Preeta Chag

Just was browsing through Netflix and came across this one.

Started watching it and was taken aback actually.

So much conversation.

Agree that the film is made in 1995, but yet……..

Today, it is never about conversations….

No movie, no play, no book is so focussed so completely on conversations.

Today, it is about  experiences….in the fast track lane submerged in technology and speed.

This film is soft-paced actually.  Jessee (Ethan Hawkes) and Celine (Julie Delpy) meet by chance on Eurail, getting off to spend a day in Vienna, exploring the city and themselves and their relationship.

They talk (really talk) about their attitudes, their thought processes, their visions, their perceptions.

Really, who in today’s world really talks to one another?

We exchange voices, but do we really talk, do we really converse?

Director Richard Linklater has made a film which is exceptional in it’s treatment. He captures the meaning of getting to know each other well. After they both depart from one another, he shows the same place they have frequented the night before in the early morning light. Still, yet speaking. Bathed in the morning light, but  so empty.

I loved the poem the poet makes up for  them….. it is so well-written, so perfect.

It is not a film which makes you want to get up and applaud rapturously. It is a film which gently goes down into you. To think.  And to write maybe (as I am doing right now).

The film just ends on hope, uncertainty…. they will meet again or not?

It is all left to our romantic fantasies or our practical certainty.

Cannot resist adding this poem from the film