***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy
Directed by Richard Linklater & written by Linklater, Kim Krizan, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy
2004
80 min R
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2004
“A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since, that I haven’t thought of that girl.”
—from “Citizen Kane.”
“Before Sunset” is the kind of wistful, nostalgic, and sweetly sad story that Garrison Keillor would take five minutes to tell in an episode of “Lake Wobegon.” Two young people spend a night together in Vienna, strolling, talking, and falling in love. That was the movie “Before Sunrise.” Nine years later they run into each other in Paris and spend the afternoon strolling, talking, and toying with the idea of falling in love again. But more than love they are thinking about what could have been, what might have been, how their lives could have gone differently. Wondering how life might have turned out differently is not the healthiest way to spend your time, but everybody does it, probably more than they ought, so it’s worth making a movie about.
In “Before Sunrise” the handsome boy (Ethan Hawke) and the pretty girl (Julie Delpy) are young, self-absorbed, and filled with wonder about what they will be and what will happen next. Now they are older, more gaunt, more distilled, and they think they know who they are and give in to wondering about what they could have been instead. Now he’s a published novelist, technically a best-seller, and she works for a company that enforces environmental laws. She is doing something to make the world better while he is a full-blown dilettante, drifting from thing to thing (like his book tour through Europe) without really holding onto anything besides the loosest possible philosophy. They run into each other at his book signing in Paris, then get coffee, then go for a walk, then take a boat down the Seine.
They spend the first half of the movie talking about how happy they are, or at least how their problems are a kind of cultivated eccentricity, all part of the show. And then their façades gently, patiently, smilingly unravel. He mentions how he’s married to a woman he knocked up and describes their marriage as “like running a daycare center with a girl I used to date.” And her initial statement that their night together was not that special, and that she doesn’t remember sleeping with him…well, that unravels, too.
A friend of mine posits that “Before Sunset” could all be a fantasy taking place in The Hawke’s head—and what’s wrong with that? Haven’t we all thought something along the lines of “wouldn’t it be sweet if I ran into her again, except this time I would be a big success (a published author perhaps)?” Haven’t we all thought things like that? Director/co-writer Richard Linklater has done that sort of thing before, with “Waking Life,” about how important our fantasy lives and thoughts are to us.
We fall in love with fantasies first and people second anyway. In the nine years since Julie and The Hawke have met they’ve spent a lot more time with the recollection—the fantasy—of each other than with the real thing. In the grand scheme of things, Julie’s “relationship” with The Hawke is much more dependent on her imaginary, memory-version of him, with whom she’s spent so much more time, than on who The Hawke really is. (For more, see “Solaris.”) The Hawke’s best seller is a fictionalized version of their night together; he must have spent an infinitely longer amount of time crafting the book than actually being with her. As in the previous movie, the idea that these two are “destined” for each other is not rammed down our throats, like in so many romantic comedies. I left both movies unsure if these two are right for each other or if they can just find really good stuff to talk about once a decade. I think that’s the point.
“Before Sunset” is a better movie than “Sunrise,” mostly because everyone involved has simply gotten better at what they do. Julie (“Killing Zoe”) and The Hawke (“Training Day”) are better actors now, Linklater is a better director—“Sunset” is not as stilted as its predecessor—and the writing, by all three of them and Kim Krizan, is smoother, allowing conversations to flow more naturally from one to the next. The movie is comprised of six- and seven-minute long takes, as the actors walk up and down Paris, which is no mean feat, and it moves gradually as the two skirt their old love.
Of course, in my own life I’m closer to “Sunset” than to “Sunrise,” I’m closer to asking “is this all there is?” than I am to wondering “who am I going to be?” It is, of course, silly that Julie and The Hawke (and I) treat their (our) lives and their (our) personalities with such finality, considering that they are only at the ripe old age of 32. But people are silly that way. And that’s what makes “Before Sunset” so very, very good; it is an infectiously sunny and loving movie that says these aren’t perfect people, but they are people, needy and silly and misguided, and not all that different from you or me. The movie’s final scene is its saddest, in a smiling kind of way, and it ends the only way it could.
Finished July 27, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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