Before Sunrise

Celine:
If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed, but... who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Jesse:
I know happy couples... but I think they lie to each other!

Celine:
I like to feel his eyes on me when I look away.

Celine:
You know what I want?

Jesse:
What?

Celine:
To be kissed.

Jesse:
Well I can do that.

Celine:
I used to think that if none of your family or friends knew you were dead, it was like not really being dead. People can invent the best and the worst for you.

Celine:
No, then it sounds like a male fantasy. Meet a French girl on the train, f*** her, and never see her again.

Celine:
Each time I wear black, or like, lose my temper, or say anything about anything, you know, they always go, "Oh it's so French. It's so cute." Ugh! I hate that!

Celine:
You know, I have this awful paranoid thought that feminism was mostly invented by men so that they could like, fool around a little more.

Street Poet:
Daydream, delusion, limousine, eyelash / Oh baby with your pretty face / Drop a tear in my wineglass / Look at those big eyes / See what you mean to me / Sweet-cakes and milkshakes / I'm delusion angel / I'm fantasy parade / I want you to know what I think / Don't want you to guess anymore / You have no idea where I came from / We have no idea where we're going / Latched in life / Like branches in a river/ Flowing downstream / Caught in the current / I'll carry you / You'll carry me / That's how it could be / Don't you know me? / Don't you know me by now?

Celine:
We're all happy and free as long as I can f*** as much as I want.

Jesse:
Everybody's parents f***ed them up. Rich kids parents gave them too much. Poor kids, not enough. You know, too much attention, not enough attention. They either left them or they stuck around and taught them the wrong things.

Celine:
I had worked for this old man and once he told me that he had spent his whole life thinking about his career and his work. And he was fifty-two and it suddenly struck him that he had never really given anything of himself. His life was for no one and nothing. He was almost crying saying that.

Jesse:
I don't know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that's what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I'll just be glad when something nice happens.

Jesse:
You know what's the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? Is when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they're thinking of you. You know, you'd like to think you're both in all this pain but they're just like 'Hey, I'm glad you're gone'.

Jesse:
There's these breeds of monkeys, right, and all they do is have sex, all the time, you know? And they turn out to be the least violent, the most peaceful, the most happy, you know? So maybe fooling around isn't so bad.

Celine:
Are you talking about monkeys?

Jesse:
Yes I'm talking about monkeys.

Celine:
Ah, I thought so...

Celine:
Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?

Jesse:
Isn't everything we do in life, a way to be loved a little more?

Celine:
But then the morning comes, and we turn back into pumpkins, right?

Celine:
Well, who says relationships have to last forever?

Jesse:
Alright, I have an admittedly insane idea, but if I don't ask you this it's just, uh, you know, it's gonna haunt me the rest of my life

Celine:
What?

Jesse:
Um... I want to keep talking to you, y'know. I have no idea what your situation is, but, uh, but I feel like we have some kind of, uh, connection. Right?

Celine:
Yeah, me too.

Jesse:
Yeah, right, well, great. So listen, so here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna, and come check out the capital.

Celine:
What?

Jesse:
Come on. It'll be fun. Come on.

Celine:
What would we do?

Jesse:
Umm, I don't know. All I know is I have to catch an Austrian Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 9:30 and I don't really have enough money for a hotel, so I was just going to walk around, and it would be a lot more fun if you came with me. And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you know, you just get on the next train. Alright, alright. Think of it like this: jump ahead, ten, twenty years, okay, and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have, y'know. You start to blame your husband. You start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you'd picked up with one of them, right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me y'know, so think of this as time travel, from then, to now, to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big a loser as he is, totally unmotivated, totally boring, and, uh, you made the right choice, and you're really happy.

Celine:
Let me get my bag.

Celine:
You know, I've been wondering lately. Do you know anyone who's in a happy relationship?

Jesse:
Uh, yeah, sure. I know happy couples. But I think they lie to each other.

Celine:
Hmf. Yeah. People can lead their life as a lie. My grandmother, she was married to this man, and I always thought she had a very simple, uncomplicated love life. But she just confessed to me that she spent her whole life dreaming about another man she was always in love with. She just accepted her fate. It's so sad.

Jesse:
I guarantee you, it was better that way. If she'd ever got to know him, I'm sure he would have disappointed her eventually.

Celine:
How do you know? You don't know them.

Jesse:
Yeah, I know, I know. It's just, people have these romantic projections they put on everything. That's not based on any kind of reality.

Jesse:
Do you believe in reincarnation?

Celine:
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.

Jesse:
Yeah, right. Well, most people, you know, a lot of people talk about past lives and things like that, you know? And even if they don't believe it in some specific way, you know, people have some kind of notion of an eternal soul, right?

Celine:
Yeah.

Jesse:
OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's, like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking...I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?

Celine:
I don't know. Wait a minute, I'm not sure...I don't...

Jesse:
Yeah, hang on, hang on. It's a, it's a totally scattered thought. It...which is kind of why it makes sense.

Jesse:
I feel like this is, uh, some dream world we're in, y'know.

Celine:
Yeah, it's so weird. It's like our time together is just ours. It's our own creation. It must be like I'm in your dream, and you in mine, or something.

Jesse:
And what's so cool is that this whole evening, all our time together, shouldn't officially be happening.

Celine:
Yeah, I know. Maybe that's why this feels so otherworldly.

Jesse:
This friend of mine had a kid, and it was a home birth, so he was there helping out and everything. And he said at that profound moment of birth, he was watching this child, experiencing life for the first time, I mean, trying to take its first breath... all he could think about was that he was looking at something that was gonna die someday. He just couldn't get it out of his head. And I think that's so true, I mean, all - everything is so finite. But don't you think that that's what, makes our time, at specific moments, so important?

Celine:
Yeah, I know. It's the same for us, tonight, though. After tomorrow morning, we're probably never going to see each other again, right? We, maybe we should try something different. I mean, it's no so bad if tonight is our only night, right? People always exchange phone numbers, addresses, they end up writing once, calling each other once or twice...

Jesse:
Right. Fizzles out. Yeah, I mean, I don't want that. I hate that.

Celine:
I hate that too, y'know.

Jesse:
Why do you think everybody thinks relationships are supposed to last forever anyway?

Celine:
Yeah, why? It's stupid.

Celine:
I don't think we should sleep together. I mean, I want to, but since we're never gonna see each other again, it will make me feel bad. I'll wonder who else you're with. I'll miss you. [Pause] I know. It's not very adult. Maybe it's a female thing. I can't help it.

Jesse:
Let's see each other again.

Poet:
???????

Celine:
?????????????????

Poet:
??????????????

Celine:
??

Poet:
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Celine:
???

Jesse:
???

Poet:
???????

Celine:
???????

Jesse:
??????? ???“?????”????????

Poet:
??????????

Jesse:
?

Celine:
???

Jesse:
????????????????

Celine:
??????“???????????”?

Jesse:
?????????????????????

Celine:
???????????? ?????????????????????????????

Jesse:
???????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Celine:
??????????????????????????

Jesse:
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Celine:
????????????????

Jesse:
?????

Poet:
????

Jesse:
??????????????

Celine:
??????????????????

Poet:
??? ?????? ????? ?????????????????????? ?????????????????? ——????? ??????? ??????? ????????????? ????????? ???????????? ????? ?????? ??????????? ???? ????? ??????? ??????? ???????????

How great technology is, it saves us a lot of time but what good is saved time if nobody uses it? It just turns into more busy work.

Jesse:
You know what drives me crazy? It's all these people talking about how great technology is, and how it saves all this time. But, what good is saved time, if nobody uses it? If it just turns into more busy work. You never hear somebody say, "With the time I've saved by using my word processor, I'm gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out". I mean, you never hear that.

Jesse:
I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. It's just usually it's myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, it's just they are sick to death of being around themselves. Let's say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it's made me feel like I'm somebody else.

Celine:
I always feel this pressure of being a strong and independent icon of womanhood, and without making it look my whole life is revolving around some guy. But loving someone, and being loved means so much to me. We always make fun of it and stuff. But isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?

Celine:
When you talked earlier about after a few years how a couple would begin to hate each other by anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms-I think it would be the opposite for me. I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone-the way he's going to part his hair, which shirt he's going to wear that day, knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love.