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Films

Before Sunset

Our philosophical film guru Thomas Wartenberg is charmed by Before Sunset but thinks it fumbles an opportunity to examine one of the genuine philosophical problems of growing older.

Going to the movies is, for most of us, an escape from real life. We want to experience a world that is really different from our daily lives, that has an excitement or charge that seems missing from our quotidian routines. Hence the appeal of superheroes, adventure films, even melodramas, for each in its own way heightens an aspect of our lives that seems dreary in the living of it but exciting when placed in high relief.

I was therefore surprised to find myself charmed by Richard Linklater’s recent film, Before Sunset, for the film seems very much a slice of life not all that different from that which most of us live. This is true not so much of the plot, but of the texture of what we witness on the screen.

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