Before Sunrise

Right after our first exam, Professor Dunphy has us sit in class for a mandatory screening. Since it is Intro To Mass Media, I was assuming it would be a film pertaining to mass media such as the satirical classic Network or something more recent with the times such as The Social Network. No. The film shown had nothing to do with media besides a few lines about how “media is the new form of fascism”.

The film that was shown is called Before Sunrise; directed by Richard Linklater. The movie was released in 1995. It is a romantic movie starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Now let me be quite honest, romantic films are never my cup of tea or coffee. They always either end tragically or they ‘live happily ever after’ showing viewers how love and relationship ‘ought’ to be. In the case of Before Sunrise, it’s pretty much a traveller’s romantic European fantasy of meeting the love of your love on the train on the way to a beautiful historical city such as Vienna. This time though, you only have a few hours to spend time together before coming back into the horrible cruel world called reality. Nevertheless, the whole crew behind this film did an amazing job.

The opening scene of the movie takes place on a train bound to Vienna, Austria. We are first introduced to Celine, who is played by Julie Delpy, sitting across this annoying German-speaking couple that is in the middle of an argument. Frustrated, Celine then changes her seat a few rows back to avoid the couple. (Though I can’t see how this would make a difference since the couple is screaming at each other. But hey, this is a movie after all.) Celine ends up sitting across this young American guy named Jessie who apparently has been traveling around Europe for a couple of weeks and is bound to Vienna to catch a flight back home to the States. After Jessie and Celine have a pleasant conversation about their backgrounds and sharing stories of their pasts, Jessie persuades Celine to get off the train and explore Vienna together for one night. The entire film after this is literally following the couple and their deep conversations while going around the beautiful city of Vienna. My first thought after Jessie convincing Celine to get off the train with him was “Yeah that would NEVER work in New York City.” Here in New York City, we tend to think of people, as psychos first then figuring out they are normal. But again, this is Europe.

What struck me about this movie was the amazing dialogue exchanged between the two characters. The writers of this movie did a great job with the script and really showed the audience that words are powerful weapons for our understanding of the world. One particular conversation that was interesting was when Jessie and Celine are on the public trolley car…

*Now don’t worry, this isn’t going to spoil the plot.

So on this trolley, Jessie suggests that they take turns exchanging answers to questions they bring up such as first sexual experience, things you hate, and so on. When asked on what does she hate, Celine gave some cool answers that would have made us good friends. She mentions that she hates that there is a war going on 300 kilometers away and that people aren’t doing anything about it or don’t know what to do about it. I completely agree with Celine’s thoughts since most casualties in war are innocent people having nothing to do directly with the particular conflict. The next thing Celine says that she hates is how “the media tries to control our minds” and that “media is the new form of fascism”. For the most part, I actually agree with Celine. A lot of our opinions and perspectives of the world are shaped by the media. No entity, besides the corporate media, really has the power to convince a whole nation to go to war or to live in fear all the time. If you really think about, the news that is reported tends to lean towards the negative and not the positive. So in a way, Celine is right by saying the media tries to control our minds.

Like I mentioned before, what really made this movie really great was the dialogue. As far as the story goes, it’s your typical romantic movie feel. However, I would still recommend this movie to anybody who’s an avid romantic movie fan. I would probably put this under the “must-see” category. On another note, I would recommend this movie to anybody who wants to get some travel inspiration or ideas on their next trip. You see a lot of great outtakes of Vienna in this film including the old architecture and friendly people. I don’t know if I would watch this again on my own, but I can’t say this wasn’t a good movie.