‘Before Sunset’, a film starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, released in 2004. I watched it on a flight a few years back and remember enjoying it. It was a sequel. I wanted to watch the first one, but never got around to doing it. The third movie in the trilogy came out in 2013.
The first in the series ‘Before Sunrise’ and the second were shown on TV on Saturday. I managed to catch bits and pieces of the first one and watched the second while the little one had her afternoon nap.
A simple low budget movie about a couple of students, an American guy and a French girl, meeting as strangers on a train in Europe and getting off at Vienna and spending the evening together. If you hear the plot you might wonder how a story line where two people talking all evening and night would be interesting. Not only was it interesting, but they managed to keep that interest going through the next two films. They departed on the proviso that they would meet up at a certain place after 6 months, without exchanging any contact details. That meeting never took place and they lost contact. The subsequent film shows them meeting up again after 9 years and the last in the series showed how the relationship progressed after another 9 years.
Conversations in the movie got me thinking. One always has an impression that our problems are unique and that everybody else leads perfect lives. Recent conversations with friends also reminded me that that is not true. Everyone has their own hurdles. Why do people yearn for perfect lives? Or do they. Or do we muddle along in our not so perfect lives and try and make the best of it. Personally I don’t believe that such a thing exists in reality, but only in one’s imagination.
Let me sleep on that thought and see if I can dream about my perfect life. A life in a parallel universe where everything is picture perfect.
