Before Sunrise: the Back Story

Okay. This is going to be another blogpost about a movie I think is truly transformative. Not only in affecting the perspective of the viewer on relationships and intersexual dynamics and everything in between, but in the way it's been put together and the reason it was made for.

A quick reminder of the movie

Before Sunrise is about two random train passengers who met onboard and exchanged a short conversation which is later to be expanded across the 1 hour and 40 minutes of the movie.

Jesse Wallace is an American guy who's stopping by the last destination in his tour in Europe, and Céline is a French girl who's taking the same train heading back to Paris after visiting her grandmother in Budapest.

The movie starts with an angry German couple who argued about something and Jesse gathering enough balls to approach Céline in public and ask her what they were arguing about. Céline then drops her first few wise words telling him "that as couples get older they lose their ability to hear each other".

"Really?" asks Jesse.

"… [M]en lose their ability to hear higher-pitched sounds and women eventually lose hearing on the low end. I guess they sort of nullify each other…", she says with a gentle smile.

Right from that line, you find yourself already immersed in the dialogue without you even knowing it. For all your Physics classes and general knowledge on men and women, did you know about that? I surely didn't. And then there is the way she puts it: as tranquil and casual as possible. It literally felt like you're having a random conversation with someone, probably the closest thing to real life.

Unlike overdramatic movies where the guy is dropping some "Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?" lines to open the conversation or a "Can I get you a beer?" line which would NEVER work neither in movies nor in real life, this movie illustrates how real life genuine love stories begin. Sometimes they begin when you have no idea where to find the snack you're looking for in a convenient store and ended up asking the girl next to you. Or maybe you've met her on campus asking her why she's signing up for subjects she's not supposed to take as a freshman which she’d most likely find autistic rather than romantic. But hey, that's how everything starts. The first few lines are not as romantic as in every romantic movie and that's what will take us to the second point of the article: Naturalism.

Naturalism

As much as I hate the -ism prefixes, Naturalism is playing a big part in this movie and it has to be stated at least once.

Ethan Hawke is known for his naturalist approach to acting. If you've seen "Training Day" where he plays a police officer with Denzel Washington, you'd see the contrast in their acting. Ethan acts as if he weren't in a movie, as if he actually were a cop and having a rough day at work while Denzel Washington was setting the dramatic tone with his walk, look, language, pitch and overall charisma. This can clearly be seen in this scene where Washington is being overdramatic while Hawke is playing it cool and careless.

A naturalist way of acting is the ability to make the viewer believe that what he’s seeing is not acting, rather improvisation, a normal casual scene from a day.

This point was emphasized more than enough by Richard Linklater, the director and scenarist of the movie. Hawke stated in one of his interviews that the former made sure to make him and Delpy rehearse the scenes and the script countless of times until it has become a part of their lives. Just like waking up everyday, sighing and hating your life, then washing your face and giving it a quick check in the mirror to admire that morning bloat is natural and characterstic of your day, so have become the scenes of the movie to Hawke and Delpy.

My first impression of the acting after watching it the first time, “Holly shit. This looks so improvised and natural, I can’t tell whether it’s acting on instinct or raw memorization of the scenario”. As it turned out, every move, every sigh, every muscle twitch, look, gesture and word is rehearsed and is SUPPOSED to happen. There is no improvisation. No “playing with the script”. Nothing. It’s all planned to look that way, and Hawke and Delpy did more than a great job in not making it look like there was a camera following them around. Instead of giving it the vibe of a movie, it was more like a documentary of the ordinary lives of two people in their first stages of attraction and exploring each other’s characters.

And that's one of the most beautiful things about this movie. The script and acting are so delicate, that the plot has become totally unimportant. What Linklater tried to achieve through this movie is to show that the dialogue can replace the plot. You're not watching to figure out what's going to happen in the movie: the end is obvious. Jesse taking a plane back to the US and Céline going back to Paris. You're watching the movie because you just to listen to them talking. One can never get enough of their monologues and playful banter about the random topics that they come up with.

The script is originally written by Richard Linklater and Kim Krizen based on a real-life story that happened to Linklater which I will be talking about later. However, the first original version of the script and the one acted in the movie is totally different from each other.

The making of the movie.

Back in 1993, Linklater produced his movie Dased and Confused, and like any other newly-released movie in Hollywood, it was screened in multiple big cinemas in the US, and Hawke, having some prior work experience with Linklater, went to one of these screenings to pay him tribute and watched the movie. Hawke loved the movie, and he went on congratulating Linklater for his job.

The director thanked him and informed him of the next movie that he’s considering shooting. He handed Hawke the script and asked him to read it and contemplate the offer.

Hawke took the script, read it and instantly realized that the idea is fresh and original but the script had some critical flaws. He couldn’t possibly verbalize such thoughts until he had actually gotten the role, so he went for an audition, and who can’t say no to Hawke’s acting? I mean come on. He obviously got the role.

But it was not that easy, anyways. Linklater was very demanding in this movie. He made sure to look at the performances of all the actors who wanted to audition for the movie and desperately tried to choose the couple that match each other the best. Meaning individual performances didn't mean that the actor is bad. What mattered the most that the male perofrmance of who is to become Jesse should perfectly match with the female performance of who is to become Céline. This and many other factors set the filter through which Linklater analyzed his potential movie actors.

Hawke is your typical American dude from Houston, Texas. That air of IDGAF attitude reeks from his eyes and his accent makes him all the more redneck. While Delpy obviously looked so French, I can’t even- she acted in some dramatic  movies in the 1990s and worked with big directors and have been to a lot of film festivals around the world, compared to Hawke who was (and still is) underrated for his acting and career.

The contrast in their auras was blatant, and Linklater deemed it to be perfect for his movie so he chose them to play Jesse and Céline, and that’s when Hawke astonished the director. He told him that the script was off. Jesse can’t possible go on a monologue about “John Huston’s The Dead  and how it relates to Meister Eckhart... FOR PAGES”. He loved the idea but the script can’t be performed like that. It must be changed for the better.

Linklater, being the cool director that he is, laughed it off and asked Hawke and Delpy to read the script and point out what they don’t like and actually sit their butts down and discuss it the three of them together.

So what happened is that they didn’t like where the movie was supposed to take place, Philadelphia, and the first thing that they changed was the place, Vienna, Austria, which resulted in them travelling to Austria and working on the script together.

What they did was basically sitting down for weeks reading the script out loud and suggesting ideas that could replace the points that they didn’t like. But for all the freedom that they were given in altering the script, Linklater had bullet points that they MUST NOT come near changing them. The two characters had to meet on the train. They had to go out of it and meet 2 Austrians on the bridge. They had to go to a graveyard and contemplate death. They had to kiss in the Ferris Wheel. And most importantly, they had to have strong feminine/feminist and masculine/patriarchal characters. Just to name a few.

With the abovementioned points beared in mind, Hawke and Delpy took the liberty to mess around with the script as much as they wanted and ended up creating each other. Jesse is Delpy’s Prince Charming, and Céline is what Hawke’s imagination would mould as the perfect woman. Obviously, the fun that they had in doing the movie was amazing, as they teased each other of this line being cheesy, too cliché, too corny or cocky, and so on (Delpy overdid this more than Hawke).

So Jesse has become this American, cocky, yet vulnerable, full of himself and attention seeker, guy while Céline this bitter-sweet strong and naughty French girl who takes initiative and stops it at will, who messes around, but always stays true to her feminine side and emotions.

Making the movie was very difficult for Linklater and he was very strict about the camera angles, the acting, and every single little detail which explains why it’s so somehow captivating. The reason behind his severeness is caused by his undescribable determination to make the perfect movie for a reason I'll be talking about in the next point.

The true story behind the movie

As I mentioned earlier, the movie is based on a true story that Linklater had lived himself with a girl in 1989.

They met in a toy store and conversed a little and then they had a lovely evening together just walking around the city discussing bullshit like in the movie. The details of their story are not completely disclosed, but some fans would believe that it ended up in them having sex somewhere, exchanging kisses and so on.

During their hangout together, Linklater stated that he was a film director and promised the girl that “I’m going to make a movie about this!”

The girl found this weird and asked him, “About what?”

He looked at her and said, “This!” referring to the magic that they had experienced together on that evening.

Little did she knew, it was a promise that he was to keep and make come true in 1995 with Before Sunrise.

Linklater didn’t see the girl after that night. He didn’t have her number, email, address or anything. Just her figure in his mind and her first name. He tried reaching out for her but he never managed, so the idea was that he creates the movie so she would hear about it and finally find him.

Linklater said in one of his interviews that he was expecting her to show up in one of the many big screenings that took place across the US, especially as the movie got popular very fast and trended for a year or two.

Screening after screening, Linklater watched the movie over and over again, probably reflecting on his original experience with the girl and where she was and why she hadn't showed up. Screening after screening, he would be expecting to be approached by her after the projection or before it, but it had never happened. She never showed up. And it naturally broke the director’s heart.

It was until 2001 that he finally had received a letter from his beloved’s best friend which shattered him by letting him know that the girl died in a motorcycle accident in 1994, one year before the movie was released.

Exactly. She left the world not knowing that he made a movie about her and her beauty that bewitched him since and inspired him to give us this masterpiece. She passed away not knowing that she was the source of all the creativity that gave rise to the “Before” trilogy afterwards.

The background story of the movie is so tragic and sad that I can’t find words to continue writing this blog. I hope you have watched the movie by this time, and I hope that you would understand why it’s so special and magical.

Peace!