Before Sunrise

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,

Before Sunrise, CC BY-SA 4.0

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.

Before Sunrise, CC BY-SA 4.0

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 scattere

Before Sunrise, CC BY-SA 4.0

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.

Before Sunrise, CC BY-SA 4.0

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 tha

Before Sunrise, CC BY-SA 4.0

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.

Before Sunrise, CC BY-SA 4.0