Customer Reviews

The End of the Affair [VHS]

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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 interrelationships 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; 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.

And it is with that same note of devotion, resignation, and hopeless we see the three main characters sink so beautifully into the abyss of this doomed love triangle.

As with most of writer-director Neil Jordan's work, three main figures are involved, and the struggles between the relationships of the three are the source of tension, action, and absolute watchability.

What makes the story even more devastating is the fact it is not purely fictional, but rather, based on novelist Graham Greene's own entanglement with a married couple. With World War II as the backdrop, despite the futility in the whole affair-debacle, the viewer can take some odd comfort in knowing love was still very much a part of man's driving force in such terrible times.

As Ralph Fiennes so perfectly embodies Bendrix with his flirtations of atheism and wanton lust, Julianne Moore provides us with an adultress even the most moral could secretly admire. Stephen Rea does a brilliant job of portraying the non-complaining, true and steady English gentleman in the face of embarrassment and death. Each of the three face a personal inner struggle, but the one to watch is Moore in the role of Sarah Miles. By looking at her torment, we see another love triangle present in the story, and that is the one between herself, God, and Bendrix. "I've made but two vows in my life-- one was to marry Henry, the other was to stop seeing you (Bendrix), and I'm too weak to keep either." How many times have we all been faced with such realizations of powerlessness?

The film is honest in its depictions of physical love, so spare the kids from seeing this one just yet. For the audience it was intended--adults who face the push and pull of life's choices--there is something for all of us brooding over a past choice which still needs to be "addressed."

This movie is about a love story, told to the audience through the eyes of the lover, Maurice Bendrix (played by Ralph Fiennes). Sarah, (played by Julianne Moore) is the loved one and Henri (played by Stephen Rea) is the husband.

It is true that for the first 40 minutes of this movie you sense that his is nothing else but a jealous's lovers account of their affair, and you start to wonder how it ended. The movie takes shape when you finally understand the reason for the breakup, and how Maurice reacts.

It is finally a great love story in all sense.

The movie tends to be dark but it is never slow. It moves along at a good speed so you can understand the different emotions all characters are feeling and why they act in a special way.

I tryly loved this movie. The sets and costumes and colors used all blend together to maket a very beautiful story. The actors are exceptional and not for one minute do you think they are not right for their roles.

Very good movie, excelent.

While this film did not hit me as hard (emotionally) as THE ENGLISH PATIENT, it sure gave me plenty to think about.

The cast and direction are first-rate. The story is well-told. It made me buy the novel and read it--and then wonder how much of the story really happened!

If you enjoy intelligent, challenging love stories told against historical backdrops, then check this movie out.
And be very careful what you ask God for.

Irish director Neil Jordan has made a mature movie for adults about an affair between the wife of a British diplomat and an athiestic novelist. No less a character than God Himself performs two miracles to resolve the plot. It's based on an acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel by Graham Greene told in two parts: the diary of the novelist, baffled by her ending of their affair, and the diary of the wife, explaining why she did it. Both accounts are told side by side, moving back and forth between wartime London and the postwar 1950s as the end of the affair and reason for it are revealed.

This is no ordinary adultery. It's the blitz and bombs are falling nearby when the novelist's apartment is hit during their lovemaking and she sees that he is dead. A lapsed Catholic, she promises to leave him forever if God lets him live --- just as he walks in the door. To her lover and husband, it appears she is seeing someone else and together they hire a detective to identify him. After she kisses away a boy's birthmark, they are stunned to learn their rival is God. The novelist transfers his hatred of an unknown lover to an unknown God. Jordan's few changes in the narrative actually enhance the film, one of the best screen adaptations of the oft-adapted Greene.

Jordan's casting is usually so adroit that Julianne Moore, the Chicago-born New York actress, at first seems an odd choice for the wife in this all-British cast, there being no dearth of fine English actresses. Moore gets by on sheer skill and luminosity. Ralph Fiennes, Stephen Rea and Ian Hart are pitch-perfect as the novelist, husband and detective. All four play this somber chamber piece like a string quartet. You may recall an earlier 1950s version, following publication of the book. It starred Deborah Kerr and Van Johnson (yes!), who was turned into an American reporter. Better not dwell too long on it.

Graham Greene's The End of the Affair has been for many years one of my very favorite books, so I was excited when I heard that it had been made into a movie. Hollywood, however, in recent years despises anti-heroes and could not bring itself to make a villain out of Morris, played by Ralph Fiennes, as had Greene. It also diminished the impact of the miraculous that the book brought to the reader, that obvious sense of God's presence and love that Morris so firmly rejected even when it saved his life.

This is not to say that this isn't a watchable film: it is only in the last minutes that the film destroys the beauty of Greene's original vision. Fiennes, Moore, and Stephen Lea play their parts very capably: Lea, in particular, acts very capably as the dull, but kind Henry Miles.

But as I noted before, the film removes Greene's ironic ending by making Morris too good. In the novel, Morris (who is also the narrator) is the Seducer who can see only evil in the world. Sarah Miles, on the other hand, often sees selflessness when Morris believes himself to be selfish. When his own life is saved by apparent divine intervention, Morris will not see the miracle nor does he appreciate the sacrifice that Sarah has made on his behalf. Following Sarah's death, Morris is faced with what is for him a very frustrating manifestation of God's presence in the reappearance of the once sinful Sarah as a saint who cures the sick! He continues to reject God, however. In the end, frustrated and alone, he admits that God exists and declares his hatred. "Leave me alone forever." The reader is left with the clear feeling that the joke is on Morris.

The movie softens the case against Morris. It has him bringing glasses of warm milk to the bedside of the cuckolded husband. He prays that Henry and Sarah be taken care of by God "but leave me alone forever". One gets the feeling that the producers/directors/actors had some of the following motives in mind:

* To not make Ralph Fiennes into a villain

* To avoid making a film which would be critical of people who fell in love with married people

* To avoid making a film which in any way might make Catholic teachings palatable. (For the record, I am agnostic.)

* To have a happier Hollywood ending than the book had had.

I ended my viewing of the film feeling that I had just seen a remake of The English Patient with a kinder husband and a slightly less sluttish wife. If I could change the last ten minutes of the film and return to it the sense of Greene's irony, I could give it a full five stars. I had to ask "How truly did this represent Greene?" And the answer was "Not very well." Perhaps those who have not read and loved Greene will feel better about this film. It is, without that comparison, an ably acted and filmed love story, if conventional in its treatment of adulterous lovers.

To quote Greene speaking through Morris: "That's not what I wrote!"

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.

After seeing this film, I couldn't get it off my mind so I bought the book. Yes, the film does take several liberties with Graham Greene's fine work. I admit I may not have enjoyed the film as much if I had first read the book, because the book is centered more on the struggle to believe in God or -- in case of the character Maurice Bendrix -- not to believe, and was masterfully done by Greene. But liberties aside, I can see why this more cerebral focus might be difficult to sustain in film, especially when juxtaposed against a love affair, which is of course more visual!

Also, the ending is rather different in the film version, but in my personal opinion, I wouldn't say it compared unfavorably with the book's ending. (Maybe I just wanted to see a tortured Ralph Fiennes experience some happiness for a change!) Regardless, I have recommended this film to several people because it's so tragically romantic.

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.

Sometimes the end is only a beginning. That's the case in The End of the Affair, a richly poignant romantic drama based on a semiautobiographical novel first published by British author Graham Greene in 1951.

Here, the end of an affair between novelist Maurice Bendrix (Fiennes) and upper-class housewife Sarah Miles (Moore) is really the starting point for a journey of self-discovery for both. As we see in flashbacks, they launch their romance in London during World War II, shortly after her husband (Rea), a milquetoast civil servant, introduces them at a party.

Soon, they are sneaking off to steam up the sheets (and sofas and rugs) every chance they get--until one day, without warning, Sarah abruptly ends the affair and Maurice is left to wonder why. What made her call it quits, and how he uncovers her reason years later after hiring a private detective to follow her, will change and color forever what love means for each of them.

Director-writer Neil Jordan (The Butcher Boy) has made a lovely, thoughtful film about love, jealousy and religious faith. It is a movie that slowly reveals its layers and continues to resonate long after it's over. Fiennes, his limpid eyes pools of intense longing, is well-suited to the role of passionate lover, while Moore, her flaming auburn locks set off by flattering period costumes, beautifully captures a woman who can do that most delicate of balancing acts, holding onto opposing emotions at the same time.