Studies of gazes and eyes are a popular subject for supercuts and video essays in general. These often focus on a particular director, multiple directors, a genre, or an actor, and how they use looks and gazes. here, film student Emma Braes chooses this same motif but focuses on a single film, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise.

Braes begins her montage in a very un-supercut-like way. An uninterrupted shot of more than a minute is not what one expects from typically fast-paced, rapidly edited supercuts. But it is an inspired opening, as it immediately makes clear what the essay’s focus will be.

The way Braes incorporates lines of dialogue that explicitly refer to gazes is very illuminating. The first one (about the Quaker wedding) even becomes something of a mission statement or manifesto for the entire film. In that single exchange, the filmmakers tell us what to pay attention to. And what to hope for: a marriage to follow all that romantic staring.