To Be in the Moment: On (Almost) Not Noticing Time Passing in Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater 1995)

Abstract

There is the potential for paradox in many uses of the long take in fiction filmmaking. While the device has the capacity to offer viewers a particularly credible dramatisation of uninterrupted fictional “reality,” if a long take’s duration becomes tangible it may also remind us forcefully of technique at the expense of absorption in the dramatic action. This chapter examines a particular long take in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) and argues that the shot finds various ways of discouraging our conscious awareness of its duration as a shot. It is further argued that, if the paradox of the long take nonetheless remains relevant here, Linklater exploits it to encourage awareness not of technique, but of the finite duration of this moment for this couple.