He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.
– In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-Wai, 2000.
Let’s never come here again
“Let’s never come here again because it would never be as much fun.”
Lost in Translation (2003), Sofia Coppola
Password
Chungking Express (1994), Wong Kar-Wai
Reverberations
“Who knows how we reverberate through each other’s lives?”
This line was stuck in my head for days after I saw Before Midnight. Richard Linklater, the director of Before Midnight and the prequels Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, revealed in an interview the true inspiration of the movies. Twenty-five years ago, Linklater met a young woman named Amy Lehrhaupt and spent a night with her that he never forgot. The memories stayed with Linklater and inspired him to make Before Sunrise. Sadly, she never saw it. Unbeknownst to Linklater, Lehrhaupt died by the time that movie came out, killed in a motorcycle accident a few weeks before shooting of the movie took place.
I found myself saying the line over and over, out loud, like a silent prayer. Who knows how we reverberate through each other’s lives? I found myself thinking of the encounters I had, and the possible reverberations I made. I looked back on the people who made a mark in my heart, and almost felt the ripples in the air.