So, I just watched Before Sunset, by Richard Linklater, and I think I might just go hang myself now. I think my psyche has taken pretty critical damage, and I'm not exactly sure how well it's going to heal - or if there will just be a really nasty scar.
Let me preface this by saying that my first entry into Linklater's work was Waking Life, which I loved. After this, when Before Sunset was in the theaters, I bought its predecessor Before Sunrise on DVD.
I loved every minute of it, but that was also a movie I should never have watched.
For those of you who don't know of it, Before Sunrise is a story about a young American man (played by Ethan Hawke) who meets a young French woman (played by the gorgeous Julie Delpy) on a train in Vienna. It is a two-ships-passing moment, but they decide to seize it and have a wonderful evening of deep philosophical conversation before they both have to leave for home at sunrise the following morning.
Not to spoil anything (and if you care about being spoiled, maybe you should stop reading), but they fall in love and decide to meet 6 months later at the same spot, though you never find out if they do or not.
Now, most of you don't really know me. In fact, I'd venture to say there are only a small handful of people on hatrack who do know much about me at all, which is by design. I've never posted a landmark. I don't open myself up much. And, when, for a brief while, people started calling me by my first name instead of FC or Cow, I left the website for several months.
All that aside, this movie about sudden romance and impulsively grabbing the moment by the throat and throttling it struck pretty close to home.
I had an experience very similar to this when I was traveling in Greece several years ago, with a whirlwind week with a wonderful young woman who I have never seen again. The week has colored my experiences with every woman I've dated since, as I've held them to that entirely unfair standard of perfection - intellectually, phsyically, and spiritually.
I still haven't let it go entirely, and I still search out that fleeting ideal to some extent. Still, though, I like to think that I've moved on somewhat, even though I haven't had a serious relationship since. So, I'm not sure if I've really moved on at all, I guess.
Before Sunset brought that all to the front of my mind in perhaps the most painful and depressing of ways. Spoiler concerned people who are still reading should stop again.
See, the two characters meet again, nine years later, and neither has been able to let go of that one night. There has been untold misery for both in those nine years, because they gave up on finding the right person and simply settled for what they could get.
They fell into what they thought was expected of them, and gave up the ideal, unable to fill the niche that had been carved out so many years earlier. When they do meet, they are both broken in some way, and the joy has been drained from them.
It was very depressing for me. I think I empathized too much, and I pulled a brain muscle.
I'm 27 now, and I haven't dated anyone seriously in four years. I mean, I've dated people, but never consistently or for any significant length of time, really. I've had flings, one night stands, casual dates... but nothing that has resonated in four years.
And now, when I'm finally beginning to look again, this spectre of the past comes up and smacks my brain around. It was a movie about painful memories, in essence, or happy memories that can cause pain. And regret. And how the past can warp the present and rob it of life and happiness.
Yet, I knew it would be, and I still watched it. I don't know why - perhaps I'm a sucker for emotional pain. It's possible. I knew I shouldn't have watched the first movie, either, because it would have made me want to hop a plane and disappear... and it did.
I resisted, through sheer force of will.
This movied didn't make me want to do anything except... I don't know. Hit myself repeatedly in the head, maybe. I don't know what I'm thinking, just that I've got regret and emptiness and loneliness and a jumble of other crap running amok inside my head.
I don't even know what I expect people to say to this, or if I even want them to say anything at all. It's just that I needed to vent, I think. To get some thoughts on paper... er, white space on the screen.
So, if you want an upbeat and uplifting evening, avoid Before Sunset. If you're up to wallow a bit in the painful lives of two characters, then be my guest.
I think I'm just going to put it on my shelf and try to repress as much of it as possible.
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To constantly seek to relive the best moments of your life is to seek to cheapen them. They're the best moments because they were moments.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Its not so much trying to relive. I know those moments are gone.
The thing is trying to find new moments that are as resonant, and it seems that I've set the bar too high. Because of a very bright moment, the world seems dimmer - thought perhaps it's just that my eyes have yet to adjust.
In the film, the two characters seemed to each have gone on with life and found some happiness, but when confronted with each other again, it all unraveled.
I know that wouldn't happen if I met the girl from Greece again, as we kept in touch afterward and drifted in opposite directions. It's just that I can't stop myself from unrealistically expecting someone else to live up to the standard of that week.
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I don't know that it is because you've set the bar too high, as much as not providing yourself with opportunities now, or not being open to them.
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That's also quite possible. Though I have found myself being very critical (picky, I guess) in the opprotunities I have opened myself too.
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If this movie has this much emotional impact, and if you're absolutely not serious at all about hurting yourself (as I assume) . . . I tend to use fiction like that to open me up. The hurt is there, whether it's at the surface or not. I think you're saying that in your case it's blocking you from some things you want? Once you've got a support system in place to help expose it, you've got a great opportunity to resolve it (and I think you're doing that right now). That's 2 cents, please.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I was thinking sort of along the lines of what Will B. said. I read Anna Karenina at a time when it was particularly painful for me--but there was some catharsis there and in a way I think it helped me move on. I hope you can find someone whose flawed, imperfect self works to create a union with you that is as beautiful, with all its problems, as the fleeing moment you had in Greece is in your memory.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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FC, I've been thinking about this type of topic recently. I've been postulating the idea that if you've been in a relationship that ended too soon due to death, (though, I would suspect that the circumstances in this movie would effectively be the same) that you could never really fall in love again because you were in love with an ideal. I mean, if you lose someone you love early, you never have a chance to be really annoyed with them. Or see them when they are puking. I mean, you just have that perfect love. And there is no way anyone else will ever measure up, because the first love never had a chance to screw up.
Anyway, just thought I'd share. Carry on.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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A dear friend and co-worker of mine has shared the stories of his family over the years we've known each other. They're all second hand...I've never met any of them.
Some years ago, he went to spend weeks at a time with his sister who was dying of cancer. She and her husband had been married for many years; they'd been as much soul mates as you can possibly ever expect. Before she died, she wrote the story of her final days, and it is soaked in the love that she and her husband shared.
After she passed, her widower remarried within 2 years to a woman quite different from his dead wife. While the love he shares with his new wife is not what it was with Verna, it is still love and a marriage worth having.
I wouldn't call it settling. I believe he's happy, and to hear it told, he recognizes that what he has with his new wife isn't the same, but he and his new wife don't expect it to be. Personally, I think you (generic "you", not specific you) can ruin a good relationship with unrealistic expectations, largely because you spend too much time being disappointed in what it isn't to appreciate what it is.
Anyway. For whatever that's worth.
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I don't think 27 is all that old. I don't think I was really ready for marriage intil my mid 30's (as evidenced by my divorce at 27).
Sounds to me like you're not ready yet, which personally, I think is an excellent thing to know. Weird thing is...I don't think you can know when you ARE ready, until you meet that person, and then you might just wonder for a while until you suddenly realize you've been married for 5 years and it's been more than you imagined it would be.
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