[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.That is partly because they also have a lot in common with each otherand with any number of Linklater s other articulate, intelligent characters.Some of their riffs, like Celine s complaints about the corporate media ( It sa new form of fascism, really ) or Jesse s speculation about how new soulsare created, could have been vignettes in Slacker.But that is not becauseLinklater s characters all sound alike so much as that he specializes in creatinga certain kind of character young, skeptical, well-read, bohemian that caninhabit different corners of the world.Celine, a daughter of May 1968 radicals, sums up her conflicted feelingsabout her parents: They love me more than anything in the world, andI ve been raised with all the freedom they fought for, she says. And yet forme now, it s another type of fight.We still have to deal with the same old 28 POST-POP CINEMAshit, but we can t really know who or what the enemy is. Jesse is a differentgenerational archetype, having grown up in the wake of a bitter divorce. Everybody s parents fuck them up, he says.Their problems are specific totheir characters, but they are also products of their era and cultures.Thepersonal is always political in Linklater s movies, and vice versa.The romance that unfolds between the two of them is sweetly predictable inits general outlines, but consistently surprising in its details.In the intelligenceof their interchanges, Linklater and his cowriters (who, on the second movie,included Hawke and Delpy) put Jesse and Celine through all the differentthings a conversation between two people can be: a ritual of introduction, amutual interrogation, a fencing match, a tennis game, a round of hide-and-seek, a pas de deux, a debate, a harmony.They talk about themselves, theirfamilies, their ambitions and fears, first loves and breakups, about politics andreligion, men and women, philosophy and sex. I have this awful, paranoidthought that feminism was mostly invented by men so they could fool arounda little more, Celine says in a typical exchange in Before Sunrise. Youknow, Woman, free your mind, free your body, sleep with me! But what all the talk is really about is love falling in it, in Before Sunrise,and dealing with its disappointments in Before Sunset and what the wordactually means. If there s any kind of magic in this world, Celine says abouthalfway through the first film, it must be in the attempt of understandingsomeone, sharing something.I know, it s almost impossible to succeed.Butwho cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt. The two films togetherchart the complex course of that attempt.On the surface, it is easy to call Before Sunrise a fantasy of love and BeforeSunset its hard-nosed reality.The first movie floats on Viennese air, driftingthrough dusky cobblestone streets to the strains of Strauss and Bach, followingJesse and Celine through bars and restaurants and a riverboat to a grassymoonlit park.(Linklater shoots the city like he s working for the chamberof commerce; it glows.) It ends suspended, still floating, with the future leftopen.Maybe they will meet again, maybe they won t.But the tantalizingpossibility is what sustains the movie s romantic effervescence right throughthe closing credits.Before Sunset seems at first to bring all that crashing down.They didn tmeet again.He showed up at the designated train station, she didn t.And ithas haunted them both, him enough that he has written a book about theirnight together.Jesse admits it took him three or four years to write, threeor four years of reliving that one night.He is married, unhappily. I feel likeI m running a small nursery with someone I used to date, he says.Celine has RICHARD LINKLATER 29been through a series of unsatisfying relationships (including, she eventuallyadmits, the one she is currently in).Even the compressed time of the movieis designed to emphasize that this is real life; rather than the dreamy, elasticnighttime of the first film, they have just over an hour of afternoon daylightbefore he has to catch a plane.But for all of the second film s melancholy and disillusionment, there issome sleight of hand going on.As the conversation bores deeper, finallyopening up into real candor only at the end, it emerges that both of themstill cling to the unfulfilled promises of that night, which has shaped andcolored their lives for the past nine years.They have never found happinesswith anyone else.The movie ends with them, against all odds, together and,possibly, intending to stay that way.The conceits underlying all of this affirmevery trope in the romantic-narrative playbook: that two people, having metjust once, can fall deeply, truly in love; that whatever obstacles arise, theywill find each other again; that it is never too late for happily ever after.Thereal achievement of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset is not to show real lifeand real love, but to reimagine romantic fantasy for a generation and an erathat prides itself on knowing better.The movies constitute a love story everybit as improbable as Pretty Woman, but built on a foundation of doubt andself-awareness.Linklater has invented a new genre: fairy-tale vérité.Both films serve as sort of a running commentary on themselves.Earlyin Before Sunrise, Jesse tells Celine about an idea he has for a TV show,which would run for a year and feature 24 full hours in the lives of 365different people around the world: getting up in the morning, eating, sleeping,etc. Wait, wait, Celine interrupts him. All those mundane, boring thingseverybody has to do every day of their fucking life? Well, Jesse says witha laugh, I was gonna say the poetry of day to day life, but you say it yourway and I ll say it mine. Of course, the poetry of day to day life is whatLinklater himself is aiming for.Throughout the movies, Jesse and Celinedisplay an awareness of being characters within a narrative not in the literalsense of knowing they are in a movie, but in the sense of having absorbed somany stories from books, movies and TV shows that they have readymadereferences for every situation.Trying to persuade Celine to get off the trainwith him in Vienna, Jesse tells her to imagine herself as an old woman lookingback on her life, regretting missed opportunities for adventure.Later, whenCeline initially resists having sex with him, she tells him, It s like some malefantasy: meet a French girl on a train, fuck her and never see her again,and have this great story to tell.I don t want to be a great story. But shealready is a great story, they are both in a great story, and they both know it. 30 POST-POP CINEMALinklater suggests that in cultures saturated with stories, it is impossible toescape thinking of ourselves as characters, acting out familiar parts
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Tematy
IndexJoel Fleishman The Foundation, A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World (2009)
William Inboden Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945 1960, The Soul of Containment (2008)
Philip Gordon, Jeremy Shapiro Allies At War, America, Europe and the Crisis Over Iraq (2004)
Jane Elliott Popular Feminist Fiction as American Allegory, Representing National Time (2008)
Cathy J. Cohen Democracy Remixed, Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (2010)
Patricia Allen Together At The Table, Sustainability And Sustenance In The American Agrifood System (2004)
Harpercollins, Oops 20 Life Lessons From The Fiascoes That Shaped America [2006 Isbn0060780835]
Paul Davies Das fĂźnfte Wunder Auf der Suche nach dem Urspung des Lebens
Orchidee z ulicy Szkarłatnej Helena Sekuła
Mel Keegan The Lords of Harbendane d