The End of the Affair

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.

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.

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.

"This is a diary of hate," is the opening line of this film, said by the main character and narrator, novelist Maurice Bendrix(Ralph Fiennes). That opening line tells you this is, or should be, a tale of passion. The novel by Graham Greene the film is based on is certainly a novel of passion, though much of it is within, and hard to dramatize in a film. But if any director could do it, surely it could be Neil Jordan, who makes films which overflow with passion(with the exception of MICHAEL COLLINS, but that was a different kind of film); even his disaster IN DREAMS was a failure of excess. And yet this film doesn't really come to life until maybe at the end.

Contrary to what one comment said, it isn't because Greene isn't relevant. Adultery will always be with us, and therefore always ripe for stories of any kind, and Greene told it in a way which is still fresh today. And Jordan makes the interesting decision to shoot the film in mostly medium shots or close-ups, rather than in panoramic wide shots, perhaps to fit the setting(London) or make you feel events are crowding the characters. But if you're going to take a microscope to your characters, you better show something, and Jordan really doesn't. Instead, he relies too much on narration and conventional storytelling(contrast this with how he adapted THE BUTCHER BOY), and until we get to hear the story from Sarah's point of view, we don't get a sense of what drives these people.

Fiennes is one of my favorite actors, but he doesn't do anything distinctive here. Only at the end does he truly come alive. Moore is also a favorite, but she too has little to work with until the story shifts to her point of view. And even when we find out about Sarah's fate, it wasn't moving enough. The ones who really come through are Rea, who not only has a note-perfect British accent, but is terrific as someone who, as he puts it, is not a lover. And Ian Hart brings some comic relief as the detective hired to follow Sarah. But this is definitely a disappointment; IN DREAMS I hated as well, but that could be dismissed as an experiment which went wrong, while this film should be the type of film Jordan excels at, but doesn't here.

This is an engrossing tale of love, passion and betrayal invloving three star-crossed lovers. Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is a man haunted by jealousy and pain over an affair he had with the wife of one of his friends, Henry Miles (Stephen Rea). The affair has been over for two years when a chance encounter with Miles takes Bendrix to his house where he once again encounters Sarah (Julianne Moore). The obsession for her returns when Henry tells him that he suspects that Sarah is having an affair. At hearing this Maurice gets jealous, thinking that he has been replaced as her paramour. What follows is a complex and tangled web of suspicion, jealousy and dolor.

This is a wonderfully complicated story that opens slowly like a flower. It is a first person narrative delivered by Bendrix and it gets more intriguing as the film progresses. The use of flashbacks is subtlety effective, where the realizations about misinterpretations come not from the dialogue, but from seeing the same scene from two perspectives. The love scenes are sensuously done and the general tone of the film is poignant and sensitive.

The film was nicely photographed with various filters to give it an old feel without losing the richness. Director Neil Jordan did a fine job of giving the film a genuine look of the period with proper English costumes from the 1940's.

Ralph Fiennes was excellent as the jealous lover. He played the character as civilized and staid with molten lava just beneath the surface. He was masterful at conveying strong emotion with a sideways glance or hand gesture without losing his composure.

Julianne Moore has added another fabulous dramatic performance to her resume as Sarah. She played the part with fatalistic passion, victimized by vortex of events she felt powerless to control.

Stephen Rea also shined as the impassive cuckold. Rea tends to be very understated in his portrayals, often too much so. But he was the perfect choice for the hapless Miles; so intellectual, withdrawn and defenseless. His phlegmatic response upon being confronted by Bendrix about their affair, showed a resigned helplessness that was both pathetic and believable.

I enjoyed this film immensely and gave it a 9/10. It is finespun yet powerful. It takes its time unfolding, so if you like pace this film might test your patience. But if you enjoy a good old fashioned steamy love triangle, this film will do nicely.