Just a little background.(For a detailed one please go to link https://mouthshut.com/review/Before_Sunrise-170189-1.html). Two strangers meet in the train on their way to Vienna and sensing a connection decide to spend a day together. Time flows by fast yet delightfully and its time to part. They promise to meet after 6 months at the same place and the movie ends there. This was Before Sunrise, the prequel to Before Sunset. Now let me delve into the subject of Before Sunset - to start from where Jesse and Celine had left.
So do they meet after 6 months as they had promised? They do not. Jesse comes there but Celine does not(could not for the death of her grandma). And Jesse does not give up hope. What are the chances of finding a person in the big wide world by just his/her first name? Almost zero. So Jesse goes back to his world and writes a book. A book about that one night in Vienna which is aptly called ‘This time’. This book becomes a best seller and with a hope in his heart he comes to Paris for a reading session and there is Celine, older, thinner but in essence the same woman he had not been able to forget for the last 9 years. And they have a few hours together. Jesse has to fly back to his world before sunset.
Elements of a fairy tale? Well, not quite. But life-like. Now Jesse is married and has a son and Celine is in a ‘good relationship’. And the movie moves on. If Before Sunrise was about young love, Before Sunset is all reality, much more immediate, the matured version of it. Both Jesse and Celine look visibly different – and through these lines on their faces and the crow’s feet near their eyes – you can’t miss them looking for each other’s past versions, for the lost love. The physical changes only talk of the mind and heart that has endured all these changes and one will be pleasantly surprised how, the chance encounter 9 years back was not really a one night stand for any of them.
Snippet 1 –
Celine: So, I want to try something.
Jesse: What?
Celine:(hugs him) I want to see if you stay together or if you dissolve into molecules.
Jesse: How am I doing?
Celine: Still here.
Jesse: Good, I like being here.
This one is shorter, more immediate and again shot completely in real time. Again its just the 2 of them on the screen and some conversations. These are however different kind of conversations – its aptly enthused with irony, humor, maturity, sometimes bitterness yet always with underlying love and hope. And it’s so believable. One thing leads to another and they are still together though the time for Jesse’s flight gets nearer. He comes to drop Celine off at her place and requests her to play him a song on her guitar. Celine gives her a few options and he chooses a waltz. And she sings. Excerpts.
Let me sing you a waltz
Out of nowhere, out of my thoughts
Let me sing you a waltz
About this one night stand…
…I don’t care what they say
I know what you meant for me that day
I just want another try, I just want another night
Even if it doesn’t seem quite right
You meant for me much more than anyone I’ve met before
One single night with you, little Jesse, is worth a thousand with anybody
I have no bitterness, my sweet I’ll never forget this one night thing
Even tomorrow in other arms, my heart will stay yours until I die
Let me sing you a waltz…
And once she is finished Jesse chides her if she plugs ‘the name’ in for every guy that comes up and Celine goes ‘Yes of course, what, you thought I wrote it for you?’.(And I thought this movie was all mature and less romance!)
The end – can magic be recreated? You bet it can be. Richard linkletter did it again. The end is the most beautiful part of the movie because it does not provide a clear answer. It’s beautiful because as Jesse says at the start of the movie – ‘it will be a good test to know if you are a romantic or a cynic’. Trust me you will figure it out. Jesse is looking at Celine with that adorable twinkle in his eyes and Celine just dances away to Nina Simone’s ‘Just in time’. What else do you need? Why do you want clear predictable answers?
I will recommend it to one and all. I love this movie for the simple reason that it makes me believe in love, in spite of the harsh reality of the big bad world. Often when I am tired or upset, Celine’s waltz manages to bring a smile on my face. It’s a song of hope, honesty and love. Sometimes, when I am at the crossroads and there are no clear answers, it makes me want to put a little extra of myself, tells me never ever to stop believing in magic…