Other films might include _Moulin Rouge_, _In the Mood for Love_, _Casablanca_,
_Wings of the Dove_, _Hiroshima, mon amour_, _La Jetee_, _The Umbrellas of
Cherbourg_, _Aimee & Jaguar_ (accentuated in the final sequence), _Jules &
Jim_, _Last Year at Marienbad_, _Y tu mama tambien_...
In _Before Sunrise_, I particularly appreciate Jesse and Celine's conversation
while sharing a drink on the ferry boat: Jesse claims that "everything is so
finite, but don't you think that's what makes our time and specific moments so
important?", to which Celine replies 'Yes, I know, it's the same for us
tonight, though. After tomorrow morning, we're probably never going to see
each other again, right?"
Celine understands the end of their only night (which becomes the film's end) as
comparable to death, their time shortened and intensified by their inevitable
parting much like death cuts short our embodied time of living...and a film's
end becomes its completion.
Beyond a relationship's demise as narrative closure, you might thus consider the
innumerable romances that rely upon literal death both to close (thereby
enabling totality) and intensify the love--a pattern nicely discussed in
Jonathan Dollimore's _Death, Desire, and Loss in Western Culture_. Dollimore
focuses primarily upon literary (_Romeo and Juliet_, _Heart of Darkness_,
etc.), religious, and philosophical texts; for cinema's visual/aural
complexities and contributions to these arguments, a consideration of film's
relation to narrative time and romance becomes all the more urgent.
See also Catherine Russell's excellent _Narrative Mortality: Death, Closure,
and New Wave Cinemas_...and Benjamin's "Storyteller."
Best of luck!
Regards,
Kristi McKim
Department of Film Studies
Emory University
109 Rich Building
1602 Fishburne Drive
Atlanta, GA 30322
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