Before Sunrise

I guess my biggest take-away from this film was that sometimes, in order to be truly honest with yourself, you have to be completely open with another person who may ask the questions you’ve been afraid to ask yourself. Until we are put into a situation where we have nothing to lose, it is so hard to truly know ourselves or find ourselves. Maybe Celine needed Jesse as much as he needed her to uncover what life and love means to each of them and let their conversations not necessarily change them, but in a way wake them  up from the daydreams they’d been living in and come close to understanding their past actions and future ambitions. 

There are three main things that really stuck with me: the concept of finding yourself, how culture and language affected the film, and the significance of location in the film.

Finding oneself or the process by which one tries to find oneself:

In the case of Celine and Jesse, both characters were sort of floating through life. Jesse was doing everything possible to be a ghost. He was virtually invisible in a different country and continent and unable to communicate with the majority of the people he encountered. Celine is lost as well but in a slightly different way. Without a real goal or a partner or an ambition, most of finding herself comes from figuring out where she fits into society and what direction she wants her life to take. When considering where souls come from if they can’t be created and the Earth’s population has been growing exponentially, they come to the conclusion that people only have fractions of souls. That’s like saying we are less people-like than the people who existed before us. We live less, love less, feel less and accomplish less and I think that viewpoint only came from their lack of realization that they’re just not making the life they wanted and have not discovered their souls, which I’m told you won’t until middle age. I wouldn’t consider them to be lacking part of their soul, I’d just call them misguided and directionless.

Along their mini adventure, Celine points out various things that she enjoys that have the common theme of being lost in the world. She actually says that she likes the idea of “unknown people lost in the world,” probably because she is one. She also points out that she loves a particular painting which uses only grays to portray two or three people whose outlines and features are not defined, merging into the background. It reminded me of getting lost in a crowd. She is permanently lost in the crowd, melted away with everyone else, nothing any different than anyone else, just another shade of gray.

I think Jesse is farther away from self-fulfillment than Celine is. The first step he seems to have taken towards finding himself was establishing who the enemy was. He doesn’t specifically say who the enemy is, maybe it’s himself. I think the enemy is his dad because he mentions that his dad didn’t want to have him and ultimately his parents got divorced so he feels like he wasn’t meant to exist which may contribute to his ghostliness in society. He also says he still feels like a teenager taking notes in school in preparation for when he does it for real, which is an indicator that he feels like his real life hasn’t started yet. He hasn’t applied anything he has learned.

Celine, on the other hand, has clearly spent some time thinking about who she is. She recalls what she determines is a successful relationship between her grandmother and grandfather and how her grandmother spent years daydreaming about another person but had accepted her fate and lived with it. Celine decides that everyone gets disappointed eventually and that happy cannot last forever. She decides for herself that since she may never find herself, the best she can do is develop relationships with others to find inner peace. Finally, the two decide that love is an escape for people who don’t know how to be alone and Jesse believes that while love is seen as an unselfish act, it couldn’t be any more selfish. Celine believes that everything we do in life is a way to be loved a little bit more but at the same time, marriage can ruin lives. She thinks we are forced to choose between a relationship and accomplishing our goals; love or a career. For some reason, she doesn’t believe she can have both. I think that when you have both, you’re closer to finding self-fulfillment than you would be if you chose one or the other.

Culture and Language:

A common theme throughout the movie was the use of language to emphasize being in a different place. The viewer is exposed to a variety of conversations that they most likely do not understand to enforce the feeling of being somewhere foreign where you cannot communicate with others in their native language. This was important for Jesse and Celine because it was an isolating factor. It also represents love as a universal language. Love is represented more by the way people look and act toward each other than by the words they say, so even though the conversations are in different languages, the viewer still understands the message of love because love becomes a language. At the same time, humans have been trying to figure out things about love for as long as humans have existed so in a way, love is about as complicated as trying to understand a conversation in a language you cannot understand.

The significance of location:

First of all, if Vienna is known for being a city of love, why was it so unheard of to just drop by and look through the city? Why were the locals so confused about why they were there? I’m also wondering if the location, and the fact that Vienna is overcrowded with images of love in paintings and statues, can influence your actions with and feelings toward the people who are with you? Could this be compared to watching a romantic film with someone you’re involved with? Maybe what it comes down to is how much influence does imagery have over our future actions and feelings? In terms of this specific film, I don’t know that being surrounded by images of love had an influence but I think the conversation was more fluid and the actions were more spontaneous because neither person knew the area or anyone in it so it became a joint exploration of not only a place and another person but also themselves and how they react to a new place, a new person, and new questions being posed to them.

Connection to Love and Desire:

When Celine and Jesse are having their “phone conversation,” Celine mentions that she sees Jesse as a little boy with all these great dreams. She “loves” him for the image she has of him, her first impression of him, but not who he actually is or is trying to be. And I think that you can’t truly love someone if you can only see you’re first impression or what exactly is in front of you. You have to love someone based on who you see them becoming and who they want to be. We’re never done growing so if you see your significant other as a juvenile, how can you ever take them seriously? Your impression of them must change with them or you’ll love them for who you think of them as instead of loving them for who they think of themselves as. Complicated, I know. But if I loved a boyfriend for the little boy who loved to play pranks on his middle school teachers, I may love him differently than the man I hope he becomes someday who is financially responsible and happy in his career and sure of himself, even if he isn’t yet.

Annie Hall

How does the film create and challenge typical romantic comedies?

                The fact that the story is told from Alvy Singer’s (the man’s) point of view is atypical in itself. Usually you’re following a romantically frustrated woman who can’t figure out why no one likes her. Instead you’re following a guy through his memories of past relationships and hearing his narration through the ups and downs of the relationship with his current significant other. Additionally, this film also focused on his career, not just his sexual behavior. It wasn’t as graphic as a typical current romantic comedy probably because it’s set in the 1970’s, although you’d expect there to be more raunchiness given the historical significance of the sexual revolution so maybe that challenges romantic comedies. This film was really honest compared to the humor of typical romantic comedies where you might see a couple hiding something from the family or a cheating incident. In this film, you see the real problems that many real couples encounter (moving in together, getting married, different interests, decreasing sexual encounters/interest, long distances…) and how real rational people cope with those problems even if they are in irrational ways (proposing marriage prematurely, on-again-off-again relationships…). This film was unique in that it almost gave advice. It wasn’t meant to be just a comedy. It was meant to be a portrayal of someone’s truth with some humor added, mostly from the fact that the main character is a comedian. It criticized the use of therapy in attempts to correct interpersonal issues which is not very common. That’s sort of an area a lot of movies try not to touch unless the film is centered around issues dealt with in therapy and thus therapy becomes a huge part of the film, which is not the case here.

How does the film support and challenge gender roles?

                If you really think about it and analyze what was going on between Alvy and Annie, the two of them share dominance in the relationship. Alvy plays the man for a little bit by being more intellectual and the breadwinner with the larger apartment, a love for watching sports and a lack of interest in long term or life long commitment while Annie has minimal knowledge on academic subjects, drives like the stereotypical woman and is terrified of spiders. In these ways, Alvy and Annie’s relationship supports gender roles. But Alvy is just as horrible at dealing with unwanted insects and actually shows a submissive role when Annie calls late at night for him to come kill a spider in her bathroom (which he fails at miserably) despite the fact that he has an attractive woman in his bed who he happily turns away in order to go see Annie without even knowing what the emergency is. When does that EVER happen?! They mutually agree to break up which is atypical since it’s usually the least happy person breaking the bad news rather than both sides of the relationship coming to the same conclusion simultaneously and agreeing from the beginning that this is an appropriate break up. When does that ever happen? Unrealistic. When do you ever laugh and reminisce with your ex-significant other while you’re packing up all of your belongings in preparation of removing yourself from their apartment? Oh right, never. That’s why it’s a movie.

How does the film present ideas and theories about love?

                Attributing “the screw up” to why a relationship ended and not realizing that it just wasn’t meant to be and it wasn’t necessarily a screw up but a difference in personalities, values or ambitions. That falls under the idea or theory that there is always a cause for the ending of a relationship. That’s like saying there is a root or cause to unhappiness or depression which is untrue because if there was, some genius would have figured out a new drug to correct or prevent that particular cause of unhappiness from occurring. So similarly, there cannot be a one screw up that ended this particular relationship. This is not true for all relationships because some end for one reason such as a cheating incident. But for Annie, this one screw up theory is a waste of time considering.

                A “sexual problem” being the root of all unhappiness in a relationship is one of those “screw ups” considered in the film as well. Couples start making excuses on either end that “I’m too tense. I need a valium.” Or that there is too much noise. At one point, Alvy talks about the fact that he doesn’t want to be in any club that would let someone like him in it and then goes on to talk about sex and sex is essentially a club of people who are sexually active that he doesn’t want to be in if they’ll take him, which “they” do because “they “ is woman and he has had sexual encounters and is therefore a part of the group he wishes not to be in since “they” did take people like him. That’s a terrible way of looking at it.  He also attributes his sexual drive to hostility and irritation but sometimes those are propellants into having sex and other times they are deterrents.

Other notes:

I thought the use of marijuana in the film was interesting. Alvy was pissed off that Annie smoked a joint before sex and actually took it away from her once. He refers to it as “artificially relaxed before sex” but how is that any worse than “I’m too tense, I need a valium”? He says he’s against it because a laugh from a person who is high doesn’t count because they’re always laughing anyway but I don’t see how that can be applied to sex since some people swear that marijuana makes everything, including sex, better. I saw it as him enforcing his views on drugs on his girlfriend instead of letting her live her life the way she has long before he arrived in it. Drugs seem to be a world that Annie is well suited for and seems to have a lot of experience in while Alvy absolutely doesn’t belong there. In contrast, Alvy belongs in this world of academics, intellectuals and comedians and Annie tries to become a part of that world but fails just as badly as Alvy does in the drug scenes. After asking other couples how they handle their relationships (again atypical for a male character to do), he finds that other couples use artificial ways of creating a more pleasurable sexual experience such as large vibrating eggs? There is way too much emphasis placed on orgasms making up for emptiness in life which may actually be the way the world is in reality or it could be that just some people feel that way. I don’t know but there was a lot of emphasis placed on orgasms, even in their respective therapy sessions. 

 

I thought Annie was an interesting character in that she had (in my opinion) a great personality (friendly, funny, ambitious to be intellectual but ignorant at the same time) but she presented herself in this strange package of weird and poorly fitting clothing and awkward mannerisms especially when she first starts talking to Alvy. Her voice is also an interesting part of her persona. She has a really beautiful voice but she presents it in an equally awkward manner through the songs she chooses to sing and not even so much the song choices themselves but how she chooses to sing songs that everyone knows so they sound familiar but all sorts of strung out that makes it feel strange but you can still appreciate the beauty of her voice the same way you can appreciate her personality through all her weird clothes and “la ti da” mannerisms.

One last thing: What is with all of these short shrimpy dudes dating mile high women? Just saying.