51. Before Sunrise
The best thing you can hope for when a quirky, original
independent filmmaker "goes Hollywood" is that he'll keep a little
piece of his soul intact and use his newfound powers for good. Richard
Linklater, who most recently made the enjoyable multiplex hit School of Rock,
was still just a cult phenomenon in
1995, when he released Before Sunrise. For the maker of Slacker
and Dazed and Confused, this was the first film in which he condensed
his scattered, quasi-philosophical, tag-team storytelling style and put it in
an audience-friendly package. You could think of it as another cult film, in
the sense that a lot of mainstream moviegoers missed it, but it found a place
in the hearts of those who saw it.
Two young twenty-somethings, the American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and the French
Celine (Julie Delpy), meet by happenstance on a train. He's supposed to leave
on a flight the next morning from Vienna while she's continuing on to France,
but they feel an instant connection and when his station comes she decides to
follow him off so they can grab a few hours together before he has to leave.
All night they walk the streets together, exploring, meeting people, laughing,
arguing, and talking about, um, ... well I don't remember most of what they
talk about but the "what" is not the point. The point is, the movie
sparkles with a certain kind of youthful intoxication -- both with ideas and
with love. It's the kind of talk that keeps undergraduates up all night
debating in their dorm rooms; and it's the kind of whirlwind entwinement of
kindred souls that gives romance a good name.
The film may feel familiar, but more because it resonates with your own
memories than because it devolves into genre stereotypes. It's not a classic
girl-meets-prince, girl-loses-prince, will-prince-come-back-for-girl fairy
tale. It's a constantly ambiguous story that doesn't hand us a gratuitous happy
ending but does perfectly capture the excitement of real, smart, good-looking,
still-awkward young people finding each other. It's a love story for people who
think. (Joshua Tanzer)
