Julie Delpy (Celine) & Ethan Hawke (Jesse)

Another first for me, I thought Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise was a real breath of fresh air, which is more than I can say about Ethan Hawke’s (Jesse) acting. I really enjoyed the opening scene with the violins beginning semi serene and eventually quickening their tempo, along with the shot of the tracks and from the actual train.

This has always been a fantasy of mine, which is probably why I connected to the movie the way I did. Who doesn’t want to be traveling Europe when all of a sudden a beautiful foreign woman sits across the aisle from you and basically invites you into conversation? Even if nothing were to come of this it would still be an inviting thought in my mind, I would love to engage in a conversation with a foreign woman, if not for the exotic accent, whether it be French like Celine (Julie Delpy) in this movie, or German or anything really. I feel that its always refreshing to talk to someone with a slight if any language barrier from another nation because they seem to be more engaged in the conversation, and I don’t know if that says something about us Americans or if its just crossing cultural borders that intrigues people.

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Every director, has their own path to stardom, some attend film school while others just are in the right place at the right time. Richard Linklater took a less conventional approach, with his desire to be in the film industry absent at an early age. Born in Houston Texas, Richard Linklater attended Sam Houston State, but left mid semester as he felt was not the right area for him at the time. Surprisingly, Linklater’s departure let him down a completely different path working offshore at an oilrig. Ironically it was here that he discovered his love of film, and used money from this occupation to buy a Super 8 camera.

Linklater has made dozens of films some of his more notable ones being, Dazed and Confused, Slacker, School of Rock, and his most recent remake of Bad News Bears earning him the most recognition. Linklater is most noted for his wide repertoire of films, with his productions ranging form slackers, a film following individuals with no real direction in their lives, to Scander Darkly, which is a sci-fi future thriller. Richard Linklater is a self-made success without having, any real mentor, or guided instruction.

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Richard Linklater showed that he can create a stunning and moving romance movie with the 1995 release Before Sunrise. Linklater (Slackers, Dazed and Confused) casts Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy into his lead roles as Jesse and Celine, travelers abroad in Europe. They meet while on the Eurorail on its way to Vienna. There Jesse will fly back to America in the morning and Celine will continue on to Paris where she will study there. The connection between the two is immediate and intense. The conversation seems so natural and full of intriguing ideas. Their conversations range from the characteristics and powers of language to sexuality and reincarnation. Much of the conversation would seem unimportant in other movies but in this one it seems to me some of the most intimate details. Some of the shots seem almost like Linklater is making the audience into a voyeur. There are scenes where Jesse and Celine try hard to not look into each others eyes and another where they try to resist the impulse of touching each other, wary of the budding chemistry between them. When the movie ends it seems too soon for their short romance to end. The last shot leaves you wanting to know whats going to happen with these two, will they ever meet again? (more…)

While watching  Richard Linklaters indie favorite Slacker, it takes a while to realize that not only is there no plot or story line, but there isn’t even a main character you’re supposed to be following. However, once the you’ve come to terms with this concept, it becomes very easy to settle in and enjoy the brief episodes featuring the musings of over a hundred characters, who make up Linklaters portrait of early 90’s bohemia in Austin, Texas.

The film takes its viewer all over the city as it introduces a cast of twenty something “slackers” who think too much and do too little. The very first of these characters, the young man trying to make sense of his dreams in the taxi cab, is Linklater himself. Some of the people the you encounter throughout the movie produce highly intelligent postulates about life and society, often unintentionally, such as the gem of wisdom from the guy describing the aging process: ” They get fat and make fun of themselves, isnt that what all old people do anyway”? Indeed! Others however, I would not deem “overeducated”, as the ensemble is described as a whole in the DVD summary.  Amongst the true thinkers in Austin, the bohemian scene is also filled with crack pot conspiracy theorists, androgynous hustlers trying to sell Madonna’s pap smear, and others who would be best described as insane rather than an intellectual slacker. I thought that was actually the most interesting angle of the film, the way that Linklater created an ecclectic combination of the sane and the mad, all the while inferring that they all actually pertain to the same social demographic of early 90’s radical thinking bohemia.  (more…)