“Before Sunrise” (1995) is the beautiful 100-minute execution of a very simple story: two young adults meet on a train across Europe. Jesse, an American, has to get off in Vienna for a flight back home. Céline is bound for Paris, but out on a limb, Jesse asks her to leave with him—to walk around the city together, just for the night. Jesse tells her, “And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get on the next train.”
Céline agrees. The rest of the movie is simply the two of them walking around, barhopping, and meeting strangers. Mostly, though, they just talk: about their childhoods, pet theories and dreams, their insecurities, as the pair eventually comes to terms with the fact that this will likely be their only night together. They are both alternately suave and embarrassing, but endearing above all else—two people, clearly enamored with each other, trying.
The film was widely appreciated upon release, netting director Richard Linklater awards for his direction and screenplay. As an emblem of ’90s nostalgia, “Before Sunrise” has found its way into the hearts of a generation of people born and brought up after its release—or at least the subset of that generation that uses Letterboxd. Every June 16, the day the film is set, stills from the movie take over my Instagram feed. And 30-year nostalgia cycles notwithstanding, I think the movie’s enduring appeal to those born after its release lies in its relationship to our present.
Gen Z is perhaps the loneliest generation in history. We are more risk-averse than our parents or grandparents—dating less, having less sex. The existence of the situationship as a concept points to a new and systematic discomfort with communication. On a campus full of people who match with one another on Tinder without ever speaking, the popularity of “Before Sunrise” and movies like it speaks volumes.
“Before Sunrise” is alien to our social reality: pre-algorithm, pre-social media. The movie is outright against technology as being meaningfully capable of sustaining a relationship. Céline and Jesse dismiss out of hand the potential of trying to stay in touch, to call or to write. Nothing can compare. And neither of them, at any point, can retreat to check a text message or Instagram. As one five-star Letterboxd review put it: “not a phone in sight, just two hours of trauma dumping on the first date.”
Things have changed in 30 years. We can stay in touch with whoever we want—we know what that guy we met once at a party last year just had for breakfast, and we see all the pictures from our middle school friends’ vacations. But what, in terms of authentic connection, have we really gained?
“Before Sunrise” points to the existence of another way of being, of connecting with one another—throwing oneself into the world with an openness to experience and to possibility, to the magic of that night in Vienna. It is a sort of modern mythology: fatally separate from us but relatable, fuel for our imaginations and our fantasies. That might be what gives the movie its enduring pull.
Maybe the impulse is escapist. Maybe we turn to movies that show another reality so that we do not have to live in our own. Maybe our overexposure to on-screen, idealized love stories is doing to our romantic lives what pornography is doing to the sexual—draining things of their real-world appeal, as we lose ourselves in simulacra of reality.
But movies can teach us things. “Before Sunrise” is a movie, essentially, about going out on a limb—the entire plot is predicated on Jesse’s arguably crazy pitch to Céline, facing a fear of rejection that to many would seem unthinkable. It is through that courage, and that of Céline to accept, that anything happens at all.
And what happens is gloriously imperfect. The movie runs toward, rather than away from, the messiness of any human relationship, especially among 20-somethings. Jesse can be pretentious and dismissive; Céline says some crazy things. There are awkward pauses and fights. And that is what gives the movie its magic. That is what makes it a movie about two people truly living without guardrails, open to themselves and each other. They are embarrassed but willing to be so, holding nothing back. What results will be messy, but it will also be human.
“Before Sunrise” is a parable of connection, unmediated by the forces that fuel modern loneliness, unbothered by the possibility of failure. In a world where rejection can seem life-or-death, it is beautiful to elevate media that show how beautiful things can be when we put ourselves out there—to risk it all for a conversation.