The End of the Affair

Two years after the sudden end of his affair with Sarah, Maurice bumps into her husband, Henry, who confides in him about his wife's possible infidelity. Driven by the same jealousy that plagued him during their affair, Maurice poses as Sarah's husband and hires a private detective to follow her and find out what she's doing. As his investigators probe Sarah's personal life, Maurice remembers back to his affair.

Having seen the 1950's version of this book, I was interested to see a version that didn't have to worry about the heavy censorship of that period. Funnily though, it is not the nudity, passion or sex that adds to this version of the story; rather it is the ability of the film to show the strong feeling and emotion between the characters. The plot is pretty true to the book and follows the same turns that are ultimately quite touching (even if their reliance on honour and promises to god seem out dated today). The film manages to evoke sympathy, pity and dislike for each of the three main characters - each is a victim here and the film allows us to see that and feel for each of them regardless of the rights and wrongs of their respective situations.

It is difficult to describe but the film is very much of the period; it is very reserved and honourable considering the material, but yet it is deeply emotional and involving. The only sticking point is the plot's reliance on Sarah's prayer; as I said, it seems difficult to accept in this age that this would have been held to - ironically the 50's version was more acceptable for some reason; maybe because I saw them having sex in this film, maybe then I found it harder to accept a `sinner's prayer' as it were. Besides this, it still does work well and is quite tragic as a love story - this is not a romantic date movie sort of thing!

The main reason I was able to buy into the heart of the emotion was the performances. Fiennes is so perfectly English in the role; he is restrained yet bursting with emotion. He does a wonderful job of having his character eat away at himself with jealousy without ever seeming pathetic. Conversely Rea does a good job of making his character pathetic but still very much keeping the sympathy of the audience. The fact that I get to see Moore in the buff (again!) is not a boost to this film, however her performance is. She is good in the role (better and freer than the 50's actress) even if I didn't feel she was as good as Rea and Fiennes - maybe because her character is less expressive and, simply, a `good' person: I can only assume Greene was unable to look down on his lover even after the end of the affair.

Overall this film has a few sticking points but it is a wonderful version of Greene's book of the same name. Much was made of the nudity and such, but it is the rawer emotion of this telling that makes it work well. The script puts them on the screen and the cast do well to bring them out as complex as they are in real life.

Love and the spiritual (i.e. inner) life have rarely been better portrayed! Graham Greene's novel has been translated to cinematic imagery with an almost religious devotion. It isn't easy to make profound and meaningful experience so immediate and felt as this film does. Watching it on video...a second viewing...I was even more deeply moved than the first time around.

Julianne Moore, very much on the big screen these days (and for good reason), gives another of her splendid performances, this time as Sarah Miles, a middle-class English woman, married to a good, but dull man who takes her for granted. Her encounter with Maurice Bendrix (played to a T by the consummate actor, Ralph Fiennes) is electric and sets in motion an affair of deep consequence...for all three people involved. Stephan Rea as Henry Miles, Sarah's husband, trapped in his desire, but inability to fulfill the emotional and sexual needs of his much-loved wife, is another convincing and touching portrayal.

The spiritual aspects expressed in the film, reflect the life-long struggle of Grahame between his Catholicism and his doubts. The deep pulls of each character toward both personal and impersonal love give the film a dimension and an honesty that reward the "participant" (for that's how potent the film is) with an indelible human experience.

To Neil Jordan, the director, my wholehearted gratitude for his sensitive, nuanced presentation of this beautiful film.

Warning! This review is unabashedly sentimental.

I first saw this film in the midst of the strongest love affair of my life and thought it was a beautiful love story, with beautiful actors and beautiful music. I loved it because I was in love and it reinforced all those wonderful feelings.

Then, almost masochistically, I rented it after the break-up of that same four year long romance and I loved it then as well for entirely opposing reasons. I could feel the bitterness of how cruel love can be when it's been taken away. Maurice Bendrix (sp?) became my sympathetic friend. I could feel why he pulled his hand away at the table -- too painful and too dangerous. Whereas when I saw it the first time, I just thought, "That cold b*stard! Why does he want to hurt her?" I felt his frustration at trying to slay a beast without a face. He didn't hate anyone or anything except his own awareness of the realities of love.

The book and this successful cinematic adaptation paint the whole picture... 360 degrees. And I think it works from all the different perspectives. Love is the most wonderful emotion but it can also carry as much danger along with it as hate can. And there's no way to completely be in love, your guard let completely down, without risking your neck. If Bendrix could do it all again, would he do anything differently? Would he have stopped himself from falling in love with Sarah? Could he have stopped himself?

I still appreciated many of the same things as I did the first time -- the acting of the leads and the strong supporting cast, the warm beautiful interior shots, the way the plot untwists ... but other things came to forefront on second viewing that slipped by the first time -- Maurice's little flashbacks on the stairway (god, that's just how it is) and the music! It seemed so benignly beautiful the first time I saw it, but it became almost too painfully intrusive the second time.

Maybe I'll watch it again when I get a more neutral perspective on the whole matter. I wonder if we ever have that when it comes to love.

One of the great joys in movie watching lies in stumbling across films that, by their very nature, should be nothing more than clichéd, hackneyed versions of stories we have seen a thousand times before yet, somehow, through the insightfulness of their creators, manage to illuminate those tales in ways that are wholly new and unexpected. Such is the case with Neil Jordan's `The End of the Affair,' a film that in its bare boned outlining would promise to be nothing more than a conventional, three-handkerchief weepie centered around the hoary issue of romantic infidelity, but which emerges, instead, as a beautiful and moving meditation on the overwhelming force jealousy, love, commitment and passion can exert on our lives.

Ralph Fiennes stars as Maurice Bendrix, a British writer living in 1940's London, who has an affair with Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore), the wife of Maurice's friend, Henry (Stephen Rea). Based on a Graham Greene novel, the film achieves far greater intellectual and emotional depth than this skeletal outline would indicate. Part of the success rests in the fact that both the original author and the adapter, writer/director Neil Jordan, have devised a multi-level scenario that utilizes a number of narrative techniques as the means of revealing crucial information to the audience regarding both the plot and the characters. For instance, the film travels fluidly back and forth in time, spanning the decade of the 1940's, from the initial meeting between Bendrix and Sarah in 1939, through the horrendous bombings of London during World War II to the `present' time of the post-war British world. This allows the authors to reveal the details of the affair slowly, enhanced by the even more striking technique of having the events viewed from the entirely different viewpoints of the two main characters involved. `Rashomon' – like, we first see the affair through the prism of Bendrix's limited perspective, only to discover, after he has confiscated Sarah's diary, that he (and consequently we) have been utterly mistaken as to the personal attributes and moral quality of Sarah all along. Thus, as an added irony, Bendrix discovers that he has been obsessing over a woman he `loves' but, in reality, knows little about.

The authors also enhance the depth of the story through their examination of TWO men struggling with their overwhelming jealousy for the same woman and the complex inter-relationships that are set up as a result. In fact, the chief distinction of this film is the way it manages to lay bare the souls of all three of these fascinating characters, making them complex, enigmatic and three-dimensional human beings with which, in their universality, we can all identify. Bendrix struggles with his raging romantic passions, his obsessive jealousy for the woman he can't possess and his lack of belief in God, the last of which faces its ultimate challenge at the end. Sarah struggles with the lack of passion she finds in the man she has married but cannot love as more than a friend, juxtaposed to the intense love she feels for this man she knows she can never fully have. In addition, she finds herself strangely faithful, if not to the two men in her life, at least to two crucial commitments (one to her wedding vows and one to God) yet unable to fully understand why. Henry struggles with his inadequacies as a lover and the strange possessiveness that nevertheless holds sway over him. Even the minor characters are fascinating. Particularly intriguing is the private investigator who becomes strangely enmeshed in the entire business as both Bendrix and Henry set him out to record Sarah's activities and whereabouts, a man full of compassion for the people whom he is, by the nature of his profession, supposed to view from a position of coldhearted objectivity. (One plot flaw does, however, show up here: why would this man, whose job it is to spy on unsuspecting people for his clients, employ a boy to help him who sports a very distinctive birthmark on one side of his face?).

`The End of the Affair' would not be the noteworthy triumph it is without the stellar, subtly nuanced performances of its three main stars. In addition, as director, Jordan, especially in the second half, achieves a lyricism rare in modern filmmaking. Through a fluidly gliding camera and a mesmerizing musical score, Jordan lifts the film almost to the level of cinematic poetry as we sit transfixed by the emotional richness and romantic purity of the experience. `The End of the Affair' takes its place alongside `Brief Encounter' and `Two For the Road' as one of the very best studies of a romantic relationship ever put on film.

Adultery in and of itself does not necessarily make good drama. Sometimes, it can make good farce, I suppose, but as far as drama is concerned, the best way to handle a love triangle is to tell the story backwards. Neil Jordan's adaptation of The End of the Affair does, in some sense, attempt to tell the story sideways, and is occasionally interesting as a question of, `Where am I now – in their idyllic past or the grim future?'

The opening credits of the film are quite reassuring. Neil Jordan has always been a superb craftsman, and very often a strong storyteller.

For the first ten minutes, I thought I was in for a treat. The camera drifts over the belongings of the protagonist, Bendix (Ralph Fiennes) and then settles in on him typing his novel. `This is a diary of hate,' he begins, and I smiled, knowing that he was going to be the laconic, smart but silly everyman akin to Joseph Cotton in `The Third Man', the Graham Greene protagonist, tough yet brittle, with a wise acre mouth but deep wells of insecurity underneath.

Fiennes and Moore flirt at a party, and talk about the characters in the book he is going to write. This seems to be the most interesting part of their relationship – the attraction stage. Once they get into the affair, which is steamy and highly charged sexually, I promptly lost interest in the movie.

See, there's really not much interest in watching people who are having an affair on film. Perhaps the Graham Greene novel handled this in a poetic way (and the dialogue sounds very much like prose), but onscreen it plays itself out as a somewhat predictable romance which comes to its end. See, it turns into a love triangle between Fiennes, Moore and – well – the Holy Ghost. An incident which caused The End of the Affair brought about Moore's complex relationship with God.

This leads to the movie's major problem, which is that I never felt the "Presence of God" in this film as a character. `Breaking the Waves' had me convinced that God was a guiding force in Beth's life, and was always there. In this film, the miracles feel like plot points.

Perhaps God is underdeveloped as a character because Moore (though excellent) is really given a somewhat limited role. She remains in the background, in a way – a mystery. Fiennes and Rea come through clearer as three dimensional characters. We are never really given insight into what Moore feels – she's always being observed by someone else, be it Fiennes, the private detective he hires, or Jordan's camera. She seems to be a product of the Male Gaze. (Emily Watson was, too, but that was part of the point in `Breaking the Waves' and never flinched from the disturbing aspects of that.)

I spent a good deal of time squirming in my seat, fairly bored by the romance and the ramifications of this affair. However, there was a subplot which really worked. Ian Hart plays the befuddled and lovable detective who is trailing Moore, who strikes up a friendship with Fiennes. He's very by the books, but not a particularly good judge of character.He's smart enough to get it done though, and to realize that his son (who follows him everywhere in training) will be an even better detective than he is.

First of all, the father and son (a little kid) detective team is simply adorable and comic – a welcome change from the heaviness of the rest of the story. The little kid gets our sympathy not for being a cute tyke but because he's a clever sot and a likable joe, like his old man. He has a huge purple birthmark on his face which he's sensitive about, but otherwise seems happy-go-lucky. He becomes perhaps the best, most moving thing about the movie, even though he disappears from most of the second half.

Interesting that the subplot manages to have more heart and soul than the central story, and even more winning is that this is where the movie finds its real miracle.