Hasitha Fernando looks at the story behind Before Sunrise as the film celebrates its 30th anniversary…
Richard Linklater was one of the most talented and successful filmmakers to emerge during the American independent film renaissance period of the ‘90s. A self-taught writer-director by nature Linklater played an instrumental role in establishing the movie scene of Austin, Texas and spearheading the indie-film movement with such efforts as Slacker and Dazed and Confused.
Before Sunrise is considered one of Linklater’s beloved efforts which not only brought the director greater recognition as an up-and-coming talented but also launched the careers of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. As the movie celebrates its 30th anniversary we look back at the making of the masterful romantic drama….
The film’s story was inspired by two real-life incidents
Before Sunrise is a bittersweet exploration of chance encounters and their impacts on our lives. As such, the premise of the film too was inspired by real-life incidents which befell both the director and writer. During one of his sojourns Richard Linklater, the writer-director of Before Sunrise, met a woman named Amy Lehrhaupt at a toy store in Philadelphia in 1989. The couple walked around the city together, conversing on various topics deep into the night. After they parted Linklater kept in touch with Amy for a short period, until all contact with the individual was lost. It was two decades later that Linklater found out that Amy had died in a road traffic accident before the film’s release in 1995.
The co-writer of Before Sunrise, Kim Krizan also had a similar encounter with a Norwegian man she met while travelling to Paris. Krizan and the gentleman also wandered around the city all night before parting ways. During an interview Krizan revealed that she never reconnected with the Norwegian man but its abundantly obvious that both encounters certainly left a lasting impression on the creatives and their respective careers.
The screenplay was completed in just eleven days
In the original draft written by Richard Linklater, the two people featured in the story as well as the city where they spend time together were kept vague by design. However, Linklater soon realized that since there were so much dialogue between a man and a woman it was important to have a good female co-write on board to craft the dialogue as well. For said task, Linklater chose Kim Krizan whom he’d collaborated previously with on Slacker and Dazed and Confused.
The pair first discussed the concept of the movie and the characters before working out an outline for the story. Linklater wanted to explore the “relationship side of life and discover two people who had complete anonymity and try to find out who they really were” and wanted to put the two leads in a foreign country because “when you’re traveling, you’re much more open to experiences outside your usual realm”. The collaboration between Linklater and Krizan proved to be a fruitful one as the duo completed the shooting script within just eleven days.
Richard Linklater took an immediate liking to Julie Delpy
At age fourteen Julie Delpy was discovered by film director Jean-Luc Goddard who cast her in the French crime film Detective in 1985. She later appeared in several Hollywood and European film productions such as Europa Europa, Voyager, The Three Musketeers, Killing Zoe and Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy which made her an international celebrity. But it was with Before Sunrise the talented actress gained a wider recognition, starring opposite Ethan Hawke.
Linklater had trouble finding the right actors to play the roles of Jesse and Céline, spending over nine months casting the film. But when he met Delpy he immediately liked her personality and considered her one of the frontrunners for the role prior to casting. Other actresses who auditioned for Delpy’s role include Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow.
Before Sunrise was the start of a rewarding relationship between Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater
After making his feature film debut opposite River Phoenix on Joe Dante’s sci-fi fantasy flick Explorers in 1985, Ethan Hawke made waves in Peter Weir’s critically acclaimed coming-of-age drama Dead Poets Society. 1991’s White Fang, an adaptation of Jack London’s novel of the same name, brought about his first leading role whilst the Generation X drama Reality Bites afforded Hawke the opportunity to flex his acting chops. It was during this time period that the young actor met with Linklater eager to take on the lead role in Before Sunrise. However, during their first meeting the filmmaker thought that Hawke was too young and therefore didn’t offer him the part, but after setting Hawke at a play in New York City he reconsidered and talked to the performer.
After he got Hawke and Delpy to do a final reading, Linklater realized that the two actors were simply perfect for their respective roles. Before Sunrise ended up being the first of the 10 collaborations between Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater, and so far it had been a very rewarding relationship for both with Hawke receiving two Academy Awards nominations for his writing contributions for Before Sunset and Before Midnight, and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for 2014’s Boyhood. Linklater too received Oscar nominations in the aforementioned three films which Hawke was part of.
Issues regarding authorship proved to be problematic
Both Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy worked closely with Richard Linklater and co-writer Kim Krizan to craft the dialogue featured in the film. So much so, that Delpy even brought up this point in recent interviews and expressed her frustration about not being credited for her contribution to the script of Before Sunrise. Although Krizan refuted Delpy’s assertions, the two actors went on to receive writing credits for the sequels Before Sunset and Before Midnight, which led to both being nominated for two WGA Awards as well as two Academy Awards.
There are numerous references to James Joyce and his novel Ulysses
There are many references to James Joyce and his acclaimed novel Ulysses present all over Before Sunrise. Both stories transpire on June 16th and run into the early hour of the day following and involve a journey that takes place around a single city – Dublin in the book Ulysses and Vienna in Richard Linklater’s film. Jesse’s real name in the movie is James – which is Joyce’s first name – and similar to the author, Jesse too spends a long time wandering in the cities of Europe instead of going back home. Both narratives also feature a visit to a graveyard.
The lead characters make a cameo appearance in Waking Life
Hawke and Delpy’s characters make a cameo appearance in another one of Richard Linklater’s films named Waking Life. The movie is a rotoscope animated flick that follows a young man in a persistent lucid-dream like state where he encounters different people and engage in thought provoking discussions about dreams, consciousness, life, existence and other philosophical mysteries. In one of the vignettes featured in Waking Life we see both Jesse and Céline musing about the perplexing nature of dream time which more or less makes Waking Life the pair’s fourth appearance in the movie apart from the Before trilogy.
Box office success, rave reviews & the launch of critically acclaimed trilogy
Before Sunrise was entered into the 45th Berlin International Film Festival where Linklater won the Silver Bear for Best Director. It then had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 1995, and went on to gross $22.5 million at the worldwide box-office, which was nine times its production budget of $2.5 million. As of writing the movie boasts a perfect 100% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The websites critic consensus reads as follows, saying, “Thought-provoking and beautifully filmed, Before Sunrise is an intelligent, unabashedly romantic look at modern love, led by marvelously natural performances from Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.”
Acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert showered praise on the effort and describing Delpy as “ravishingly beautiful and, more important, warm and matter-of-fact, speaking English so well the screenplay has to explain it (she spent some time in the States)”. The movies exploration of the themes of self-fulfilment and self-discovery were applauded by both audiences and film critics, which led to it appearing in multiple film list compilations such as Entertainment Weekly’s Top 25 Modern Romances and The Guardian’s Best Romantic Films of all time.
The critical and commercial success of Before Sunrise prompted Linklater, Krizan, Hawke and Delpy to revisit the characters which led to the production of its sequels – Before Sunset released in 2004 and Before Midnight in 2013. As the stunning, dialogue-driven romantic drama celebrates its 30th anniversary now is a good a time as any to check out the film and appreciate its simplistic beauty and heart-touching.
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Hasitha Fernando is a part-time medical practitioner and full-time cinephile. Follow him on Twitter via @DoctorCinephile for regular updates on the world of entertainment.
