Before Sunrise

Do you have any idea what they were arguing about?

D-Do you speak English?

Yeah. No, I'm sorry. My German is not very good.

Have you heard that as couples get older, they lose their ability to hear each other?

No.

Well, supposedly, men lose their ability to hear higher-pitched sounds.

And women eventually lose hearing on the low end.

- I guess they sort of nullify each other. - I guess.

Nature's way of allowing couples to grow old together without killing each other.

What are you reading?

Ah, yeah.

- How about you? - Um...

- Mmm. (chuckles) - Hmm.

Look, I was thinking about going to the lounge car sometime soon.

- Would you like to come with me? - Yeah.

Okay.

So how do you speak such good English?

I went to school for a summer in Los Angeles.

- Yeah? - It's fine here?

Yeah, this is good.

Then I spent some time in London.

Uh, well...

How do you speak such good English?

Me? I'm American.

- You're American? - Yeah.

- Are you sure? - Yeah.

No, I'm joking.

I knew you were American. And of course, you don't speak any other language, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, I get it.

So I'm the crude, dumb, vulgar American

who doesn't speak any other languages, who has no culture, right?

But I tried.

I took French for four years in high school.

When I first got to Paris, I stood in line at the Metro station,

I was practicing — Une billet, s'il vous plaît.

- Une billet, s'il vous plaît. - Un billet.

Un, whatever — Un — Un —

Un billet, s'il vous plait. Un billet, s'il vous plait.

And I get up there and I look at this woman and my mind goes completely blank.

And I start saying, "Ah, listen, I need a ticket to get to, um —" You know.

So, anyway. Um —

So where are you headed?

Well, back to Paris. My classes start next week.

- You're still in school? Where do you go? - Yeah. La Sorbonne, you know?

Sure.

- Are you coming from Budapest? - Yeah, I was visiting my grandmother.

Ah. How is she?

She — She's okay.

- She's all right? - She's fine, yeah.

- How about you? Where are you going? - I'm going to Vienna.

- Vienna? What's there? - I have no idea. I'm flying out of there tomorrow.

- Ah. You're on holiday? - Uh...

- Uh, I don't really know what I'm on. - Okay.

I'm just traveling around. I've been riding the trains the past two, three weeks.

Mm-hmm. You were visiting friends or just on your own?

- Yeah. I had a friend in Madrid, but, um — - Madrid? That's nice.

Yeah, I got one of those Eurail passes, is what I did.

That's great.

So, has this trip around Europe been good for you?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's been, um — It sucked.

- You know? - What?

- (laughing) No, it's — It isn't — - (laughing)

It's had its, um — Well, I'll tell you.

Sitting, you know, for weeks on end, looking out the window

has actually been kinda great.

What do you mean?

Well, uh, you know, for inst —

You have ideas that you ordinarily wouldn't have.

- What kind of ideas? - You wanna hear one?

- Yeah, tell me. - All right.

- Uh, I have this idea, okay? - Mm-hmm.

For a television show. Some friends of mine are these cable access producers.

Do you know what that is, cable acc...

Anybody can produce a show real cheap, and they have to put it on. Right?

I have this idea for this show that would last 24 hours a day, for a year straight, right?

What you do is you get 365 people

from cities all over the world

to do these 24-hour documents of real time,

capturing life as it's lived.

You know, it would start with a guy waking up in the morning

and, uh, you know, taking a long shower,

um, eating a little breakfast, making a little coffee,

you know, and, uh, reading the paper.

Wait, wait, all those mundane, boring things

everybody has to do every day of their fucking life?

I was gonna say "the poetry of day-to-day life."

But you say it the way you say it, I'll say it the way I say it.

- Who's gonna want to watch this? - But think about it like this —

Why is it that a dog sleeping in the sun is so beautiful?

You know? It is. It's beautiful.

But a guy standing at a bank machine, trying to take some money out,

looks like a complete moron.

So it's like a National Geographic program, but on people.

- Yeah. - Hmm.

- What do you think? - I can — I can see it —

Like 24 boring hours. Sorry.

And, like, a three-minute sex scene where he falls asleep right after, no?

Yeah! You know —

- I mean, that would be a great episode. - Yeah.

- People would talk about that episode. - (laughing)

You and your friends could do one in Paris if you wanted to.

Oh, sure.

The key — The thing that kinda haunts me is, uh — is the distribution.

Getting these tapes from town to town, city to city, so that it would play continuously.

'Cause it'd have to play all the time or else it just wouldn't work.

Thank you.

Thanks.

You know what? They're not service-oriented.

Just an observation about Europe.

My parents have never really spoken of the possibility of my falling in love

or getting married or having children.

Even as a little girl,

they wanted me to think as a future career as a, you know, interior designer

or lawyer or something like that.

I'd say to my Dad, "I want to be a writer," and he'd say, "Journalist."

I'd say I wanted to have a refuge for stray cats and he'd say, "Veterinarian."

I'd say I wanted to be an actress and he'd say, "TV newscaster."

It was this constant conversion of my fanciful ambition

into these practical, moneymaking ventures.

Mmm.

I always had a pretty good bullshit detector when I was a kid.

I always knew when they were lying to me, you know?

By the time I was in high school,

I was dead set on listening to what everybody thought I should be doing with my life

and just kinda... doing the opposite.

Nobody was ever mean about it.

It's just I could never get very excited about other people's ambitions for my life.

Hmm. But you know what?

If your parents never really fully contradict you about anything

- and are basically nice and supportive — - Right.

it makes it even harder to officially complain.

You know, even when they're wrong.

It's this passive-aggressive shit. You know what I mean? It's...

I hate it.

- I really hate it. - (chuckling)

Well, you know, despite all that kind of bullshit that comes along with it,

I remember childhood as this...

you know, this magical time.

I do.

I remember when, uh, my mother first told me about death.

My great-grandmother had just died,

and my whole family had just visited them in Florida.

I was about three, three and a half years old.

Anyway, I was in the backyard, playing,

and my sister had just taught me

how to take the garden hose and do it in such a way that,

uh, it sprayed into the sun and it would make a rainbow.

Right?

So I was doing that,

and through the mist, I could see my grandmother.

You know? And she was just standing there, smiling at me.

And, uh, I held it there for a long time

and I looked at her, and then finally I-I let go of the nozzle.

You know? And then I dropped the hose.

And she disappeared.

So I run back inside and I tell my parents.

And they, uh, sit me down and give me this big rap

on how, when people die, you never see them again and how I'd imagined it.

But I knew what I'd seen.

I was just glad that I saw it. I've never seen anything like that since.

But I don't know.

It just kinda let me know how ambiguous everything was.

You know? Even death.

You're really lucky you can have this attitude toward death.

I think I'm afraid of death 24 hours a day.

I swear.

That's why I'm in a train right now. I could have flown to Paris, but I'm too scared.

- Oh, come on. - I can't help it. I can't help it.

I know the statistics say "na na na," it's safer. Whatever.

When I'm in a plane, I can see it. I can see the explosion.

- I can see me falling through the clouds. - (imitates explosion)

And I'm so scared of those few seconds of consciousness before you're gonna die.

You know, when you know for sure you're gonna die?

I can't stop thinking that way.

- It's — It's exhausting. - Yeah, I bet.

Really exhausting.

- I think this is Vienna. - Yeah.

- You get off here, no? - Yeah. What a drag.

I wish I had met you earlier. I really like talking to you.

Yeah, me too. (laughs)

It was really nice talking to you.

I have an admittedly insane idea, but if I don't ask you this,

it's gonna haunt me the rest of my life.

What?

Um... I want to keep talking to you. I have no idea what your situation is.

But, uh... But I feel like we have some kind of a connection, right?

- Yeah, me too. - Yeah, right. Well, great.

So you should get off the train with me here in Vienna and come check out the town.

- What? - Come on. It'll be fun. Come on.

- What would we do? - 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 have enough money for a hotel, so I was just gonna walk around,

and it'd be a lot more fun if you came with me.

And if I turn out to be some kind of psycho, you just get on the next train.

All right, think of it like this. Um...

Uh, jump ahead ten, 20 years. Okay? And you're married.

Only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have.

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 picked up with one of them, right?