Before Sunset

Before Sunset was very interesting because of its contrast to Before Sunrise. The overall feel of the movie is quite similar but conveys a change in both characters through the subject matter they discuss while demonstrating their lack of change through the activities they do together and the secrets they share with one another. They are the same people they were nine years ago but with more experiences to connect to.

Early in the movie, Celine discusses her friend who made a mistake with a lover by making a suggestion of how to please her which offended him by indicating she was dissatisfied with his performance. Jesse says it’s about the timing and that she waited too long into the relationship to make changes in their love life. Changes must come earlier in the relationship.  I’d argue that the problem was caused by the approach and that she should have prefaced it with a compliment and then given him further instructions. The context and the way we communicate can often say more than the words we use. It’s a common error but one that is completely avoidable if the woman this happened to had given it some thought before springing her displeasure on her lover. Clearly, Jesse would have fallen into the same problem.

I was really surprised by the way Jesse treated Celine when he saw her at first. He treated her as though they were both still single. When I saw the wedding ring while they were in the café, I thought the editors didn’t realize what finger it was on. I feel like most people would be less flirty with someone they slept with 9 years ago if they were now in a committed relationship. That gives the wrong impression and then you dump on them that not only are you married but you also have a 4 year old and it’s like all hope is lost on their end, even if they too are in a relationship.

I enjoyed how Celine compared switching lovers to switching brands of cereal for some people. The concept of forgetting or replacing someone came across very clearly from Celine’s explanation of why she doesn’t get involved with people casually. You can’t replace people because they’re made up of so many specific details, she says. She never gets over people and each one hurts so bad to move on from that it’s worth being highly selective. Even with all of her considerations before starting a new relationship, Celine has not found happiness with her current lover and prefers he be away from her for extended periods. Perhaps being alone with a long distance lover is not the answer to solving her issues. Maybe it’s an issue over knowing herself, deciding what she wants out of life, not just a career. It’s truly heartbreaking that she feels so left out in the cold while each of her ex’s finds a wife. The acting in the scene in the car was incredible and appeared exactly as the viewer would expect it to look in real life. 

If you think about what they did at the end of Before Sunrise, it’s actually quite strange. They put faith in one another to show up to a specific time in a specific place on a very specific date without any means of communication to confirm the destination or make other arrangements. They put faith into each other like they were putting faith into God. He put faith into her and was let down and then found her using his own devices, which, I have to say, is pretty clever. 

I felt really bad for him during their conversation on the boat. He was thinking in hypotheticals if her grandmother had died a few days earlier or later than December 16^th but put into that situation, I would have told myself it was fate. We weren’t meant to be together. This was the universe stopping something that shouldn’t have happened. 

You can tell he doesn’t love his life. He talks about it in this tired sort of way. The first things out of his mouth are that his wife is a great teacher and a great mother but that doesn’t say anything about the way he feels about her. I feel like if he really loved her, he would have started off saying she’s a great lover and supportive partner. No one was ever made for you or will match you perfectly. Jesse says it’s a matter of committing yourself to a life with that person, not arguing that they are perfect or that you are soul mates. He says he’s had sex 10 times in the last four years. Where’s the love in that relationship? To me, that’s justification to not get married. Why should I sit around waiting for our love to die and unhappiness to creep back into my life? Why not spend a few years with this one and a few years with that one and wait until I hit mid-forties to settle down, when I really know myself, and then commit to being with that one person for the remainder of my life? It’s not traditional, I know. But I wouldn’t want to conform to a tradition of marriage that will undoubtedly lead me to displeasure in all aspects of my home life.

As weird as it was, I loved the ending of this movie. It’s so whimsical. She’s dancing and he’s captivated by her like it’s the first time he’s ever seen her. He loves her and I’m glad he chose to miss his flight. I hope he never catches the next one.   

Steve Almond: Short-Story Writer and Essayist

I was so impressed by Steve Almond’s work last night. Not just his writing, but his presentation too. I loved how informal it was. I thought the way he presented his work fit well into the messages he was trying to convey. While a lot of his material was witty, I was most impressed by the underlying messages, particularly in “Skull.” I thought it was ingenious how he went about carrying his message just through conversation and let the reader come up with their own assumptions and then he clarified the message through a character’s words. I’ve never come across a piece of literature that effectively conveyed how every human that ever existed just wants to be loved with all of their faults. This story was just an exaggeration of what all of us feel while we attempt to hide the scars we’ve been facing our entire lives, just hoping that one day someone will love us and love those scars because they are part of us. I can’t think of a better or more accurate representation of this feeling. Despite the hair raising feeling of envisioning an empty eye socket, that’s sometimes what it takes to shock a reader into understanding. How can you not envision what he is saying? What’s so powerful about it is that he doesn’t describe how people or things look where his characters are. He describes emotion, awkwardness, desire and hope. It’s effective because while you can very clearly envision the scene, he offers little distinguishing details that would prevent a reader from putting themselves into the same situation. 

To me, Steve Almond presented himself less as an author, less like a presenter and more like a person. Everything he said was real and applicable to everyone and it takes so much experience and attention to write about something that most people will experience in their lives and still allow everyone to comprehend, relate to, and experience within the literature. Even though these stories were not about his personal experiences, you can hear in his voice that he’s lived this stories in his mind over and over and feels what his characters do. These characters may be fictional, but they exist in all of us. We all have a piece of the girl with a missing eye within us, that’s the part of us that carries a scar we long to have loved along with the rest of us. We all have a piece of Zach, who cares deeply for someone with flaws and accepts those flaws, visible or not. And we all have a piece of the narrator, the person who’s afraid to hear the awkwardness, dying of curiosity and longing for something similar to walk into our lives, no matter what challenges accompany it. 

This lecture was truly inspiring. I wish I could put my feelings and stories into a piece of literature the way he does, leaving a resonating “somebody gets it” feeling with the readers, or in this case, listeners. To me, literature is dangerous. I don’t perceive the world around me the way he does, and for that I am envious. For me, writing just uncovers things I wish would stay buried in the back of my mind. Steve Almond is not afraid to go into the dark corners of our lives and really pull out emotion, good or bad. That’s truly fearless.

Desire in Tunisia

What I liked most about this film is that this boy’s struggle is universal. We all at one point or another want to be acknowledged as an adult and take on new responsibilities but at the same time, we wish to hold on to that bit of childhood that allows us to live carefree while there are minimal expectations of us. The largest struggle during this time of life is curiosity. At the age of 12 or 13, we start learning about what desire is. We start to realize the things we know nothing of and have a great desire to learn about the adult world, ourselves and the opposite sex.

In relation to the producer of this film, this is the first time I have heard of desire being linked to nostalgia for something that has been lost. It makes perfect sense and I wish I had thought of it before but I think it might be one of the strongest forms of desires because it can rarely be fulfilled. You can’t just reach back into the past to grab or relive what used to be so it becomes a lifelong desire and nostalgia for the past, in this case, for a Mediterranean society before the police state existed.

When I think of prohibition of incest, I think of prohibition of desire. It’s human nature to desire others and it’s also human nature to act on our desires. To prohibit sex outside of marriage, while I understand the need for it, seems destined to failure. It’s very difficult to control peoples’ desires and I don’t think we should. But then again, we shouldn’t use sex as a weapon or a method of revenge either.

I thought it was so interesting that there is technically room for only one man in the country who is the president and all other men are emasculated. This is such a departure from so many other cultures that place importance on the man as the leader of the house and the most important person in the family. To say that all other men in the society are emasculated by the president is like saying that the responsibility of the president is to govern the entire country as if all of his people were his family and all other men are simply enforcers of the main man’s orders. Maybe that’s why all the men in this film seem to have all the time in the world to spy on little boys and stare at women.