happy talk
by Douglas Messerli
Richard
Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke (screenplay, based on a concept by
Linklater and Kim Krizan), Richard Linklater (director) Before Sunset / 2004
This time, moreover, the director has
taken an important step forward by involving his two actors in the
script-writing itself—a brave gesture which reaps huge rewards since we cannot
imagine, in many respects, that the ideas these figures express do not
represent their own thinking. This, in turn, lends the fragile story a kind a
deep honesty that helps to make us feel that we are listening in on truly human
conversations that, despite the continuing evasion and sometimes mocking tone
of their words, means something much, much deeper. It quickly becomes,
apparent, in fact, that despite their open recognition that their second
encounter will probably come to nothing, they are both desperate for it to result
in something that might resemble the joy and pleasure of their first meeting.
They are, we realize, still very much in
love, despite the fact that she has not been able to show up for their youthful
reunion (her beloved grandmother had died a few days before, and the funeral
conflicted with her meeting plans). But their destiny to come together again,
it is suggested, has been predicted. She, like Jesse, has lived in New York
during the same years in which he did; and on the way to his wedding, he admits
that he had spotted a woman who looked very much like her, in the very
neighborhood, she reveals, where she actually lived.
In these scenes, we recognize Linklater’s
often witty and seldom sentimental “comedy” to also be a love story even more
romantic that the great works of the genre such as An Affair to Remember or the darker, but just as sensual, Vertigo.
It is in his recognition that even though
film, at heart, is a series of images, the “pictures” mean little if the actors
cannot say or convey something beyond their pretty faces. Yes, Deply is
Botticellian beauty, Hawke has a charming face and a pleasant smile, but what
is most important is that these two quite otherwise ordinary individuals really
can think, question, wonder, and challenge each other. I’ve come to the
conclusion, moreover, that in Linklater’s ability to respect human speech and
the wonder of language itself, so clearly expressed in Bernie, Boyhood and these
three films, that he is one of the most important of American film directors.
Los Angeles,
February 15, 2016
Excellent commentary, and I too find the depth of the pieces in the dialogue of Delpy/Hawke which come across as honest & secular probing of the modern world, its humor, its difficult relationships, its search for joy amid the vicissitudes of actual living.
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