Believe it or not, there is something so romantic about the entire act of letting go, it is perhaps in that very moment that one actually gets to feel how strong one is while crippled down with pain and anxiety all at the same time.
Richard Linklater’s ‘Before’ Trilogy is one such big tale of letting go. Over the last couple of years, I have personally been going back to ‘Before Sunset’, the second part of the trilogy which completes the 17th year of its release this month, every now and then.
I first watched ‘Before Sunset’ as a teenager and even to this day as someone who is almost in her mid-twenties it crushes my soul, hijacks my thoughts and yet parts of it never fail to lift up my spirit.
It is striking how beautifully Linklater creates a meta-nature in the scene where Jesse looks at Celine for the first time in the film, standing in a corner, right when journalists start asking him if the characters in Jesse’s novel will ever meet again in the near future.
‘Before Sunset’ begins with a reunion that induces hope in you. It makes you want to believe that there is a time and a place for everything in life and that sooner or later things will work out.
But like Jesse says “We all see the world through our tiny keyhole” and we often try to reflect our hopes and dreams on characters that we see on screen.
Jesse and Celine portrayed by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy reflect a certain kind of awkwardness on screen after all these years almost as if they were meeting for the very first time, yet it is evident that the two characters are genuinely comfortable around each other.
It is challenging to create something as iconic as a film with nothing but the two leads immersed in conversation with one another, but that is what love truly is, right? It is about communicating, it is about living in the moment with each other without having to worry about what the next hour has in store for you.
When Jessie and Celine chat, every other thing in the world is nothing but an irrelevant shadow, and every other problem is nothing but mere and bleak. This is perhaps what love looks like.
And, the love that they felt all those years ago takes centre stage in life for both Jesse and Celine, and while Jesse holds on to it through his writing and takes great pride in his love story-he is almost certain that he will never encounter something of that sort ever again.
Celine is one of us, she is fearless yet she is coy and even though she pretends to forget the minor details of that night in the initial half of the film, she later fearlessly admits remembering every bit of it. Unlike Jesse who gave up on ever feeling the same way again, Celine kept hoping and became a part of several relationships that she considered “bleh”.
The first time Linklater introduced the characters, they were somewhere in their 20s but in the second part they are in their mid-30s and we start noticing how so much has changed, they are not the same as they used to be, and their priorities are different and so are their worldly outlook but they are the same with each other and their admiration for each other remains the same and this is exactly how Linklater defined what simple love is all about, it stays.
Even though Celine says, “I don’t believe in anything related to love” she is very much in love with the kind of love that she felt while exploring a new city with an unknown man who listened, who she floated around with in Vienna and saw herself connecting with.
Love as Linklater preaches is undulated and unadulterated, love is all about holding on to it even while letting it go because reality can often be starkly different from how you imagine it to be.
While they are on a boat sailing in Paris, doing what Celine finds extremely touristy, she tells Jesse, “I guess when you’re young, you just believe there will be many people with whom you connect with. And later in life, you realise it only happens a few times,” and that is a girl standing in front of a boy accepting love the way it comes and celebrating reality.
‘Before Sunset’ is a testament to the fact that a true connection will stand the test of time and even if it does not you can always live with all that it taught you- all that it gave you. Love as Celine and Jesse portray on screen is not supposed to hold you back but set you free.
The movie ends abruptly just like most other things in life and you are back to reality trying to look for a love which can be timeless in a world that is bound by time.
