Sunrise, Sunset
Sixteen years ago almost to the day, I got off the train at a sleepy Italian seaside town called Finale Liguria and trudged with my backpack to the local youth hostel, following the routine I had established over the past three or four weeks of traveling. The next day, I met a smart, independent-minded, unconventionally-beautiful young American woman at breakfast and passed a lovely day with her exploring the tiny town and relaxing on the beach. As the sun went down, we went for gelati on the boardwalk, and the next morning, we watched the first rays of sun sprinkle across the Mediterranean, huddled under a blanket on the roof of a castle perched high on a cliff overlooking the coastline. After breakfast, we went our separate ways.
That episode remains, despite some stiff competition right up to the present day, the most romantic evening of my life. I was 21, which had more than a little to do with it. For this reason, I had no problem relating to director Richard Linklater’s 1995 film Before Sunrise, which tells a variation of this familiar travelers’ tale. Young actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy perfectly capture the exuberance that comes with discovering a soul-mate in deeply exotic and exciting circumstances. They get it all: the awkwardness, the self-consciousness and intellectual preening that eventually gives way to the sudden and slightly terrifying realization of true connection, and the joy that blossoms from that moment of discovery. The film also depicts the bittersweet ambivalence that follows: the burning desire to make the moment last, against the stubborn fact of its transience.
Much of the poignancy of Before Sunrise arises from the characters’ youth. We find them at a moment in life when anything seems possible, full of confidence, wit and intelligence, eager to explore the world and make their mark on it. If anyone can perform the Great Work of romantic alchemy and transform the base metal of the “perfect moment” into the gold of the fully-realized lifetime partnership against the odds arrayed against them, it is these two. And yet, the film leaves you wondering, as it should.
As someone who has, at best, a mixed record at these sorts of things, I could not help projecting my own experience onto the film. In the fall of the following year, I looked up the young woman I had met in Italy. It turned out to be an unwise decision. Sometimes the expectations raised in the perfect moment can’t survive in the cold light of day, and all I ended up doing was appending an unneeded coda to the event and tarnishing the pristine luster of the original memory. Attempting to pursue the possibilities beyond a certain point is like chasing rainbows. As a romantic myself, it was a lesson I noted, but rarely followed.
More often, these things remain unresolved – perhaps for years, perhaps forever. Even on the odd occasion where you have a chance, years later, to encounter the dramatis personae of your romantic past, time has moved inexorably onward, creating new and usually irreconcilable barriers toward whatever might have been. Eventually, even the eternal romantic learns that if the ending to the story isn’t going to be “they lived happily ever after,” the next best thing is “…and I never saw her again the rest of my life.”
Linklater explores the question of what happens next in Before Sunset, a followup to the original film that reunites the two protagonists, Jesse and Celine, after nine years. Jesse is in Paris on the last stop of a tour promoting his novel, which was based on his night in Vienna with Celine. She turns up at the reading, and they proceed to spend the 80-odd minutes until he needs to catch his plane walking and talking in real time, exploring where they’ve been and where they could possibly be going.
The tag-line in the advertising is, “What if you had a second chance with the one who got away?” The question implies hope, but in reality, it can be the most painful scenario one can imagine. Unlike the short, sharp pain of abrupt separation, the pain of reunion is often an excruciating plunge into the miasma of compromise, disappointment, regret and false promise. The lambent light of the past turns the present into a jungle of soft-edged shadows, through which lost traces of self can be dimly seen, and felt mostly by their absence.
The beauty of the perfect moment is that it lingers unchanged forever in memory. But outside, time passes and leaves its mark on the people involved. Outsiders intrude on the comfortable bubble of mutuality and desire that made the original moment special. If and when the lovers encounter each other again, even if the magical brew of chemistry still retains its potency, it is almost inevitably adulterated by complications that conspire against the possibility of continuance.
In Before Sunset, Jesse and Celine find each other encumbered with the weight of accumulated commitments. Jesse is trapped in a loveless marriage and is the father of a young child. Celine’s independent spirit has hardened into a defensive crust of cynicism and bitterness that threatens to engulf her. Geography is against them: He is in New York, she in Paris, each living their own lives and moving in their own directions. He is an accomplished author; she is passionately engaged in her own important work.
The key aspect of their situation is timing. At one point in the film, the characters discuss a missed connection that took place several years ago, when Celine was a grad-student at NYU and Jesse caught a glimpse of her on the street downtown. Had they followed up on that encounter, they may have had a wonderful time, but then decided afterwards, for eminently level-headed and practical reasons, not to take things any further. After all, he was busy with his writing and relationship, she with her studies. In your mid-20s, those priorities seem more important; the complexities of a serious relationship daunting; the opportunity costs high compared to other new experiences life has to offer.
But Before Sunset catches the characters in their 30s – old enough to recognize that their relationship is too special to be taken for granted, but not yet so old that they have entirely given up on the possibility of happiness. Despite the outward trappings of success in their lives and careers, Jesse and Celine desperately feel the absence of that ineffable passion that they glimpsed with each other nine years before.
The tension in the film comes from wondering how the characters will react. It is obvious immediately that they remain made for each other. They have a sympathy, a shared intellectual energy, a passion for life and an intangible chemistry that makes it blindingly obvious that each could make, and perhaps keep, the other not only satisfied, but inspired. Together, they have the potential for a kind of happiness that most people only dream of. The question is, will they have the courage to overcome the complications and reconcile their divergent ambitions and directions to achieve this rare and precious emotional synthesis?
Are they chasing rainbows? Modern life despises this kind of simple joy – an observation manifested in various ways throughout the characters’ conversation. Eventually, even the most diehard romantic becomes resigned to the necessity of compromise, finding happiness at the opportune moments and muddling through with the rest. Some terribly cynical people call this process of realization “growing up.”
Before Sunset stands in opposition to the remorseless engine of compromise. Jesse and Celine may be flawed, they may be deluded. Perhaps their relationship, if it continues, won’t survive the thousands of mundane issues and annoyances that pull even the loftiest dreams back to earth. But they have hope, and they may even have courage. And in them, perhaps, is hope for the hopeless romantic in us all.
8:29:04 AM 
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