Before Sunrise | Real to Reel

Amy Lehrhaupt was a Brooklyn born woman who died in a motorcycle accident on May 6th, 1994. Five years prior, she hung out with a guy called Richard. One year prior, he would go on to release the now incomparable Dazed and Confused, but it soon flopped at the box office. It’s regarded as a cult classic nowadays, but back then, it was 100 minutes of 70’s worship that struck viewers as largely uninteresting given its wavering of an essential law of making a film - having a plot.

I find this quite indicative of Richard Linklater’s oeuvre - a man obsessed with capturing the fleeting moments of life, the Houston born director has made a name for his brand of films that are often written to serve the circumstances that they are born out of, as opposed to weaving complex narratives for quicker engagements.

Would I have liked a Linklater picture when I was a teenager? I doubt it - for what they lack in originality on a surface level, they instead offer a snapshot of something greater and more all encompassing - Dazed for instance, a film produced in a decade twice removed from what it portrayed, is just that. If Linklater was to depict the total essence of 1970’s America down to the gritty particulars then we’d have received a pretty different film, but instead, it is an entirely idealised, mystically nostalgic version of this era, both serving nothing and everything simultaneously. Sure, college kids were listening to quite a bit of Aerosmith in their Plymouth Dusters back then, but there was also, like, Watergate, you know? And Elvis died!

Now luckily for us, Richard Linklater had no intention of showcasing an honest edition of the American political landscape at the time, nor its cultural booms of disco dancing and flicks of intergalactic daddy issues - that’s simply not what Dazed is. Instead, it is inherently a showcase of what comes to mind when we think ‘SEVENTIES’. It is all the bling belts and classic engine revs viewers feel they miss from that era, even if we were never around to experience them first-hand. It sets out to warp audiences back to a time in America where things were just better - but were they actually better? That’s up to one’s own opinion, but the film’s ever growing critical reception now moving into the 2020’s is proof of something Linklater has spoken of many times when musing over his own filmography, which is memory. The way things truly were vs the way we remember them is an ever present theme throughout - Dazed reinforces this idea that the 70’s are certainly remembered better now that we’re so far removed from them, and I think that’s part of why the film has become more and more revered as a classic despite it debuting with a whimper - the further time marches on, the further we stray from those glorious ‘golden’ years, and oh how they glimmered. 

It is paramount to mention then, that Richard Linklater was born July 30th 1960, an eventual hotshot fresh out of this 70’s era where he graduated Huntsville High School - eager to reminisce over that time in the 90’s, Dazed and Confused was born. Do I like Linklater pictures now, as an adult? Absolutely.

AMC’s Mad Men is a television show that’s similarly nestled in a bygone era of American history - the infamous carousel pitch quite accurately demonstrates the allure of Linklater’s subsequent film Before Sunrise and the trilogy it spawned, and why I think its final product functions so well on-screen when it otherwise shouldn’t on paper.

Don Draper, the show’s protagonist, is giving a pitch for a slide projector. Whilst this piece of technology in the 1960’s was sure to be innovative, Draper reframes its usefulness to the roundtable’s shareholders as a form of time travel - a means for users to relive past experiences over and over again, from the third to the fourth and back around once more. As he puts it ‘to be engaged on a level beyond flash - to have a sentimental bond with the product’.

There is of course a caveat to this, that you’re not technically reliving anything at all, but I find that to be the beauty of photography at its core - capturing stills from moving moments is a unique sensation that congeals an ever dissolving blur of experience in one’s mind. This is the kind of approach that Linklater takes in his work - it’s all about looking at culture, or feeling, or era, ones as expansive as ‘1970’s America’ or ‘falling in love’ and creating a highlight reel of moments within them that you could shake around in a box, remove and put together in a different order, and largely retain whatever magic the original cut had. The simplicity in this approach is quite genius because it latches onto the unspoken antithesis of the plot law I mentioned earlier - whilst we all love an effortlessly complex narrative such as The Shawshank Redemption, we don’t remember each intricate beat of Darabont’s adaption years on from our first watch, do we? No - what we truly remember is the inmates grabbing a beer each on the roof, we remember the damn tunnel. 

What Linklater ultimately understands about our relationship with film, more broadly art, then life and all its involvements, is that we remember moments more than we do the greater experience. This is not a perspective that teenage me would have understood as, to put it in McConaughey’s terms, I hadn't done enough L-I-V-I-N, and I’d have likely reprimanded Linklater’s work as uninspired when he is actually the most ‘human’ artist that I take interest in now as an adult. If Linklater wanted to direct Dazed when he was in his early 20’s then he would not have been able to approach his expert dialogue with the same delicacy that he would go on to do in his 30’s - maturity inevitably aids one’s writing abilities but in the case of Linklater, he also understands that to create a film is to take one’s real, lived experiences, feed them all into a highlight reel, and sit back for the following fireworks. All this to say, and perhaps explain for those who still cannot wrap their heads around these films’ enchanting aesthetics that seem to transcend the genre’s usual limitations - the Before Trilogy is Richard Linklater’s magnum opus, and Sunrise is just the opening chapter. A perfect three act culmination of his philosophical leanings and writing techniques that display the heavenly haze of meeting, the purgatorial what-if, and the hellscape of a dying love. 

It's as easy to get entirely lost in Before Sunrise as Jesse and Celine are in each other. In the beginning, the American boy claims how the blurry visions of the ever moving Austrian countryside beyond the train have offered him his best writing ideas. Later, the French girl claims her love of an art piece, through its depiction of the human figures dissolving into the background. In the end, we again see many of the film’s locales apart from Jesse and Celine - they’re now still, reticent wide shots, harbouring the ghostly echoes of their experience. Linklater’s initial foray into romance is not at all heartbreaking in a vacuum if going off of the material it presents, as after all, it seems their connection was worth a second visit like they plan - so why do we watch Sunrise with streaming tears and helpless, bittersweet grins?

Richard Linklater understands that underneath our desire for a good story, there is an even deeper desire to re-experience our memories on the screen, and there is no more effective way to accomplish this than to have a film that is, simply, two souls allowing one another the privilege of sharing a highlight reel for a day. No dramatic climax, no third act twist, nor anything that would make the film feel more akin to a crafted screenplay than a translation of something real, something lived - because that’s exactly what it is. 

In the fall of 1989, Richard met Amy at a toy store in Philadelphia. They talked, laughed and lamented over nothing in particular, instead feeding off one another’s energy for that one day, until they fell out of touch soon after. Richard would later admit that this brief encounter inspired the creation of his film, and perhaps that’s the secret ingredient for many a fan’s sentimental bond with Before Sunrise.

Written By Jack Mortimer | IG: @jackcmortimer | LB: jackcmortimer