| Product: |
Before Sunrise (DVD) |
| Date: |
04.09.05 (119 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Acting, direction, everything really!
Disadvantages: None at all, except there should be more of it :o)
Before Sunrise is a film for the hopeless romantics amongst us all, for those who believe in love and especially love at first sight. It is the story of Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American who has been touring Europe and is heading towards Vienna airport to catch his plane back home, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French woman heading back home. They meet on a train heading through Austria when Celine moves away from a couple that spend their journey arguing all the time. The humour of the couple gives them something to talk about and it doesn’t take long before the two of them find a connection, that indefinable something that brings two people together.
With only an evening and morning before his flight home Jesse knows he has to act know, when the train reaches Vienna and he has to get off he acts spontaneously and asks Celine to get off with him. She thinks about it and decides that she to wants to take a chance, their conversation so far sparking something that makes her not want to lose Jesses company so quickly, after all they will never met again if the part ways now!
From then on the film follows them through the evening, night and morning. The only time they have together just walking and talking around the sights of Vienna. That’s it, nothing else, a film of two people chatting about everyday life, where they are, where they’ve been and all those normal kind of things we all do.
Of course they interact with some of the locals and we get to see the wonderful city of Vienna and its beautiful sights as they walk but there is nothing else to this film, and it is all the better for it.
I know that this probably sounds uninteresting, and probably in the hands of a less accomplished director than Richard Linklater (Slacker, School of Rock) and a less talented pair of actor/actress than it certainly could have been.
Linklater has developed a way of directing that seems is almost fly on the wall like. Watching this you don’t have those cuts to different places, different people like most films do. The camera follows Jesse and Celine everywhere they go, moving in front of them, around them and watching as the walk away. This realism adds to the ‘common man’ dialogue the two of them use. No long words or conversations about things that we ourselves wouldn’t talk about. The interaction between Jesse and Celine just sparkles, their conversations natural, unforced and above all realistic. I cannot remember the last time a film so completely involved me, enveloped me in its on screen world. You so much want them to get together as the film progresses, but you know that like in real life that is not guaranteed, unlike most other romantic film. You want them to, you believe they will but can you be sure of this? Nope you can’t, the realism of the film doesn’t allow you to ‘know’ this is going to happen. And as the film moves through the hours they have together you realise that anything could happen by the time we come to the final scene.
Ethan Hawke will never be better than he is in this, he is not an actor I would say is great or has the charisma for this kind of part, but then maybe that is why he works as Jesse. He is not an actor you think of as a star and so your viewing of the film isn’t prejudiced by his star quality or the things you have seen him in before. You see him as Jesse and not as Ethan Hawke, unlike Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks for example who you always see as themselves not who they are playing!
Julie Delpy is just as good, again her beauty is such that she is not a make up plastered mega star, someone who has too look brilliant in every scene, you know the ones who wake up in the morning on screen with their hair perfect and their make up already on. She is beautiful in an average, normal person way (and I mean this as a compliment! She looks normal and having met her she looks just as incredible in real life as well)
This film was made 11 years ago now (1994) and somehow managed to pass me by at the time, probably because it got a limited release and didn’t reach many cinemas. Much like it’s newer sequel Before Sunset, showing what the two are up to 10 years later, made in 2005. This sequel was again ignored by pretty much every cinema around my area, the big chains not wanting to show a film that isn’t guaranteed to pull in loads of punters.
I was lucky enough to see both these films in a double bill last year and it made an afternoon/evening to remember. Two beautiful films that deserve to be seen by everyone but will probably not get the viewers they really deserve.
Before Sunrise is a rare example of the near perfect film, it may not be my favourite of all time, or even last year, but it is certainly the closest I have seen to perfect!
You can buy Before Sunrise for around £8-9 from various online stores but I would say save your money and get the box set of both film because once you’ve seen one you will have to see the other one :o)
This is available from anything between £19-“% from various outlets
The DVD only has one extra and that is a disappointing trailer. This is so a film that could have done with a cast commentary!
Two final comments now:
1) The adventures of Jesse and Celine also appear in Linklaters animated multi story film ‘Waking Life’ voiced by Hawke and Delpy
2) I just have to add that I was in a cinema with Julie Delpy during the premiere of Before Sunset and she managed to elbow me in the ribs, hey it’s kind of a claim to fame!
Summary: A modern film that deals with a real life relationship
|
|
