Enduring Love

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

One day,novelist and science lecturer Joe (Daniel Craig) takes his girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) out for a picnic in the beautiful English countryside.He has an ulterior motive-he means to propose to her.But then,suddenly and completely without warning,their lives are changed irrevocably forever when a red hot air balloon falls from the sky and a desperate struggle ensues to save the people on board.A man is killed and Joe is plagued with feelings of guilt and failure for sometime after.After a while,he does his best to put the incident behind him and move on with his life.But there's one person for whom doing that obviously hasn't been so easy for-fellow rescuer Jed (Rhys Ifans) who begins obsessively following Joe everywhere,leading him down a nightmare path of fear and madness.

All of the cast do exceptionally well.Craig crafts a perfect portrayal of a retiring English gent desperately ill-at-ease with the troubling situation in front of him.This is the making of a promising new English talent we are seeing here,following on from his success in the lead role in Layer Cake.Ifans,usually a comedic actor (sometimes even in films where the tone is pretty serious),here successfully starts to broaden his range with an impressively unhinged portrayal of a man unable to let go and desperately trying to make sense of the demons burning inside him.Supporting players Morton and Bill Nighy are also very good back up to these two actors who are shining their socks off.

The film has an impressive use of the camera,with inventively flashy visuals here-and-there and still shots that skillfully add to the tension of the story.This is complimented with a clever use of soundtrack that further revs up the story some notches.

Sometimes the story doesn't come together that well,and the plotting goes a bit wavey.Also,some of the dialogue and delivery can't help but feel a little uninspiring.But for the most part,Brit director Roger Michell has crafted a film that hangs together very well and proves to be very intriguing,as well as further high-lighting some fine British talent that deserves to go much further.***

(since antirealist already beat me to the first...)

Oddly, I happen to be the person who asked Michell why he chose to use a hand-held camera on Saturday, and his initial response ("Why not?") was a bit flippant, but at the same time, I'm guessing the filmmakers weren't intending to give anything other than glib answers to the puffball questions they were expecting. (When asked if they felt the film perpetuated the negative stereotype of the mentally ill being violent, director Michell dismissed the allegation out of hand before Rhys Ifans stepped in with a quick-hit one-liner about being "completely sane, but I'm feeling a bit violent about that question." That should do it for intelligent discourse at THIS Q&A, thank you...)

The camera-work is a bit distracting, not necessarily because it's hand-held but because the reason for it -- which Michell did say was to represent a first person POV -- is so obvious. In particular, there are a few scenes in which the camera sneaks around behind walls and windows to catch a better view of the characters that screams "you're being watched," which generally sums up my main concern about the film: it telegraphs almost everything.

For a psychological thriller, it isn't nearly as taut or unpredictable as it needs to be. It also lags notably between plot points, content to bleed off any steam it may have picked up from a previous scene. Part of this problem could be caused by the trailer's reliance on exposing nearly every twist in the film, and part of it could be on the film's overuse of "thriller music" that, in the cut I saw, nearly overpowered all five senses every time it appeared in the mix.

However, the acting is generally impressive, yet understated. Daniel Craig does a wonderful job at portraying the complexities of a rational man who comes unhinged in the aftermath of a bizarre accident and the resultant stalker he's burdened with. And there was at least one twist that made me jump, so all is not lost on the tension front.

Last thought: I was stunned by the film's equation of homosexuality, theology and mental illness. I'm not sure what exact conclusion it (or the book) is trying to come to, but I'm guessing the post-screening Q&A wasn't the place to bring it up...

Enduring Love is complex psychologically, and treads grounds that attempt to expose the nature of post traumatic experience, and the important issue of obsession. There's a cruel irony here, as one man's obsession upon another man, an almost incomprehensible assault that must have its true source in mental illness (rather than the tragedy that binds these characters), in turn tragically becomes an obsession for the victim, as he struggles in vain to understand this unwanted attention in a most British and gentlemanly way. It exposes to a great extent just how vulnerable social conventions can be in the way Englishmen interact with each other. I found it interesting that this nightmare may have been mitigated had the victim's de facto/bed partner (another aspect of the swirling psychologies) been just a tad more supportive. Is that the feminine side of Englishness? Grow a backbone, you find the solution, you're the man? This is the sort of movie that Uni students could write papers on and discuss for hours. It was engrossing, to be sure, but I'm an Australian and thus docked it a couple of points for being infuriating. Part of the soundtrack has a beautiful classical, pastoral melody. Other parts, those of tightened tension, are more severe. I wondered if two composers were employed for this. At its core this movie has a huge heart, is a showcase for wonderful actors, is high quality, and surely must have been one of the best and most interesting movies of its year.

A freak balloon accident in the Oxfordshire countryside involving five men and a child results in the death of an Oxford GP. One of the men is a writer-teacher called Joe (Daniel Craig) who is obsessed with the fact that love may be a science and on top of that he is finding it hard to come to terms with what happened at the accident. This is causing tension between him and his sculptor girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) and the situation is worsened when he is contacted by one of the other men in the accident. The man is a loner called Jed (Rhys Ifans), a homosexual who believes that the accident was meant to bring him and Joe together and he begins stalking him wherever he goes with ultimately dangerous results.

ENDURING LOVE adapted from a novel by Ian McEwan is a long and complex thriller, but one that never fails to grip the audience with NOTTING HILL director Roger Michell skillfully blending the mixture of themes including Joe's obsessive theories about love (which are ultimately turned upside down), the impact of the stalking and how it affects the relationship between Claire and Joe and the latter's guilt about the accident. Michell is ably assisted by a first rate cast including Daniel Craig as Joe who was brilliant in this year's British gangster blockbuster LAYER CAKE and Rhys Ifans from NOTTING HILL is splendid as the gay stalker. Samantha Morton also deserves praise as Joe's lover and it is sad to know that ENDURING LOVE isn't likely to find an audience beyond the art-houses. It is well above the quality of some of the hopelessly pretentious offerings our country has turned out in recent years like TRAUMA and THE RATCATCHER.

'Enduring Love' manages to be grip the viewers attention right from the very beginning. We are given some wonderful shots of the beautiful British landscape at the centre of which there is couple on a picnic. However a hot-air balloon appears to be on the loose and what follows is a terrible accident that effects their lives. 'Enduring Love' is visually impressive mostly due to the excellent cinematography and the background score contributing to the scenes. Penhall's writing is very good (sharp dialogues, unfolding events, well-defined characters) but in the middle it gets a bit slow-paced. The stalker subplot could have been done with less focus (that extra scene during the rolling credits wasn't necessary and the film may have been stronger without it) as it was working better as a movie about Joe and his fragile relationship with Claire. The movie is pretty much character driven and it heavily relies on the performances. Fortunately, this is where 'Enduring Love' scores high. Daniel Craig breathes into a role that seems made for him. He portrays Joe's guilt, confusion, patience and determination with amazing skill. Samantha Morton has less screen time but she is just as good while she gives a beautifully understated performance. Rhys Ifans springs a surprise in remarkably playing a homosexual stalker with Clerambault's syndrome. Bill Nighy and Susan Lynch are adequate in their tiny roles. For me 'Enduring Love' has been a strange movie watching experience but as I thought more about it, I grew to understand and appreciate it more. It does have its flaws as mentioned earlier but it's a good character study and visually interesting.