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 (1995) is a film directed by Richard Linklater and written by Linklater and Kim Krizan.

The movie follows Jesse, a young American on his way to Vienna to catch a flight back home after a traumatic break-up, and Celine, a young French woman traveling back to Paris to attend school at La Sorbonne after having visited her grandmother in Budapest. They meet on a train and after talking for a while, Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train with him at Vienna so they can spend more time together.

The plot is best described as minimalist, since aside from walking and talking, not much happens. The two characters' ideas, perspectives on life, love, reincarnation, etc. are detailed and thought out. Jesse is a romantic disguised as a cynic, and Celine seemingly a romantic though 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.

In 2004, Before Sunset, a long awaited sequel, was released from the same director and cast and reprising the original concept.

Contents

[edit] Plot Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie starts with Jesse meeting Celine on a train to Paris. They strike a conversation in the train. Jesse is going to Vienna whereas Celine is on her way to Paris after visiting her grandmother.

When they reach Vienna, Jesse asks Celine to accompany him in Vienna. Jesse convinces Celine by saying that after 10 or 20 years down the road, she might not be happy with her marriage and might wonder how it would have been 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 doesn't have enough money to rent a room for the night, so they decide to roam around in Vienna. They exchange some peculiar observations on life and love in general.

Sometime through the night they click romantically and end up sleeping together in the park. The movie ends the next day at the train station, where the two agree to meet together at the same place in six months.

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Spoilers end here.

[edit] Memorable Quotes

  • Jesse: OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's, like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking…I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?
  • Jesse: Alright, alright, think of it like this: jump ahead ten, twenty years, okay? And you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, you know? You start to blame your husband. You start to think of all those guys you met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well I'm one of those guys, that's me! So think of this as time travel. From then to now to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything; I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and you made the right choice and you're really happy.
  • Celine: I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.
  • Celine: Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?

[edit] Trivia

  • The characters appear again in another film by the same director, Waking Life.
  • The plot of the movie was conceived by the director Richard Linklater, who shared a similar experience with a woman named Amy when they spent a whole night talking as they roamed the streets of Philadelphia.
  • The books read by Celine and Jesse may have given them a sense of the other's inner workings (it is movie land).
Celine is reading a George Bataille anthology: ‘Madame Edwarda’, ‘Le Mort’ (The Dead Man), ‘Histoire de L’Oeil’ (History of the Eye). Jesse has actor Klaus Kinski’s autobiography, “All I Need Is Love’.
Bataille promotes intense experiences and heightened awareness of them (both pleasure and pain); he emphasises the sensations of ‘life’ over rational thought and social order. He treats Sex - the creation of new life – with the kind of seriousness usually reserved for Death. Kinski’s autobiography is lighter (less intellectual, more populist), but he was famous for conveying intensity on screen and living with passion. Bataille writes about deliberately seeking a life of emotional intensity; Kinski simply lived that way.
So Celine is reading about the principle of a passionate life, while Jesse is reading about the practise of a passionate life. She is earnest about cultivating relationships (as serious as she is about Death), and talks about creating a life that expresses her inner self. (Presumably she is on the look out for someone who will match that). Jesse tends towards a more passive acceptance of whatever happens, as though life is a big party that you have to crash, and an experience that is similar for everyone.

[edit] Cast

Character Actor
Jesse Ethan Hawke
Celine Julie Delpy
Street Poet Dominic Castell

[edit] Reviews

  • 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[1].
  • The sequel,Before Sunset, was released to equally positive reviews, with Rottentomatoes.com logging a 94% "Fresh" rating [2].
  • Influential e-critic James Berardinelli has cited the film as "the best romance of all time" [3].
  • Critic Anthony Lane remarked that this film could be alternately titled "Schlacker".

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:


Films directed by Richard Linklater
It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books • Slacker • Dazed and Confused • Before Sunrise • subUrbia • The Newton Boys • Waking Life • Tape • School of Rock • Before Sunset • Bad News Bears • A Scanner Darkly • Fast Food Nation
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