Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
This film really seems to be affecting the people I’ve talked to who have seen it. It’s a great piece of work, and we’re always pleased to have Ghostboy back, especially when he loves something as much as this:
Howdy folks,
Preamble: It's been a while since I've sent in a review. Been a while, I suppose, since I felt passionate enough about something to extoll its virtues prior to its release. But I've seen 'Before Sunset' twice now, and I'm pretty passionate about it. I'm pretty sure I won't love another movie so much this year. The second time I saw it, which was yesterday, was at a back-to-back screening of it and its predecessor; I can't remember the last time I was left so deliriously happy by a cinematic experience. The closest thing I can remember was the first screening I saw of 'Lost In Translation.' Which, incidentally, was the last movie review I had posted at AICN.
Anyway, on to the review itself:
In Richard Linklater's third film, 'Before Sunrise,' the young couple spending their one night together in Vienna look at an ad for an art show and admire the paintings, commenting on how the figures seem to be dissolving into the backgrounds, how those backgrounds are more real than the people themselves.
At the end of the film, in a series of long, lonely static shots, Linklater's camera looks back at all the places they'd visited over the course of night - the park they slept in, the alleyway they stopped to talk in - all deserted and somehow colder in the morning light, all looking more real than they had when the lovers were sharing their fleeting moments there.
Conversely, the beginning of 'Before Sunset' is a series of static shots of various locations throughout a sun dappled, postcard-perfect Paris; over the next ninety minutes, these places will become occupied by that couple, meeting for the first time since that night in Vienna nine years ago, and be made more real by them. Later, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) will confess that everything feels so fleeting with him that he's afraid that if anyone touches him, he'll just dissolve into molecules, then and there. Celine (Julie Delpy) gives him a big hug to test his theory.
'Before Sunset' is an extraordinary sort of sequel that seems too good to be true, partially because it was made at all, but mostly because it is so good. It makes the first film, which in its nine years of existence has remained passionately but quietly loved by those who've seen it, seem so much more complete. One of the many conversations Jesse and Celine have concerns memories, and how they never really change and that new events will always change how once perceives what's happened in the past; they're referring to their memories of the night they spent together, of course. Likewise, seeing this film changes the first.
They meet in Paris, at a bookstore where Jesse is signing copies of his first novel. He has to leave for the airport in an hour, but that seems like enough time to catch up. They spend that hour walking and talking, filling each other in on what they've been doing, what they're feeling, who they've loved, how their lives have ended up, talking like two people who have a lifetime of things to say and are trying to get as much out as possible in the little time they have left. The night of the first film was as expansive as the starry European sky above them; they had all the time in the world. Here, ninety minutes seems tragically short, and everything seems so fleeting. It's like they're hanging onto time by their fingernails.
As in the first film, their chemistry is immediate, electric. The entire movie is their real-time conversation, which is so perfectly written (by Linklater, Hawke and Delpy) and performed that I want to get my hands on the screenplay, to study it. The most remarkable thing about it is that nearly everything they discuss are things I've thought, felt, said or wanted to say. They discuss deep things that we, by nature, often think about, and they put into words so precisely the various things that we're sometimes at odds to say. I say we now because I think, or at least hope, that most audience members will feel the same way.
If you've seen 'Before Sunset,' or 'Waking Life,' you know the type of conversations that Linklater's characters have. Intellectual, philosphical discussions, sometimes amongst characters in over their heads. Ideas like, that once you've lost faith in God or an afterlife, every single day seems much more immediate and precious, or that, alternately, if you don't believe in some sort of magic or mystery, you might as well be dead (that one comes from Albert Einstein). That we never change. There was a discussion in 'Waking Life' about how when you're young, you imagine that someday you'll plateau, but then you realize that you're getting older and you're still learning, striving, growing, and that's touched upon here, too. And because it's these two characters doing the talking, it all eventually circles back to them and their relationship. "Why," Jesse asks rhetorically at one point, in exasperation, "didn't you show up in Vienna?" They'd made that plan to meet each other six months to the date of that first night, and the first film famously left the ending ambiguous. We get the answers here, sort of.
The movie could be a play, what with all the talking, but then we'd lose two very important parts. One is a gesture that Celine makes at one point, in a car that says almost as much by itself as everything she's said up to that point. The other is a long walk up a staircase, where nothing is said but looks are exchanged; we remember the first film, the scene where they're listening to the record and keep trying to steal glances at each other without getting caught, and we notice how much things have changed.
I've debated over whether these two films (which seem to me now more like one film, two halves of a hole) could be called a love story. A romance, certainly, but so many words are spent deconstructing love that a good case is made against it. Jesse, in talking about his novel at the beginning of the movie, explains the difference between a romantic and cynic, and how they perceive things, and I suppose that could apply here as well. The frustrating thing about love is not that it may or may not exist, but that regardless, we usually end up needing it anyway, and maybe that's the answer to the question. There's a point near the end where Jesse tells a lie, and then, a short time after Celine tells one too. They don't admit to lying, but we know they are. Or, at least, I know they are, and maybe I'm not as cyncial as I thought.
And that's that. Please. please go see it. Not only will you love it (I hope), but maybe if it makes a little bit of money, it won't be so hard for these guys to finance the next installment nine years from now.
And that's that. I'm outta here
P.S. I'd also like to thank Hawke for his comments in the last chapter
of 'Down And Dirty Pictures.' From my indie-filmmaking POV, they did a
nice job of putting some things into much-needed perspective.
Excellent work, and I couldn’t agree more.
"Moriarty" out.
