Before Sunrise, Before Sunset
First WB and then World Movies showed Before Sunset and Before Sunrise some months ago; two movies that can be seen independent of each other but are also good when watched sequentially. This movie manufactures tears in my body, but does not help with expelling it. Such is its sense of humour. Not sad at all, not happy surely--and not classifiable in those terms at all. The colour this movie splashes about is the colour of truth. An exploration into the myriad forms of love, disappointing relationships and my favourite part: a prophecy lived out.
I seriously recommend this movie to those amateurs among us who have seen few movies, little life and even less of relationships. I cannot help saying that, and sounding imperious! Art makes us better and these movies are ART. But, of course, it takes a long long time to even understand art and then benefit from it. Like everything else, it also possesses the ability to violate us.
Art makes better human beings because it provides for us, quickly, somewhat inexpensively, an occasion to imagine. A probable situation, a believable character (even if we insist that they are indeed unbelievable and it can happen only in the movies!), a set of circumstances that come to form the great mystery that life is.
My belief in the benefits of watching movies were suddenly and unexpectedly confirmed the other day by Robin Sharma. Yes, none other than him! He says in a smaller version of his best-selling book, A Monk who sold his Ferrari, that there is a lesson to learn through the movies we watch.
Ordinarily, a movie leaves me with an impression, an experience, that I can draw upon continuously, anywhere, anytime in order to practice more compassion towards fellow humans. I absorb stories like a sponge, but true to an Eng Lit student capacity, I will not be able to remember names of characters or places or even the name of the movie, just a short while later.
In what is otherwise a generally long story about a love relationship with the movies, Before Sunset and Before Sunrise, assume for me, the grand proportion of a genuinely free and playful consummation. I could write down every line of this movie to cherish it a little later, a little more fully. Two people doing nothing on a summer day in Spain and meeting each other after decades, and its as if they were indeed the love of each others' lives--to us!
Now that's way too romantic for a cynic like me, but the realizations such as--love happens only so many times in life, that one is at peace when alone and hates being in relationships, while actually burning madly for love...all this is true and precise. But wait, this is life. Whoever said it was art? Did I? I so take it back. It is realism, yes, but saying that, is an injustice to these two movies. Life. This movie and all its minute realizations about relationships is life itself.
How could the non-stop chatter of two people, estranged, meeting as strangers still hold within it, the potential to render all the wisdom there was ever to give about human relationships? I don't know, just watch the two movies! And if you ever ever have been lonely, you will be touched by that song addressed to the walls and may gather half a tear in your eye, that will neither flow nor dry.
I seriously recommend this movie to those amateurs among us who have seen few movies, little life and even less of relationships. I cannot help saying that, and sounding imperious! Art makes us better and these movies are ART. But, of course, it takes a long long time to even understand art and then benefit from it. Like everything else, it also possesses the ability to violate us.
Art makes better human beings because it provides for us, quickly, somewhat inexpensively, an occasion to imagine. A probable situation, a believable character (even if we insist that they are indeed unbelievable and it can happen only in the movies!), a set of circumstances that come to form the great mystery that life is.
My belief in the benefits of watching movies were suddenly and unexpectedly confirmed the other day by Robin Sharma. Yes, none other than him! He says in a smaller version of his best-selling book, A Monk who sold his Ferrari, that there is a lesson to learn through the movies we watch.
Ordinarily, a movie leaves me with an impression, an experience, that I can draw upon continuously, anywhere, anytime in order to practice more compassion towards fellow humans. I absorb stories like a sponge, but true to an Eng Lit student capacity, I will not be able to remember names of characters or places or even the name of the movie, just a short while later.
In what is otherwise a generally long story about a love relationship with the movies, Before Sunset and Before Sunrise, assume for me, the grand proportion of a genuinely free and playful consummation. I could write down every line of this movie to cherish it a little later, a little more fully. Two people doing nothing on a summer day in Spain and meeting each other after decades, and its as if they were indeed the love of each others' lives--to us!
Now that's way too romantic for a cynic like me, but the realizations such as--love happens only so many times in life, that one is at peace when alone and hates being in relationships, while actually burning madly for love...all this is true and precise. But wait, this is life. Whoever said it was art? Did I? I so take it back. It is realism, yes, but saying that, is an injustice to these two movies. Life. This movie and all its minute realizations about relationships is life itself.
How could the non-stop chatter of two people, estranged, meeting as strangers still hold within it, the potential to render all the wisdom there was ever to give about human relationships? I don't know, just watch the two movies! And if you ever ever have been lonely, you will be touched by that song addressed to the walls and may gather half a tear in your eye, that will neither flow nor dry.
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