Love can be mesmerizing, love can be enchanting, love can be ripping and it can be ambrosia to the soul, all at the same time. Blessed are those people for whom love can come as a complete surprise for love can happen at first sight or it could take a lifetime of waiting. Love can move poets to sonnets, it could move artists to oeuvres, and it could inspire symphonies from the musical aficionado, at the same time it could move the toughest of souls to misery and pains. Love is like that sparkling river of endless abundance which could either irrigate one’s life to an orchard of dreams fulfilled and joyous abundance or it could inundate the listlessness of a life where everything ceases to exist. Such is the power and charm of love. Love is the most potent form of magic ever conceived even by the Almighty.
After having spoken at rather eloquent lengths about the virtues and vices of love I am sure you would have realized today love is going to be the canvas on which I paint everything. Love at first sight, till not long ago, seemed like the kind of stuff that happens in books and romantic folklore, but after having watched the movie that I am going to talk of, I feel it could so effortlessly happen to any of us at the most unexpected of times, sweeping us of your feet before we realize it.
Before Sunrise is a film about uncomplicated love and romance blossoming between two people who are so different to each other yet they seem to share a common connect that propels them closer to each other. The movie treads a path less chartered in English movies and Richard Linklater comes up with a convincing and true to life film. The melodrama and floss has been cut and the story is so make believe that after a point in time the audience forgets its just two characters far removed from reality. The distinction between the reel and the real seems to vanish. It is a talking movie and literally so as the protagonists talk about a plethora of topics and issues most of which would have gotten a hush up from a conventional moviemaker.
The concept and story of the movie is simple. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) meets Celine (Julie Delpy) on a train traveling through Europe. His destination is Vienna, where a flight back to America awaits him the next morning. She’s on her way to Paris, where she starts classes at the Sorbonne next week. Right from the word go the chemistry between the two is palpable and the connect between the two is so visible. They strike some conservation and then Jesse makes Celine a proposal that they disembark at the next station and spend sometime together and they can continue their own ways next day morning. The proposal is so make believe and convincing that Celine accepts it. That’s the start of a whirlwind romantic journey through the streets of Vienna. What starts with a rambling in the train ends up with their lovemaking in the park under the moonlight and their subsequent falling for each other by sunrise.
The beauty of the movie is its effortless ease; there is no hint of the archetypical melodrama and candyfloss romance so commonplace for a movie of this genre. The director does not fall for the usual trap of trying to paint a larger then life canvas or making a complex psychological drama delving upon society and their ilk. What follows is a plain and simple love story, which is so minimalist that the audience seems to derive a voyeur like pleasure from the story of the protagonists. It seems like the dream story that each one of us would love to live. Celine is the kind of girl we would love to meet on a journey, the kind of girl we would want to take home to meet our parents, while Jesse is the ideal caring and loving yet carefree soul that any girl would want to have a relation with.
The movie is an ode to simple and effective movie making with the aspects of story telling and acting showing signs of brilliance. The screenplay of Linklater and Kim Krizan is sheer delight for they had to create enough dialogues and regulate the pace and tone of it in such a way that it doesn’t bore the audiences and yet at the same time keep the audiences interested in what happens to the characters and come up with a realistic ending after watching them come closer. It is a wonderful celebration of young romance where people connect through ideas and their spoken words rather then sex and their actions. It is the kind of movie which would light the hearts of both a romantic and a loner for the former would see in it the joyous bliss of love and would relate to the narration as his own state of mind while the loner would feel happy for the sheer delight of the triumph of human bondage.
Performances Delpy is the rare mix of strength; sweetness and vulnerability to give her character the shade that we all love. Hawke on the other hand in the role of the hurt American exudes warmth and a charm, which is infectious and rubs on as the movie progresses. The spontaneity and originality of their acting and chemistry is exuberant and that makes the ride a wonderfully pleasant one.
Moments The repressed emotions, subtleties of body language and mannerism have all found wonderfully detailed attention in the film. There is one scene where they listen to music in a small booth, nervously trying to avoid eye contact or the scene where suddenly the city comes to life with the sun rising or for that matter the poignant parting scene which is so devoid of melodrama yet so moving. All these scenes have been handled with such delicate detailing that it’s a connoisseur’s delight. The movie is an amalgamation of moments, which are so surreal; yet so sublime it makes you wonder whether it is a dream or a movie for you associate with it so much.
It is one of those movies which transports you into a different world, a world which is simple and bereft of the complexities and travails of life, a world where the small joys of life are still cheered, a world where love and romance rules, a love where human beings enjoy the small pleasures of life with gay abandon and a world where dreams do come true. It is not a movie, it is an experience, which can only be cherished when you become a part of it, and mere words are not enough to quite describe it.
The movie ends just as it begun, on an unexpected note, just when we thought that the two lovers would come together, they say good bye to each other with the solemn promise that they will see each other again at the same platform. Will they meet again or not, will their love reach the logical culmination, for all of that and more check out the 2nd part of my review where I will discuss the sequel Before Sunset. Till then go and grab the CDs of this movie and enjoy it for you wont regret it one bit. See you…!