17. Before Sunrise × Kierkegaard.

Philosophy, Loved by Cinema

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Love is born only within the choices that answer to its possibilities.

Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise is, from beginning to end, a drama of choice — a philosophical fable that renders the anxiety of existence in romantic tones. On a train, Jesse and Céline were nothing more than strangers. They could have easily passed each other by without a word. Yet Jesse’s brief invitation — “Would you like to get off with me?” — reshapes both of their worlds entirely. From that instant, what Kierkegaard once called the dizziness of possibility unfolds in the unfamiliar streets of Vienna.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the Danish philosopher often hailed as the “father of existentialism,” placed his focus not on universal truths but on individual existence — on the singularity of me, on subjective truth lived from within. For Kierkegaard, the human being is shaped through free choice, and with each choice comes an inescapable anxiety. What he called the moment (Øieblik) is not a mere slice of time, but a threshold: the point at which possibility opens and an existential decision takes place.

The film lingers on these thresholds. In the cramped booth of a vintage record store, Jesse and Céline avert their eyes, caught in two and a half minutes of silence. Yet within that silence, they explore the irresistible pull of possibility. The same is true of the hesitation before their first kiss at the amusement park. That trembling is not just youthful infatuation — it is the existential fear of laying bare one’s vulnerability to another. As Kierkegaard reminds us, possibility always carries with it both fear and trembling, but only in facing that anxiety directly can one encounter one’s truest self.

One of the great charms of Before Sunrise lies in its refusal to promise a happy ending. Jesse and Céline know that when night ends, they must return to their separate journeys. The future is uncertain; another meeting cannot be guaranteed. Yet through Kierkegaard’s lens, that very uncertainty is not a flaw but the essence of love. Love is never a finished state; it is the courage to stake everything on what is not yet — on pure possibility. The film shows us that whether a single night becomes a lifetime of love or fades into a memory, love itself is not a matter of certainty but of continual choice. What looks like chance is, in fact, born only in the decisions we make to respond to possibility.

Ultimately, Before Sunrise turns its gaze toward us. Amid the countless fleeting chances of everyday life, do we have the courage to stand at the threshold of possibility? Kierkegaard, perhaps, would have answered this way: “Love is born only in possibility, and it is won only by those who dare to seize its anxious, trembling moment.”