A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I may have mentioned it before: I love rewatching films. Obviously not all films, but on the whole I get a huge enjoyment out of revisiting films. Doesn’t matter that I know the plot and all the twists, since plot, while not entirely unimportant (it depends on what kind of film it is), is by far not the main thing I enjoy about films – and even when I watch a film for the plot, there’s so much more to storytelling than just finding out what happens next. For me, rewatching a film isn’t all that different from listening to a song or an album: it’s not a static thing, it depends on where I’m at, and I can get entirely different things out of a movie on revisiting them. Or sometimes I get exactly what I expect, and that’s exactly what I want or need at a certain moment. Give me that Pulp Fiction feeling! I’m in a Seven mood!

And while I mostly rewatch films that I have enjoyed in the past – so much so that I can’t remember how often I’ve seen Fargo or Jules et Jim or Jackie Brown -, it also happens that I rewatch a film I didn’t particularly like the first time around.

Sometimes it’s because I think I was in the wrong headspace when watching a film, so I want to give them a second chance – and sometimes this works out (The Big Lebowski), sometimes less so (Catch Me While You Can). Sometimes it’s that while I didn’t enjoy the experience of watching a movie the first time around, but there’s some niggling thing at the back of my head, the specific way I disliked the movie or a scene that I can’t get out of my head, that makes me want to go back and see what happens if I pull that particular thread. And sometimes it’s that I’ve heard so often, from people whose opinions I respect, that a certain movie is worthwhile, so I go back to it to find out: is there something I missed? Did I watch it the wrong way, whatever that means? Or is it just that a film or a filmmaker don’t resonate with me?

When I first watched Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), I was, oh, around 30 – and while it’s not that I outright hated the film, I didn’t much enjoy my time spent with Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Deply), two cute-as-buttons 20-somethings who meet up in a train to Vienna, hit it off, and decide to spend some time together in the city. I found the two of them annoying, even grating, with their conversations that they obviously think are deep and true and original, and nine out of ten people their age have had exactly those conversations. I had read about how this was supposed to be one of the most romantic films ever – and I didn’t see it. Sure, Jesse and Céline have great chemistry – but they’re cute 20-somethings with movie star looks, they’re high on youth and hormones, and they’re in Vienna, a city that offers both gorgeous scenery and a grungy punk underside. Obviously they’d hit it off, but that’s not romance!

In brief: I didn’t relate. I felt that the characters, the story, the much-praised dialogues were humdrum. Mostly, I felt that I’d watched Before Sunrise too late: I could totally imagine liking it better if I’d seen it as the 20-year-old I was when the film came out. (Seeing how I was a bit of a jaded 20-year-old, I might not have liked it any better. I probably avoided it because of how everyone insisted that this was the most romantic movie ever. At that age, my idea of a good time was rewatching Seven.) Being a whopping eight or nine years older than the characters, I admit that I cringed more than a bit – yes, these kids were credible as what they were, but that didn’t make their conversations, or their romance, any truer or deeper. They were basically just-about-not-teenagers discovering themselves, each other and the world, thinking that they were the first ever to have these particular thoughts and feelings, and I was happy enough to be out of that age myself. I didn’t want to spend even 101 minutes with these people!

Some time later, I watched the second film in Linklater’s trilogy, Before Sunset (2004), in which Jesse and Céline meet again, this time in Paris, and this time in their early 30s – and I was surprised to find that I loved that film. They were no longer the kids they’d been, and I found the movie all the better for it. Now these were people I could relate to: they were no longer generic, if atypically attractive, kids thinking they were oh-so-original for having thoughts pretty much everyone has around that age. They’d grown up, they were more hesitant and doubtful in some ways, more certain and well-formed in others. (Then, in 2013, came Before Midnight, and while I was more or less the same age as the two protagonists, I bounced off their middle-aged squabbling.)

Fast-forward to 2025 and my favourite cinema’s 10-year anniversary. The REX showed films that, like the cinema itself, had a round anniversary this year, from Buster Keaton’s Go West (2025) via Rome, Open City (1945), The Sound of Music (1965), Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) to – yes, you’ve guessed it – Before Sunrise. Only having seen the film once, on DVD and on a screen that could have been much, much bigger, I thought: it’s 101 minutes long. I’ve given Goddard’s A Bout de Souffle three or four chances (I appreciate the film, but I also dislike watching it), so surely I could give Richard, Ethan, Julie, Jesse and Céline an hour or two of my time, right? What’s the worst that can happen? I might not like it again?

Here’s the punchline: I did like the film. A lot. It’s not that I suddenly found these two kids less cringy, their conversations deeper or their romance more romantic. But being twenty years older myself, I find that I no longer feel the strong need to distance myself from that age, and from my memories of being that age. I don’t think that Before Sunrise is an amazingly romantic film, or at least it isn’t for me: give me Jules et Jim for that, for the exhilaration and the cruelty of love and desire, and give me Jackie Brown for its romance between Jackie and Max, two people that have stopped expecting romance to happen.

For me, at the age of 50, Before Sunrise had a truth that I didn’t see before, but it wasn’t the truth about love or romance or life, even if that’s exactly what young Céline and Jesse think they’re navigating during their night in Vienna. No longer needing to make it clear to myself that I’m not that young and that silly and that full of myself anymore, I could see how well Linklater and his actors are at depicting exactly that age, its convictions, its insecurities, it’s silliness, and yes, it’s excitement. Jesse and Céline don’t know what’s ahead of them: we do, or at least those of us who have seen the whole trilogy – but even then, these are just snapshots in time, and there is truth – and, yes, beauty – in this particular snapshot.

Would I say I loved Before Sunrise on rewatching it? No, certainly not. I think I lack a certain longing to be that young and silly and full of myself again, and I was never a Jesse or a Céline. I still don’t relate to the extent that I think you need to in order to enjoy the film fully. I would have liked there to be more fragility and uncertainty, but also, more friction between the characters: Jesse, while undoubtedly attractive (I mean, he’s played by a young Ethan Hawke!), is quite an ass at times, and while Céline brings it up, I would have liked her to call him out more. And there’s also the simple fact that I think the film relies a lot on viewers finding both Hawke and Delpy attractive – and I’m afraid that’s not entirely true in my case. (As much as I think Delpy is very good in this, I do find her a bit boring – which is an entirely personal thing and no criticism of her as an actor.)

But in many ways it doesn’t matter that I came out having changed my opinion on the film: what matters is that the film I saw a few nights ago wasn’t the same film I saw twenty years ago, because I’m not the same person. (Ironically, now I’m the one spouting truisms as if they were deep, important truths. Perhaps I’m more of a Jessie than I thought I was.) Revisiting films also means revisiting ourselves: we remember what we thought and felt about a movie, and in the process we remember ourselves as much as the film. Sometimes the act of rewatching a film reminds us of the ways in which we have changed, sometimes it’s the ways in which we’re still the same person. Which gives me more respect for Linklater and his various attempts of capturing exactly this in film, whether it’s the Before trilogy or Boyhood or his audacious, insane project of making a movie version of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, which is set to finish filming some time around 2040. There is a beauty and a magic to revisiting characters, and revisiting ourselves, every few years.