Fine di una storia

As so often, I haven't yet read the novel this movie was based on. So again, you can't expect from me that I make a comparison between the two. But even if I had read the book I don't think I would have talked about it, because this doesn't honor the many work and inspiration that the director has put in it. It's not because he uses an existing story, that what he does with it, has to be completely the same...

Even though the largest part of the story is situated during the Second World War, it doesn't start there. We first meet the novelist Maurice Bendrix and Henry Miles, the husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, on a rainy night in London in 1946. For a reason we don't know yet, the affair between Bendrix and Sarah was abruptly ended by her, two years before, and since then they hadn't seen each other. Now Bendrix's obsession with Sarah immediately gets a new spark and out of jealousy he arranges to have her followed. That's when we learn the reason for their separation. During a bombing raid, Sarah made a bargain with God. She would sacrifice their relationship in exchange for Bendrix's life. He survived and that's why she didn't want to see him anymore. But when he reappears, she soon realizes that it will be very difficult to keep her promise to God...

When you hear in the trailer that Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore are magic together, you might believe that this is just some nice promo talk, only intended for making you buy the DVD. But for once they really didn't exaggerate. Together they lifted this movie to a higher level, although it must be said that Stephen Rea did a very fine job too. The fact that they had a very good and well-written script to work with, must have helped them too of course. Some were not pleased with what they called a couple of 'soft-porn scenes' but personally I didn't have a problem with that at all. In my opinion this only added to the rawness of the emotions.

Some will also say that this is an incredibly boring movie. Well, if you don't like or are not used to watching a movie without big action scenes, than this is absolutely true. If you are such a person, than you better leave it alone and choose something else. But when you like to see a quality product (and no I'm not going to use the title 'art'-movie because I hate that name and this certainly isn't such a movie), with believable emotions, a great story and some excellent acting performances, than this might be a movie that you definitely should give a try. I really liked what I saw and that's why I give it a 7.5/10 at least, maybe even an 8/10.

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.

This film tells the story of a wartime love affair between Maurice, a successful, cynical and rather callous novelist, and Sarah, the beautiful but neglected wife of a dull senior civil servant. She tends to believe in the supernatural, he does not, but both are spurred on by the danger of both discovery and the bombs raining down on London. Perversely, when her husband confides to Maurice his suspicion that Sarah is having an affair, Maurice hires a private detective to investigate, in effect, himself. In the end, it is God who decrees the finale, not the characters, who accommodate as best they can to their destinies.

Do we really care? This is not easy to answer. Maurice, the narrator, is a prize prick, unfeeling of others, concentrated on his misery and his work, yet obsessively jealous. Sarah provides a focus for his substantial sex drive but he does develop an affection for her. Sarah, on the other hand, clearly likes a good bonk as well, but she needs the relationship to full the void left by her husband's emotional absence, and Maurice is too self-centred to be a real soulmate. She is also quite a nice person in comparison with nasty bitter old Maurice. So yes, we are sorry for her. We have to admire Maurice for being honest enough to tell the story but there is an air of self-flagellation about it.

As a film, this is a terrific piece of work, directed by the Irish director Neil Jordan who was responsible for "The Crying Game". Greene is a very cinematic novelist - at last count there were at least 40 screen versions of his works - and Jordan has very cleverly used a present - flashback - present and then forward technique to tell the story from both Maurice's and Sarah's viewpoint. The gloom and danger of wartime London is effectively invoked but there was a bit of overkill in having it rain almost continuously from 1939 to 1945 (London has less rain days than Sydney!) It struck me early on that Ralph Fiennes was by no means inevitable in the part - I was reminded of the early Sam Neill. His character is really rather empty - a man whose only real commitments are to his work and sex. Julianne Moore, delightfully bad as Mrs Cheveley in "An Ideal Husband", and delightfully slapstick as the childish Cora in "Cookie's" Fortune", is much more sympathetic here. Stephen Rea (a Jordan favourite) as the cuckold is the most sympathetic of the lot or at least the most self-aware. He gives us a wonderful portrayal of stitched up dismay and yet it does not seem beyond the bounds of credibility that, knowing of the affair, he should invite Maurice to come and live with them towards the end.

Greeneland is a pretty bleak place, but a couple of apparent miracles brighten things up. Greene clearly thought God had a sense of humour. The novel is said to be semi-autobiographical, but the real affair Greene had with the wife of a wealthy businessman, while no doubt equally painful, did not end so melodramatically as the novel. Looking at a biography of Greene by Michael Shelden I note that Catherine Walston, whose relationship with Greene was the chief inspiration for "The End of the Affair," died in 1978, aged 62, 13 years before Greene. According to Shelden, Catherine refused to see Greene on her deathbed because she didn't want him to see how sick she was. The affair itself petered out in the early fifties, though they remained in touch. Henry Walston, it seemed, asserted himself and demanded that Catherine cut down on her contact with Greene. Greene went overseas to find danger and forget, to Vietnam and elsewhere, and these trips produced at least one more major novel, "The Quiet American." However Greene's career as a writer peaked with "The End of the Affair." His later work is interesting and readable, but never again did he reach the same emotional depths and heights.

Greene is often said to be a Catholic novelist but on the basis of this work at least he wasn't a great pitchman for the Almighty. Greene was, however, an eloquent portrayer of spiritual suffering and this aspect has been effectively brought to the screen by Neil Jordan. Perhaps it takes an Irishman to understand an English Catholic.

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.

"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.