Before Sunrise
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(Redirected from Before sunrise) Before Sunrise (1995) is a film directed by Richard Linklater and written by Linklater and Kim Krizan.
The movie follows Jesse, a young American on his way to Vienna to catch a flight back home after a traumatic break-up, and Celine, a young French woman traveling back to Paris to attend school at La Sorbonne after having visited her grandmother in Budapest.
They meet on a train and after talking for a while, Jesse convinces
Celine to get off the train with him at Vienna so they can spend more
time together.
The plot is best described as minimalist, since aside from walking
and talking, not much happens. The two characters' ideas, perspectives
on life, love, reincarnation, etc. are detailed and thought out. Jesse is a romantic disguised as a cynic,
and Celine seemingly a romantic though with some doubts. Taking place
over the course of one night, their limited time together is always on
their minds, and leads to their revealing more about themselves than
they normally would, since both believe they will never see one another
again.
In 2004, Before Sunset, a long awaited sequel, was released from the same director and cast and reprising the original concept.
Plot Summary
The movie starts with Jesse meeting Celine on a train to Paris. They
strike a conversation in the train. Jesse is going to Vienna whereas
Celine is on her way to Paris after visiting her grandmother.
When they reach Vienna, Jesse asks Celine to accompany him in
Vienna. Jesse convinces Celine by saying that after 10 or 20 years down
the road, she might not be happy with her marriage and might wonder how
it would have been if she had picked another guy, and this is a chance
to realize that he himself is not that different from the rest. In his
words, he is "the same boring unmotivated guy." Jesse has to catch a
flight early in the morning and doesn't have enough money to rent a
room for the night, so they decide to roam around in Vienna. They
exchange some peculiar observations on life and love in general.
Sometime through the night they click romantically and end up
sleeping together in the park. The movie ends the next day at the train
station, where the two agree to meet together at the same place in six
months.
Memorable Quotes
- Jesse: OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago, there are
not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's,
like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and
six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own,
like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You
know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if
they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last
50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so
at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking"¦I
mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all
so specialized?
- Jesse: Alright, alright, 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, you know? You start to blame
your husband. You start to think of all those guys you 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! 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
you made the right choice and you're really happy.
- Celine: I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any
of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's
any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of
understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible
to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.
- Celine: Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?
- Celine: Why do you become obsessed with people you don't really like that much, you know, I mean"¦
- Celine: I like to feel his eyes on me when I look away.
[edit] Trivia
- The characters appear again in another film by the same director, Waking Life.
- The plot of the movie was conceived by the director Richard Linklater, who shared a similar experience with a woman named Amy when they spent a whole night talking as they roamed the streets of Philadelphia.
- The books read by Celine and Jesse may have given them a sense of the other's inner workings. (It is movie land).
- Celine is reading a George Bataille anthology: "˜Madame Edwarda’, "˜Le Mort’ (The Dead Man), "˜Histoire de L’Oeil’ (The Story of the Eye). Jesse has actor Klaus Kinski’s autobiography, "All I Need Is Love’.
- Bataille promotes intense experiences and heightened awareness of
them (both pleasure and pain); he emphasises the sensations of "˜life’
over rational thought and social order. Kinski’s autobiography is
lighter (less intellectual, more populist), but he was famous for
conveying intensity on screen and living with passion. Bataille writes
about deliberately seeking a life of emotional intensity; so Celine is
reading about the principle of a passionate life. Kinski lived
passionately; so Jesse is reading about the practice of a passionate
life.
- Celine is earnest about cultivating relationships, so presumably
she is on the look out for someone who matches her outlook. Jesse tends
towards dealing with whatever life brings, but he does have a lively
attitude to life (it's a big party that you have to crash). Their books
may be a symbol that they both have a passionate personality.
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