The Sense of an Ending

The movie, adapted from a slim novel by Julian Barnes, is a tale of memory, guilt and regret. At the centre of the story is Tom, a divorced man in his late 60s, who leads a life of oppressive sameness. He receives a letter from a solicitor and Tom's routine is interrupted.

From flashbacks to the 1960s, we learn he was involved with a lass called Veronica and met Adrian, a charismatic student. A thoughtless act leads to, or may not have led to, tragedy.

How much of Tom's history (shown in the flashbacks) is true and how much is a distortion of his memory, is open to question.

Meanwhile, Tom's life in the present continues. His daughter is close to giving birth which means regular meetings with his former wife. This gives Tom an opportunity to discuss the past. By staying alert and listening in to the conversations closely and watching the flashbacks carefully, clues emerge for us to discern the truth.

Six fellow film fans and I saw the movie together and met for lunch afterwards. Our interpretations differed. An indication that we'd seen an exceptional film.

There were things we agreed on: the ensemble cast was outstanding; the editing was first-rate; the music unobtrusive; and the director's touch admirable.

Various actions of the major characters and possible actions not actually shown on screen were raised and analysed with the results agreed to by some, rejected by others.

It's not a film for everyone … but for those who enjoy a movie where clues are given but interpretations are left to the viewer, this one's for you.

It's a movie that stays with you for days.

Rhitesh Batra's film 'The Sense of an Ending' is based on a Booker-prize winning novel by Julian Barnes. Oddly, I've read almost the entirity of Barnes's oevre, but nor this work, which tells of an old man suddenly reconnected to his distant past. His enthusiasm for revisiting his old life might partly be due to his present-day loneliness, and partly due to his own capacity for re-imagining his history through a lense of nostalgia and heroism (indeed, his self-justifying self-absorption goes a long way to explaining exactly why is he now alone). So he begins a journey that will take him to uncomfortable and unexpected places. But in the film, the character (played by Jim Broadbent, possibly not the optimal choice for the role) is so obviously bumptious and narcicisstic that our sense of shock is undermined; he learns things about himself (in the specific) that were (in the general) already obvious to us. Another limitation is that although the adult characters are fully formed (and the two female leads in particular are well realised), their younger selves (who appear in flashback) remain thin and weakly sketched. I still quite enjoyed the movie; but it made we want to read the book where I suspect Barnes might have managed things better.

After somewhat iffy reviews and some discouraging interviews I was really pleased by this movie. The novel has great depth and touches on weighty topics, leaving certain unresolved issues in its wake. Payne (scriptwriter) and Batra take on a very challenging job and with the help of a stellar cast they make as good an adaptation as anyone could reasonably expect. Broadbent is magnificent as the male lead and all the female ones are excellent. The cinematography is outstanding with some exterior shots that take your breath away, indeed Batra lingers on them a bit too long, though one can see why!

There is a good deal to admire. The interweaving of past and present is highly skilled, the recreation of sixties milieus authentic. The school scenes rang true - I went to an all boys grammar school in the sixties and they get it right with the exception of the swearing. Incredible as it may seem to some people, swearing was unusual fifty years ago. I loved the way the painful weekend at Chislehurst - central to the mystery - was handled.

There were a few lapses of judgement and taste but overall I would rate this as one of the best movies I have seen in the past year. It deserves awards.

Everyone is a storyteller in their own way. Some use the big screen, others a book or a painter's canvas, but most of us tell stories to ourselves. In 1967, acclaimed literary theorist Professor Frank Kermode published a seminal book called The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. He argued that we all internally write the fictions of our lives into a coherent pattern so things appear to have a logical beginning, a middle and an ending. We do this for one simple reason: to make it possible to "coexist with temporal chaos" and to "humanise the common death". This philosophical insight inspired the 2011 Julian Barnes novel of the same name that is now adapted in the film The Sense of an Ending (2017). Joining these dots help us to understand what this film is about.

The film plot is simple but the story complex. Retired divorcée Tony (Jim Broadbent) is known as a curmudgeon by his ex-wife Margaret (Harriet Walter) and daughter Suzie (Michelle Dockery). He busies himself in his tiny shop selling second-hand Leica cameras when one day a lawyer's letter arrives that reopens memories of his first love. What follows is a jigsaw of glimpses into an old man's obsessive quest for redemption as he becomes haunted by an act of spite that he believes led to the suicide of his best friend. When he renews contact with his first love Veronica (Charlotte Rampling) he must confront unresolved emotions that were buried beneath the fictions he has constructed about his life.

This slow and serious film is not for everyone. Younger people are too busy making memories to be rewriting the story of their lives. Older audiences will recognise what Tony is experiencing and empathise with his need for a 'sense of an ending'. Despite the film's stellar cast and fine acting, none of the characters are especially likable, so it is possible to leave this film disengaged with the people while having been thoroughly immersed in the story. This is a well-directed dialogue-driven film. Its multiple flashbacks capture the disjointed half recalled fragments that many of us store as life memories. Most of all, it is an introspective and insightful essay on how we make sense of our lives.

If you've ever said (or done) something to a friend and regretted it later, if you thought you knew the way things were (and found they were not that way), if you've found, as you get older, that things you thought far in your past have resurfaced, you might be as impressed with "The Sense of An Ending" as I was, watching it in an advance screening tonight.

Then, even if those things are not true for you, you might enjoy the cast and their acting, the writing, the London settings and many other things about this film. A good one.