Great

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2006)

Along with one other film, this film and its sequel have moved me more than any others. Many great comments have been posted here. I would add that repeated viewings of the film reveal to me that it's only Jesse who's ambivalent about turning the night into something lasting. He's from a divorce background and seems to want to keep an image of himself as a footloose kid. You can see it in the way he walks away jauntily and youthfully from the train station after they part. It's not so much a "guy thing" as personal psychology. Celine is from a happy home and has no ambivalence--she wants them to be together and stay together. It's almost too painful that they lose each other for nine years, and that Jesse comes back six months later but doesn't find her there. The film superbly uses imagery and music to evoke the deeply sacred nature of the love that they find. Yes it is "romantic," but also realistic--sometimes people do meet who are wonderful matches for each other. In their youth and relative innocence and inexperience, they're swept into something mighty and profound. The film's exceptional blend of rapture and pain comes from the suspense of not knowing if they (Jesse) will be smart enough to make sure they hold onto this connection. Of course, this is what makes the ending of Sunset such an overpowering relief--at the very least they'll remain in touch and know where each other is. I think we're dealing here with rare works of art because of the balance and blending between the finest of detail on the surface and the deepest of profundity and poignancy in the background. After the predawn love in the park, we see the mundane, sun-drenched city, hear the harpsichord and the church bells, see them sitting at the base of the statue with her resting her head in his lap--all superb, beautiful, and exceptionally moving.
It's a great moment when they're having "the conversation" about whether they'll stay in each other's lives, and they seem to reach a sad conclusion, and then the Strauss waltz starts playing in the background. This is "risky" and would be sentimental in a less-great movie. In this movie it works wonderfully. It's also wonderful that so soon after they meet, they start talking about death and visit a cemetery. This is because they both sense, intuitively, that they've met a person who deeply resonates for them, someone with whom they can talk about anything--they comprehend all of life and even death for each other. Watch the film more and you start to see how metaphysical it is. They sit in the church, they hear the church bells in the morning, they talk of the afterlife, birth, reincarnation, and all the metaphysical questions. They are "everything" to each other. In other words, simply and prosaically, they're people who could be life-partners and be happy with each other, with all that entails. Such things happen, after all. They almost lose all of it, but by the end of Sunset have regained at least part of it.