Before sunset – poetry in motion

Putting passion for action – that’s one of the lines blurted by Jesse in this poem-turned-movie that sticks to my mind. Wow this movie is so simple but so beautiful! Indeed beauties and importance lie in small things, like bringing pencils to impoverished schools in Mexico, or watching how ants pass by, as Ammu and her lover observed in God of Small Things. This movie transforms you as a participant in the relationship of two souls who struggled to keep the memory alive while simultaneously living at the present tense. But when the two met again, after nine years, memory has proved more toxic than the present and the spontaneous combustion of intensified, burning hearts cannot be controlled nor be subjected to logical interpretations! It's a love story that does away with mushy and hero-saves-the-heroine stuffs. It explores the seeming intricacies of life in cute ways – like the need to desire as opposed to liberating yourself from your desires as Buddhism preaches. Or we have innate characters, whether angst-ridden, cheerful or not. It explores fatalism without being preachy but as a possibility, when some events cannot be explained clearly, or why in heaven’s name two important events happen simultaneously you have to decide which one you will do and which will you drop instantly. And finally, it is explores the deepest contradiction in love without romanticzing it to the hilt. That is how to fit the past, which you try to relive everyday in your mind, to your present existence, when the haunting past knocks in your door and tries to become real (again). That is a mess – how to deal with your present commitments, responsibilities, etc. Good thing the movie did not attempt to answer that – and we have to explore these ourselves!