Weeksy
10 Years Of Moviehole – Best Of The Best
I’ve noticed a trend from a lot of critics, that the longer they stay in the game, the more jaded they get. Our very own boss man “Hollywood Movie Star” Clint Morris has on occasion admitted as much when it comes to his own viewing preferences – and it’s something I get – watch enough crap over the years (and we’ve all seen a tonne of crap), and you can get into that mindset very quickly.
Where I tend to disagree is the often used line of “200X is quite possibly the worst year for movies yet” – you’d be surprised at how many people drop that line into reviews or wrap-ups, so here’s where I want to get nostalgic if I may. Over the coming weeks & months, to continue with the celebrating of “10 years of Moviehole”, I’m going to revisit some of the films of the last decade, some for the first time in a long time, and some just for the first time altogether – a lot of these flicks that I’m going to review are purely for selfish reasons, being the movies that I really wanted to review, but just never got a chance, or films that came out prior to my beginnings with the ‘Hole back in 2000.
When you look at the films from this decade, I think you’ll agree we haven’t done too badly for entertainment – with films like “Saving Private Ryan”, “The Big Lebowski”, “The Truman Show”, “Out Of Sight”, “Rushmore”, “Fight Club”, “American Beauty”, “The Matrix”, “Gladiator”, “Almost Famous”, “Traffic”, the “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy, “Lost In Translation”, “Mystic River”, “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” and many, many others just as good.
In future installments, I’ll cover some of the above, and also some of the best TV since ’98 as well – so here we go, I hope you enjoy the flashbacks……………….
“Before Sunset” – 2004
“What if you had a second chance with the one that got away?”
Director: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke; Julie Delpy
Run Time: 80 minutes
 
 
 
“Before Sunset” was, for the uninitiated, the follow up to the 1995 movie “Before Sunrise”, a film that focused on two people in their early 20’s, Jesse (Hawke) & Celine (Delpy) who spend a night in Vienna after meeting on a train – it was a beautiful and quite honestly unexpected film, especially considering my first introduction to Richard Linklater had been through “Dazed & Confused” – it had all the flow of a natural conversation, because in truth, that’s what the film was – an American & a young French woman meeting and talking against a beautiful backdrop.
The film ended on a very ambiguous note – the two had very obviously fallen for each other over the course of the evening, and in a test of fate on a train platform the next morning, they decide to meet again:
Celine: “Maybe… maybe we should meet here, in five years or something. “
Jesse: “Alright, alright. Five years. Five years? That’s a long time.”
Celine: “Yes. It’s awful. It’s like a sociological experiment. How about one year?”
Jesse: “One year. Alright, alright.”
Celine: “One year.”
Jesse: “How about six months?”
Celine: “Six months?”
Jesse: “Yeah.”
Celine: “It’s gonna be freezing.”
Jesse: “Yeah?”
Celine: “Yeah.”
Jesse: “Who cares? We come here, we go somewhere else.”
Celine: “Okay. Okay. Uh, six months from now, or last night?”
Jesse: “Um… Last night. Six months from last night, which was, uh, uh, June 16th. So uh, Track Nine, six months from now, at six o’clock at night.”
Celine: “Dece– December.”
Jesse: “December, yeah, right. Now listen, it’s a train ride for you, but I got to fly all the way over here and shit like that, alright, but I’m going to be here.”
Celine: “Okay, me too.”
“Before Sunrise” was, and still is a beautiful film (achieving a 100% rating on RottenTomatoes.com) – but it’s important to have that reference in mind, because 9 years later, all the principals reunited to continue the story. Jesse has become a successful author, having penned the semi-autobiographical novel “This Time”, the story of a young American and a young French – well, you get the point – he showed up on the platform 6 months later – Celine did not (her Grandmother had passed away).
On the last day of his book signing tour in a Parisian bookstore, Celine comes along, and the two embark on another journey together to talk about the differences in their lives, and their experiences of the last near-decade:
Jesse: “I just…”
Celine: “What?”
Jesse: “I wanted to talk to you for so long, you know, now that…”
Celine: “Yeah, me too”
Jesse: “…It’s just so real, you know, I feel I can’t get anything out of my mouth.”
Celine: “I know, I know, how long do we have? 20 minutes and 30 seconds?”
Over the course of the next hour, we learn everything that has happened to the two of them, how they’ve thought of each other often over the years, but ultimately in their own ways have moved on from the events of that night – Jesse is married with a son, Celine is dating a Photographer, but in a telling exchange (which many took to mirror Hawke’s own marital woes with Uma Thurman at the time), Jesse describes his life:
Jesse: “I mean, what is love? Right, if it’s not respect, trust, admiration? And I… I felt all those things! So, cut to the present tense, I feel like I’m running a small nursery with somebody I used to date.”
But the thing that works so well with “Before Sunset” is that it once again feels so natural – watching it again the other day for the first time since the theatre, I was struck by how similar the conversation is to others that I’ve had in my own life. Now that I’ve hit my early 30’s, it’s kind of hard not to run into the occasional ex-Girlfriend – and as the tag line says “What if you had a second chance with the one that got away?” – I’ve been in similar situations where I’ve been able to sit down for an extended conversation with people that I’ve had genuine feelings for – even love for – in the past, and it feels very much like “Sunset” – the initial awkward small talk that soon gives way to genuine soul baring, and sometimes even a raw honesty that often can’t be replicated with the people in your life closest to you now.
Jesse & Celine have always carried the feelings they developed for each other just under the skin, and have had, as the R.E.M. song goes, a “Pale imitation of life” – they begin to become more honest with each other as their time together draws to a close:
Celine: “I was fine. Until I read your fucking book! It stirred shit up, you know? It reminded me how… genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things and… now it’s like… I don’t believe in anything that relates to love, I don’t feel things for people anymore.
In a way… I put all my romanticism into that one night and I was never able to feel “all this” again. Like somehow this night took things away from me and… I expressed them to you and you took them with you!
It made me feel cold, like if love wasn’t for me!”
…….
“No, I didn’t… (forget) and it pisses me off, ok? You come here to Paris, all romantic, and married.
Ok? Screw you!”
…….
Jesse: “I have these dreams, you know, that I’m standing on a platform, and you keep going by on a train, and you go by, and you go by, and you go by, and I wake up with the fucking sweats, you know?
And then I have this other dream, where you’re pregnant, in bed, beside me, naked, and I want so badly to touch you, but you tell me not to, and then you look away. And…  and I… I… I touch you anyway, right on your ankle, and your skin is so soft, and I wake up in sobs, all right?
And my wife is sitting there, looking at me, and I feel like I’m a million miles from her and I know that there’s something wrong!
By the time that the day finally draws to a close in Celine’s apartment, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that the two will wind up together somehow – but still, the ambiguity of the first film remains as Nina Simone plays on the stereo:
Celine: (singing) “You…. are…. gonna… miss… that… plane….”
Jesse: (quietly) “I know…..”
Fade to black……
As I’ve said, the beauty of “Sunrise” & “Sunset” lies in the natural chemistry of the two leads – the fact that there was no “script” as such for either film shows the level of improvisation and genuine trust that Linklater, Hawke & Delpy have with each other. The discussions are sometimes quite clearly ripped from their own lives, but even the easy flow of conversation at times gives way to some truly beautiful locations. Shot over the course of 15 days on a meager budget of 2 Million dollars, the film shows a side of Paris that few would have ever seen even if they knew where to look. The events take place in “real time”, so to achieve the look, Linklater only filmed mid-Afternoon, with Lee Daniels once again stepping behind the camera – it truly is a beautiful looking film.
Both movies have long held a special place in my heart – and have seemingly invaded personal “Best Of’s” in many of my friends and families that would normally avoid what they would perceive to be a “talky film” – my biggest suggestion for you if you haven’t seen either film is to block out a few hours on a Sunday afternoon, and watch them back to back – it’s hard to believe that 9 years would make a lot of difference in someone’s life – and maybe 10 years ago I would have said the same thing – but now that I’m a little bit older, there’s a little (well, a lot) more grey in my hair, and I’ve lived life a little more – 9 years can be enormous – and it’s a great part of why “Before Sunset” is one of my picks for films you have to watch – enjoy the trailer below, then go out and get it:
TRAILER
