This little space

Squall, that's the guy from the sexy - or so he wishes, LOL! - blog, has made a post about the great movies Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. So it would be rather stupid, lame and copycatish to do the same... Let's do it.



Hey, my post is in English and it emphasizes other stuff from the movies, so I guess I can get away with it. I can get away with a lot of stuff actually, since this is my territory. It is mine! My own! My... preciousss... Oh no wait, that wasn't the movie I was supposed to talk about, what it? Darn. Ehm. Why don't you go off to Youtube and check some Guitar Hero movies while I have a drink, take a crap, move upstairs, wonder what I'm doing there, go back downstairs, drink some more, have a piss and try to think of the movie I was going to talk about. Off you go, then!

[Two drinks, one crap, one piss, some noisy stairs and two irritated-about-getting-woken (or is it waked? whatever)-up-by-the-dramatic-sound-of-me-walking-up-and-down-the-stairs family members later...]

Ah, there you are! Jolly good! I remember now, isn't that great! So let's talk about an American guy and a French girl sitting on a train across Europe. They get off together in Vienna. Off the train, obviously. It doesn't make much sense telling the movie set-up lik this, which is probably one of the reasons why I like the movie. Non sense making stuff for teh win!

The main reason for me liking Before Sunrise is Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke. Some trivia about Ethan Hawke: he plays in some other movies too. Jesse is an American guy who, for reasons no one really cares about in this kind of movie, has been sitting on a train across Europe for over three weeks. When a girl asks him why he does that, he says he has wonderful ideas on the train. Ideas that he doesn't get anywhere else. The girl asks him to give an example. He tells her he has come up with a unique idea for a television show. He describes a lame version of Big Brother. The girl laughs at the silly American. I'm starting to like the movie.

So the basic idea is that two strangers meet on a train and start talking. The stuff they talk about is just mental. They'd rather talk about relationship therapies, the meaning of life and love and a whooole bunch of other philosophical stuff before they even bother to know what the other one's bloody name is. Celine, that would be the girl - played by Julie Delpy and talking in a horrible English accent, actually gets off a train in a town she shouldn't be in with a guy she knows for about two hours. Because 'I feel there is some kind of connection', she says. Sounds totally lame and it probably is. I'm afraid I'm one lame mother[angry mob is busy having drinks which I paid for as to keep them silent]er, because I love the whole idea.

Jesse has to leave Vienna some time in the morning, and so they stroll across town all night. You know, they walk and talk just until before sunrise. There, I spoiled the title. Big deal. They have a lot of weird conversations that you normally wouldn't have with a total stranger, which is just the thing that I absolutely love about this movie. The way these two persons talk is just beyond human understanding. They talk like they are living encyclopedias, occasionally (I hope I spelt that right) spitting out random knowledge. Most of Celine's talk starts of with something like: 'When I was nine years old,' 'This one time in junior high school', 'When I visited my grandmother as a child'. She just loves talking about herself and how she hates just about everything in the world. To tell you a little secret, I don't like her very much. Now and then she says something interesting, but overall she just talks waaaay to much.

As always, the girl is more interesting to look at; but it's the guy you want to turn to if you really want to hear something intelligent. Therefore my personal favourite amongst the two characters is Jesse. May the swift hand of Death find you quickly if you even think about making gay jokes about that. I particularly liked one of his quotes, it goes something like this:

"When I was a child - I guess he had been with Christine for quite som time by then, so he had already taken over her habit of starting a monologue with that horrible beginning - I heard my parents fighting in the kitchen. My father shouted that I wasn't meant to exist, that I was an accident. I guess that, ever since that moment, I look at life as if I don't really belong here. As if I'm just an observer, trashing the big world party."


I love the notion of being detached from the world. Just looking at all the wonderful things that happen down here, without actually being too big a part of it. I guess we all feel like that sometimes. I would hope so, it would be rather awkward to be the only one to feel that way. If you don't ever feel that way, you have no soul! I've always had major problems with managing responsibilities in life, which must be why I can find so much of myself in that quote. I just feel like letting go and just enjoying the show without doing anything myself. Let others lead their life, and I will find my peace at watching them be happy. For, however lame this may sound, the times in my life when I am just completely happy and at peace are the times when I am amongst other happy people. It doesn't really matter if it was me who made them happy or not, it just feels so magnificent to have smiling people around you in a world like this.

Now, there were some more thoughts that I liked, but I seem to have forgotten about them. Let's have a drink and try to remember some, shall we?

[Musical interlude - Squall enters the room and proudly states: 'Let me play you a waltz!' The drunk crowd cheers, I flee to another room in horror]

Ah yes, Jesse's grandmother vision. Absolutely loved that one. Just after his great-grandmother died, Jesse (back then only nine years old) was playing with the garden hose. He had learned a trick to make the water sprinkle in such a way that it would make some kind of curtain in which you could see a small rainbow. And then he sees his grandmother through the water, and she just smiles. Of course, young Jesse can't take his eyes off of her and so they just stare at each other. When he told his parents about it, they told him that it was only natural to see these things in times of grief. Jesse thinks 'Screw you, I know what I saw and I believe it'. It's the same with me, really. Although my mother passed away physically over a year ago, I can still feel here presence each and every day. If I watch a television show whe used to watch together, with small tears in the eyes during those moments that made her laugh the hardest, if I'm riding on my bike and see a mother with her happy son. Tons of moments each day in which I see my mother, and I don't give a camel's ass about what other people think about it. Those moments are entirely ours, no one else's.

Another great theme in the first movie, by the way. I think it's Celine that says: 'Time is so weird. It feels like this night together is just ours. Nobody else's, just yours and mine.' Which is true, during their magical night together, they are all that matters. Everyone else is just some kind of puppet in a play in which they are the leading stars. That is the main reason why the first rays of sunshine the next day feel so... can't really find the right word here. You just get the feeling that they were sucked into reality an time that belongs to everyone again, and it hurts. They didn't want the night to ever end, but in the end you can't change time. So make the best of the time you have.

Jesse talks about that kind of stuff in the second movie. How, as he grew up, he learned to appreciate the small things in life more. He used to play in a rock band who, at the end of their short career, were constantly looking for bigger events to play at, buying more expensive equipment and the like. But only now does he realise that the important thing abou all that was just the time together with friends; laughing, playing music and just enjoying life. It's actually pretty hard to realise you didn't enjoy previous important moments in your lifetime to their maximum extent, once you get older. Friends and lovers are all that really matters in life. Celine put it this way:

'God is not in you, or in me. Nor in anyone in this world. He is right here, in this little space between us.'


So much more stuff to say about these movies, but I'm too tired right now and to be honest, I'm starting to smell a bit weird, too. Must be Squall's eau de cologne still hanging in the air. Now let's find some pictures to make this stuff more interesting and then it's off to bed. Smell ya later. Oh me and my clever word jokes.