Before Sunrise

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Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise film poster
Directed by Richard Linklater
Produced by Anne Walker-McBay
Written by Richard Linklater,
Kim Krizan
Starring Ethan Hawke,
Julie Delpy
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s) January 27, 1995
Running time 105 minutes
Language English
Budget ~ US$2,500,000
Followed by Before Sunset
IMDb profile

Before Sunrise is a 1995 drama film directed by Richard Linklater and written by Linklater and Kim Krizan.

The film follows Jesse, a young American, and Céline, a young French woman, who meet on a train and disembark in Vienna, where they spend the night walking around the city and getting to know one another.

The plot is minimalist, since aside from walking and talking, not much happens. The two characters' ideas and perspectives on life, love, and reincarnation are detailed. Jesse is a romantic disguised as a cynic, and Céline is seemingly a romantic, albeit 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. However, these characters appear again in another of Linklater's films, Waking Life.

In 2004, a sequel titled Before Sunset was released, in which the story was continued with the same director and cast.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The film starts with Jesse meeting Céline on a train to Paris and striking up a conversation with her. Jesse is going to Vienna to catch a flight back to the United States, whereas Céline is returning to university in Paris after visiting her grandmother in Budapest.

When they reach Vienna, Jesse convinces Céline to disembark with him, saying that 10 or 20 years down the road, she might not be happy with her marriage and might wonder how her life would have been different 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 does not have enough money to rent a room for the night, so they decide to roam around in Vienna, where they exchange observations on life and love in general.

At one point when they are walking alongside a canal they are approached by a somewhat dishevelled character who, instead of begging, offers to write them a poem with a word of their choice in it. Jesse and Céline decide on the word "milkshake", and are soon presented with the poem Delusion Angel, written for the film by the poet David Jewell (Poet).

Gradually, Jesse and Céline begin to click romantically during their many conversations that night, ending in the implication of sexual intercourse between them. At that point, Jesse explains that if given the choice, he'd marry her instead of never seeing her again. The film ends the next day at the train station, where the two hastily agree to meet together at the same place in six months as the train is about to leave.

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[edit] Background

The plot of the film was conceived by the director Richard Linklater, who shared a similar experience with a woman named Amy when they spent a night talking as they roamed the streets of Philadelphia.

[edit] Themes

Before Sunrise revolves largely around the twin themes of self-fulfilment and self-discovery through the significant other, charging the concept through the introduction of a twelve-hour time constraint in which the goals implicit to the two themes have to be realised. They are underlined by the poem "Delusion Angel", which evokes a longing for complete and unifying, possibly even redeeming, understanding between two partners in a world which is itself unknowable, and over which one can exercise no control.

An important role is played by the theme of spontaneous and uninhibited response to one's environment. It is reflected by the actions of Jesse and Céline, whose joint stream of consciousness, initiated by a previously unmeditated decision to leave the train together, allows them to temporarily detach themselves from the world, and enter a realm where only the other's company is of importance. It is worth noting that when the morning arrives Céline remarks that she and Jesse have again entered real time. [1]

It could be argued that Before Sunrise subsumes its main themes under that of life. In one scene, Céline and Jesse visit the Friedhof der Namenlosen, the Cemetery of the Nameless in Simmering. The people buried in the cemetery have found anonimity in death; by learning to know and understand one another, Celine and Jesse experience and embrace life, suspending their own mortality.[2]

[edit] Cast

[edit] Critical Reception

Before Sunrise received high critical praise at the time of its release. The film has received a rare perfect 100% rating of positive reviews on Rottentomatoes.com.[3] Influential e-critic James Berardinelli has cited the film as "the best romance of all time".[4] Alternately, critic Anthony Lane remarked that this film could be alternately titled Schlacker.

The sequel, Before Sunset, was released to equally positive reviews, with Rottentomatoes.com logging a 94% "Fresh" rating.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Intertextual references highlight, and potentially expand, the notion of spontaneity. While on the train, Céline and Jesse read books that are suggestive of behaviour patterns in which experience takes precedence over rationality. Céline reads a George Bataille anthology: Madame Edwarda, Le Mort (The Dead Man), and Histoire de L’Oeil (The Story of the Eye); Jesse reads Klaus Kinski's autobiography, All I Need Is Love.
  2. ^ Cf. James Berardinelli's 1995 online review, and Jonathan Romney's comments on the sequel "Before Sunset" in the "Independent" of 25 July 2004
  3. ^ Before Sunrise Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
  4. ^ Review: Waking Life
  5. ^ Before Sunset Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
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[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
v • d • e
Films directed by Richard Linklater

It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1989) • Slacker (1991) • Dazed and Confused (1993) • Before Sunrise (1995) • subUrbia (1996) • The Newton Boys (1998) • Waking Life (2001) • Tape (2001) • School of Rock (2003) • Before Sunset (2004) • Bad News Bears (2005) • A Scanner Darkly (2006) • Fast Food Nation (2006) • Boyhood (~2015)