The End of the Affair
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Movie Reviews of The End of the Affair
Movie Review: "Goodness has so little fictional value"
Summary: 5 Stars
I love films which unfold complexities slowly, that use color with deep intention, and don't rely on words to say everything that must be said.
To fit into alloted time, I feel that you must allow a film like this to stand on its own. Many adjustments were made to the story, and what eventually emerges is, to me, even more cohesive and personal.
One thing I particularly love about The End of the Affair, is the color pallette and sharp attention to clothing. I love Sarah's red suits, her green jacket, her hair (carefully suited to the time), and the way the colors stand out, but with subtlety, from every scene that she stands in until her character begins to fade.
This movie permanently affected my aesthetic sensibilities.
The *most* affecting aspect of the movie for me however, was being able to deeply relate to the character of Sarah, as I think many people can. Most of us have our superstitions, even when we work to keep them subdued, and certainly a seemingly "miraculous experience," or great trauma (they usually go together don't they?) can bring those things to the surface.
I thought that the Bendrix and Henry dynamic that played out in the film was fascinating. It created a contrast between two ways of living really: One figure, content to live on a straight line, climbing little by little with bits of satisfaction but no passion, and the other all passion and anger and intensity. Henry, in a way, created the passion Sarah felt for Maurice. He bottled her up and placed her on a shelf where she simmered, and I think the "vulgar sex scenes" as some called them, are extraordinarily necessary if you want to understand the emotions going on. I suppose one can debate the manner in which they're filmed, but I don't think the movie would have been nearly as strong without them.
Then again, Sarah's religious devotion followed her commitment to Henry, which before the vow she seemed to have no intention of lessening, so you also see that she was more than the sensual person that she was with Maurice, she was also the practical wife. Neither was a role she was playing.
Every central character in this film, is a dichotomy, and more than that, they are wonderfully and spectacularly flawed, which certainly is the core of Graham Greene's insightful and philosophic writing.
This is a film rich in unanswerable questions, and contains brilliant use of perspective.
Movie Review: Complicated, powerful and intriguing
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Movie Review: A beautiful and intelligent love story
Summary: 5 Stars
If you're the kind of person whose idea of a good movie is an action film, and you don't care for movies where almost all the action happens inside the characters, this movie is not for you. But if what you look in the cinema its a film with a perfect cast, directed by an artist filmmaker, with a brillant screenplay, based on a novel of one of the best writers of the century: The End of the Affair is a sure bet. Based on a Graham Green's novel, The End Of the Affair was originally made in the 50s with Deborah Kerr as the unfaithfull wife and Van Johnson as the jealous lover. I confess that I saw the 90s version completelly virgin because I haven't read the book, or seen the earlier version, so with nothing to compare Neil Jordan's version, I absolutelly loved this film. Why? Let me count the ways: First the screenplay: beautiful dialogues, one liners and silences; all the characters are extraordinary and the plot is full of surprises; Second: The cast; They are perfect: Ralph Fiennes as the jealous lover is better than in The English Patient, maybe because Julianne Moore, as the enigmatic Sarah, makes believable all the passion felt for her by the men on the story(and the boy too); and I shouldn't forget the unpassionate husband(why did she married him?), the clumsy and sentimental private detective, and his marked boy, and God, who is the big antagonist of the film. Neil Jordan, always a great director, never have been better than with The End of the Affair, making a strange jewel: A beautiful and intelligent love story.Movie Review: Mature Love for a Anxious Audience
Summary: 5 Stars
In these times of youth galore and Generation X, it is indeed rare to come around and find a love story which can be labeled *mature* and have that not be an overstatement of fact. This film, while not blowing away the box office upon it's U.S. release, certainly encompasses three sensational performances, a director who truly keeps to the spirit of the written word, cinematography that plays integral part of the story itself and a score that haunts with subtle yet vibrant beauty.While no one can deny that Julianne Moore is the centerpiece of the tale as Sarah, Ralph Fiennes and Stephen Rea are also to be lauded for their interpretations of Bendrix and Henry respectively. Fiennes, in a role of quiet intensity and soft-pitched rage takes us into the psyche of Bendrix and gives us perhaps the best visual image as to what life must have been been for Graham Greene himself during the affair that marked his life. Rea as the cuckhold Henry is, as has been written a dullard through and through, but what makes his interpretation noble is the fact that he is well aware of it at every instant. It's obvious that his marriage to Sarah was at all moments a marriage of convenience that hoped for something better, but that never truly reached the pinnacle of love.
The tale begins with Bendrix's "diary of hate" and never loses that. Yes, he hates and never stops hating but as a constant, love is tempered and fed by the fuel of such fires. Ultimately, it is fate that becomes the undoing and the true end of the affair.
Movie Review: A Beautiful and Complex Film
Summary: 5 Stars
The End of the Affair
I postponed seeing this film for a very long time, for some reason thinking that it would be just another predictable and trite tale of doomed love. I was so completely wrong. The film is one of the finest that I've seen, and though it deals with the subject of doomed love, it does so with originality, grit, and realism. The film stands as a real testimony to what Neil Jordan is capable of doing in film. He takes risks as a director. (Remember 'The Crying Game?') He uses Graham Greene's wonderful novel as the basis for the screenplay, and it works beautifully.
From the first sentence of the film spoken by the main character played by Fiennes, I was hooked. As the character, a writer, types his thoughts on a piece of paper: "This is a diary of hate." This is a great lead in to a difficult story well-balanced by superb acting. And, let's not even start on Julianne Moore. What an incredible performance she gives in this film. Why the hell didn't I see this before? Why didn't she get nominated for that performance?
The best part of the film is its originality and the way the narrative shifts from the beginning in which the man tells his version of the love affair to the middle when the woman takes over and replays the same events from her vantage point. The result is superb.
See this film. You will not be disappointed.