“Before Sunrise”
I’ve thought a lot recently when watching movies about how love is involved in pretty much every movie we love. Sure, it may not be a major factor in a lot of movies, and it’s not totally 100% of movies that include it, but in one way or another, love is a prevalent in every story we tell.
It’s because love is one of very, very few feelings - beyond maybe faith and passion - that is unexplainable through words. There is truly no way in which one can truly express love properly. It is explained through experience and understanding, rather than through words.
This movie, though, explains love in a quiet, discreet, and non-boastful manner. It’s simple and straightforward, it doesn’t have a complex storyline, and it has minimal characters.
It is through our understanding of these characters, their situations, personalities, pasts, and desires that we can see the sensation of love unravel in its purest form.
Love, at its core, is faith. Here we saw two different people, plagued with the idea that love is almost a hoax, both believing that for different reasons. A man, whose parents never really loved another, plus a woman, who was so set on loving herself that love was lost in translation.
This man, as a result of his parents, has never felt like he belonged, or deserved love, and that he was a problem to everything he interacted with. So, he holds onto that child like innocence that destructs any of the seriousness within those feelings. But love isn’t child like. Love is serious, and it takes courage, growing up, and understanding of oneself to fully appreciate and embrace it. And, when love came knocking on his door, all of a sudden he felt like he belonged somewhere. That’s a two-way street. Love created that opportunity for him, but he also allowed himself to get to that level of vulnerability.
That’s where the true power of love lies, is within the courage, the risk, and the transaction. First, we must gain a deeper understanding of yourself. And, in return, love will give us acceptance of that understanding.
This movie characterizes two completely distinct characters, who we knew zero about in advance, to evolve into two completely changed people by the end of the film, while making them feel like close friends to us. Even though they change throughout the course of the film, they never lose sight of who they truly are. They carry their mannerisms and their pasts with them in a way that allows love to make them grow into a more natural and mature version of themselves that is ready to devote their vulnerability and energy to the understanding of another person.
It’s through quiet moments, detailed scenery, delicate metaphors, and poetic writing that this movie delivers on all of these points. It never goes over board with any of these, and never gets too ambitious with its story or modes of conveying the messages, and that’s where the true ambition lies within this film.
Stripping itself down and allowing the audience to sit quietly with these two people in a consequential and delicate setting is one of the most courageous things a filmmaker can do. It makes the audience interpret everything for their own, it makes them make assumptions, and it doesn’t move too fast. Yet, that ambition creates opportunity that this film fully takes advantage of. That quiet that comes from the setting and the intricacy of love moves freely through these characters, and makes this a familiar place for the audience, which ultimately generates room for free thinking, allowing the audience to create their own powerful narrative about love.
