before Sunrise feels like it was made for college kids to cum and cry to at the same time.

7.3/10