Before Sunrise....Before Sunset

Rating: 9/10 (15 August 2011)

The other day I wanted to kill some time and decided to watch a few clips of Before Sunrise and as always ended up watching not only the whole of before sunrise but also before sunset. Before sunrise is the story of Jesse and Celine who meet on a train in Europe. He's nursing a broken heart, she's just on her way back home, he convinces her to get down and spend one day with him in Vienna and they spend the rest of their time together walking and talking. They decide to meet again after six months in Vienna and the movie ends with us feeling exactly like the protagonists, hopeful and that life is full of possibilities.
Cut to nine years later and we meet them again in Before sunset a little older and maybe a little wiser. At the surface it looks like they've both moved on to very successful lives both personally and professionally. He's married and has a little boy and is the author of a bestseller (curiously about a boy and a girl and a day in Vienna), she's moved on to a job in the Greencross and they've both managed to convert their passions into careers. But as they start talking again we see how unhappy they really are. He had turned up in Vienna and she hadn't, he's now stuck in an unhappy marriage and she's having trouble committing emotionally in any relationship. The movie ends with Jesse in Celine's apartment and we're left wondering whether he let her leave his life one more time or did he end up staying this time. I find myself going back to these movies time and again because Richard Linklater, the director, has managed to do something completely magical with these movies. There's nothing majorly dramatic in either film, the most dramatic scene is probably the scene in the car when Jesse is dropping Celine off and their real feelings come to the surface but even that scene is so heart wrenchingly beautiful that you believe every minute of it. It's two days in the lives of two people and thats exactly what it feels like, like looking into someone else's life. I could easily be Celine you could easily be Jesse and you never question what either of them are saying. The movies though no travelogue made me want to go to Paris and Vienna, a feat that I managed to achieve on my recent trip to Europe. Of course my before sunrise didn't quite happen all I got was a very drunk Chinese gentleman on the train who was incredibly happy to be sitting next to me.
But as Celine says it is so difficult to find anyone that you make any real connection with, that you can hold a conversation with that may not change the world but may change you. It's easy to take our relationships for granted, be it friends, a significant other or family. We all do it because it's so difficult to be in the moment and realise that this person, this relationship is significant. I don't know if Jesse and Celine were soul-mates, whether they were supposed to end up together, but I really really hope they did.