issues Before Sunset brings up

Rating: Null/10 (7 December 2004)

I suspect that Before Sunset is getting such mixed reviews because it will mean very little to viewers who have not reached the stage of life portrayed in it. To my mind, this is not a romance. Rather, it's a very frank look at how we end up with life partners.
For that reason, it is an important film for twentysomethings to see and is a gift to them from Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy.
SPOILERS FOLLOW:
The death of Celine's grandmother brings up two issues: the role of chance and that of our responsibilities to ourselves. Jesse knows Celine missed their planned meeting in Vienna because her grandmother died. But this does not prevent his pained question on the boat, something to the effect of 'Why weren't you there?' He is referring to rotten luck, the dark side of fate that is capable of robbing us of what we most desire. What were the odds that her grandmother would have died within those few days? Tiny. But it led to them not meeting again.
However, Celine still chose to not meet Jesse. Yes, her family may not have understood had she skipped the funeral. But life is for the living, and her grandmother wouldn't have known if she hadn't been there. So Celine must take responsibility for the fact that their lives didn't include each other.
Another precious dialog occurs when they discuss why they didn't exchange addresses or phone numbers nine years ago. Celine says it was because they were young and overly optimistic and assumed they'd meet plenty of people with whom they would connect equally well. Are the twentysomethings listening?
Celine expresses a problem many face when she explains why she prefers to have a boyfriend who is away much of the time: she feels suffocated when he is around too long. But she has been depressed since reading Jesse's book because she misses the kind of total intimacy they briefly shared and realizes there is no easy solution to this dilemma. One cannot simultaneously be intimate and distant, and all relationships involve finding a compromise.
Jesse's marriage is an ordinary one. He married his wife because she was smart, pretty, and pregnant, and marriage is about commitment. But even on his way to the church he was thinking of Celine. Are we being warned of the danger of staying in a mediocre relationship?
He says his wife and he are now like coworkers in a preschool, a description that will ring true with many viewers.
So is the lesson that you should throw caution to the wind and sacrifice all for someone who thrills your heart for a day? Before Sunset offers no such easy solution, as Jesse and Celine admit they may have discovered they didn't like each other after all.
As I see it, the primary role of film is to give voice to emotions and aspects of life we all know to be true but are not acceptable to discuss in polite society. In this regard Before Sunset excels. I can't help but think that when Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy decided to do this brief film it was not about profit at all-they simply had some things they thought people should hear, and this was their gift to the public.