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Realistic Mythmaking
A young lover often holds contradictory thoughts in his mind:
One, that she might be "the one" you want to spend
the rest of your life with, growing old together on a porch
swing reminiscing about Good Times; Two, that if this doesn't
work out, then there'll always be someone else just as great.
It takes some life experience to realize that there's a finite
number of people you really "connect" with--that
unspoken bond reaches past timidity and embarrassment. You
give each other the freedom to be frank, but respect enough
to reserve your impulses. It's difficult to explain, but she
just gets you, and you, her. Conversation is an aphrodisiac.
Then comes the most complicated contradiction: The fantasy
doesn't exist, but here it is, right in front of you. This
is very hard for cynical Gen X'ers to deal with; the Reality
Bites generation has been bred not to believe in fairy
tales or John Hughes movies. The mature thing to do is to
accept a profound friendship, out of respect for the disillusionment
indulgence might bring. It's the right thing to do because
in this cynical world, the ideal isn't real.
And then life flows on. Relationships come and go, circumstances
intrude, pragmatism wins out, a low fog settles in. Comfort
and routine stave off complete depression. This is the early
thirties. Mortality doesn't set in, but a sense of mediocrity
does: This is who I'm stuck with. And I love my kids more
than anything, but damn if they don't cramp my style. When
am I going to write that book? Or get that degree? Or run
for that office? Ask for that transfer? Go after that promotion?
What might have happened, because where I'm going isn't where
I planned.
Personally, I've been in fourteen wedding ceremonies over
the past ten years, none my own, and I don't think you see
this scenario play out as much as the movies and trade paperback
industries would have you believe. It does, however, afflict
a pretty specific character type: The gifted, those intellectual
and artistic spirits bound by circumstances and responsibilities
that tether their natural curiosities about the world. Some
gifted people are lucky enough to find a kindred spirit, and
they're the couple everyone admires and wants to hang out
with. The rest slowly choke on the rope of this albatross,
usually tied around their own neck. Reality bites, indeed.
This archetype guides Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise
series. The first film, released in 1994, documents the chance
meeting of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) on
a train near Vienna. Celine is a French student returning
from visiting family; Jesse is engaged in the cliché,
which he acknowledges, of "finding myself in Europe or
some bullshit." They start talking out of boredom and
intrigue; the boldness of their conversation has erotic undertones,
but they aren't interested necessarily in sex--at least, not
in any acknowledged way. It's something else, so when Jesse
suggests they get off the train and wander around Vienna,
Celine accepts, and we follow them as the run into interesting
characters and just, well, talk. Pseudo-philosophy and armchair
psychology eroticized.
Linklater films their streams of talk in continuous tracking
shots, following them through alleys and streets, allowing
the two wayward souls find each other without being forced
by the needs of the camera. They talk and talk, and talk some
more, about life, love, politics, and everything in between.
If this sounds pretentious, it is--Jesse and Celine are pretentious
themselves, in the way that gifted, intelligent, and sensitive
twenty-somethings are, when you've just begun to figure out
all that ails the world. They're both so self-aware that they've
convinced themselves, perhaps rightly, that their "connection"
is a fleeting fantasy, a dreamy night so...interesting that
it can't possibly last.
The climax of the film centers on one question: Is it real?
Their intellectual, realist side says: We'll hate each other,
things like this never work out, you eventually stop calling
and writing, and then they both end up doing the "sensible"
thing. But the sensitive side pulls them desperately into
the romantic dreamworld. Because we know Jesse and Celine
so intimately (we've listened to them talk about everything
for an hour and a half, and shared a sweet moment atop
a ferris wheel), Before Sunrise becomes as desperate
to the audience as it does to them. Every love story comes
down to Will they or won't they?, and Linklater's movie
dares to let this question linger with the audience. It's
one of those rare films whose impact isn't fleeting, but as
profound as engrossing literature. That these characters are
so carefully measured, and yet so natural, is a testament
to the literary sensibilities of Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy.
If Before Sunrise is about the fantasy; Before
Sunset is about the crisis--in the Gen X narrative, the
early thirties funk. Jesse is in Paris on a book tour promoting,
you guessed it, a novel about one magical night in Vienna
with a beautiful stranger. Jesse is as he was nine years ago;
when asked if the book is autobiographical, he gives one of
his careful answers that's both honest and coy: "You
will use the clay of your own life, and you can't avoid that."
Jesse has lost some hair and his face has fallen just a tad--he's
lost the boyishness of the original--but it wears on him well.
He has a more authoritative presence. When asked by a book
critic if they "get back together," Jesse's answer
seems more directed at the viewer: "It's a test of whether
you're a romantic or a cynic."
Celine shows up, and after the appropriately awkward, but
natural-feeling, opening salvos, we learn that she's an enviro-crusader
and world traveler, "I admire that--you're actually doing
something when most of us just sit around and bitch."
In a neat narrative construct, the conversation transitions
from the brief biographies right into philosophy and politics
again, just as it did in the first film--it's the reason they
connected in the first place. In fact, Jesse and Celine seem
to embody the tensions between the American and French Left.
Celine lived in New York for a while; an episode with a cop
has made her paranoid of American fear and aggression. Her
diatribe becomes a mini-essay on the French perception of
cowboyism, yet Celine, true to form, is self-critical too:
"Americans are always in some bullshit good mood, and
Paris is just grumpy." Celine is prone scoldings of America,
which Jesse responds to by calling her "comrade."
This whole conversation, filmed in the cobblestone streets
of Paris, is a string of small profound moments--that just
by talking things out, the world travelers Jesse and Celine
come to some common agreements about American and French virtues
in the world. If nothing else, Before Sunrise is Texan
Richard Linklater's diplomatic plea to restore Franco-American
relations.
This ends Act One, a reestablishment of character. The second
act is a Socratic seminar on post-modern relationships. Questions
are answered by questions, which lead to small epiphanies.
Celine: "Memories are a wonderful thing, if you don't
have to deal with the past," Jesse: "You can't ever
replace someone because they have such specific details."
If that doesn't sound like a writer, what does? Their conversation
eventually grows toward the specific, taking on darker tones,
especially as Jesse divulges about his marriage: "I feel
like I'm running a small nursery with someone I used to date."
As they talk, Linklater moves then in and out of shadows,
through tunnels, underneath bridges, eventually onto a boat,
which gives him the space to let the sun set behind them as
the movie confronts its central question. The movie's buzz
revolved around Ethan Hawke admitting that he drew on his
recent public divorce with Uma Thurman for inspiration in
these conversations ("My life is 24/7 mad...there's got
to be more to love than commitment.") Indeed, this is
great stuff (When Ethan says, "Men need to feel essential,
and they don't anymore," one can imagine him thinking
of The Bride killing Bill). But overlooked is that Linklater's
photography is so beautiful, itself a painterly narration
of the emotional undertones of the film. At the same time,
since the movie is shown in real time, he uses light to create
an unconscious dramatic push--the sun is setting, that plane
is leaving....will they or won't they?!
The miracle of this film is that all this great dialogue--a
single strand is unmatched in the whole six hours of Kill
Bill--is framed against a poetic backdrop, its most dramatic
moments filmed in vehicles that start and stop as the emotions
grow more tense. Before Sunset is a deceptively simple-looking
film, but Linklater stages the film to create dramatic torque
naturally in the conversation, without drawing attention to
his work as the director. In an age of egomaniacal directors
such as M. Night Shyamalan and Quentin Tarantino, Linklater's
selfless act seems damn near heroic. He lets his actors burrow
into character so deeply that, at one point, I'm sure I heard
Jesse address his co-star as "Julie." Linklater's
method of perpetual motion indicates that this story is about
nothing less than Life Itself, and his sense of drama diffuses
the pretension of their conversation--he's on par with many
of the "great" novelists of the day.
Still, on further review, the fairy-taleness of the movie
dogs it. All these happenstance occurrences, the profundity
wrought from approximately eighteen hours together--it doesn't
seem possible. It's reminiscent of Ovid's telling of the myth
of Psyche and Cupid, in which the young god of love falls
for the most beautiful and talented woman in the world. Oracles
are consulted, declarations from upon high are bestowed upon
the mortals, and great food and wine is consumed as the two
walk in and out of great castles of old Europe. The two can
only be in love while in the dark--they both fear reality,
what would happen if they see each other in the light. Should
they just live in the darkness, or see each other for who
they really are? Psyche, of course, lights the candle and
Cupid runs away. Psyche is put to many hard tasks, but she
eventually meets her Cupid again, and sees him for who he
really is--wounds and all. It all works out in the end.
But as Edith Hamilton notes about the myth, "The
writer is entertained by what he writes; he believes none
of it." Clearly, the principals of Before Sunset are
not just entertained, but enraptured by this little myth they've
charted. What's odd is that despite the chance of the plot,
the sheer breadth of their conversation makes it seem more
"real" and natural than almost any work of any Gen
X filmmaker, lending it a power more persuasive than any obvious,
cartoonish, movie-ish myth. The questions left for their third
movie, as yet unwritten, are these: Do we believe what we've
written? Is there a chance that the myth might be real? What
are you willing to risk to find out? Is the potential heartbreak
worth the potential immortality? For intellectual/sensitive
gifted types like Jesse and Celine, this is the question
upon which your happiness, your life's fulfillment, and indeed
your fate rests. In Ovid's story, Love and Soul spend eternity
on Olympus. I just don't see how I can wait another nine years
to find out what Linklater decides for his Cupid and Psyche.
When I think of Julie Delpy in these, two of my favorite movies,
I think of this painting, Psyche Entering Cupid's Garden
by John William Waterhouse. Linklater creates the same
type of drama as the pre-Raphaelite master.
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