![]() |
Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes in a doomed romance in The End of the Affair |
Director: Neil Jordan
Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Maurice Bendrix), Julianne Moore (Sarah
Miles), Stephen Rea (Henry Miles), Ian Hart (Mr Parkis), Jason Isaacs (Father
Richard Smythe), James Bolam (Mr Savage), Sam Bould (Lance Parks), Deborah
Findlay (Miss Smythe)
The End of the Affair
is one of Graham Greene’s most autobiographical novels, based strongly on his
relationship with Catherine Walston, wife of a friend in the civil service.
Unlike the affair in the book, Greene’s continued for decades, long after the
publication of the novel in 1951 (which had led to the husband demanding an end
to it – a demand ignored). Greene’s novel recounts the dangerous passions of an
affair, mixed with the powerful anxieties and uncertainties that the Catholic
faith can have on relationships. Jordan’s film captures much of this – but in
places fails to fully understand the spirit of Greene’s compelling novel.
Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is a moderately successful
popular author, excused war service due to having injured his leg in the
Spanish Civil War. In 1946, a chance meeting with Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), a
staid civil servant brings back vivid memories of Maurice’s wartime affair with
Henry’s wife Sarah (Julianne Moore). The affair ended abruptly for reasons
Maurice cannot understand, and his love is twisting into jealous resentment.
With Henry now concerned Sarah is having an affair – and seemingly unaware of
Maurice and Sarah’s wartime relationship – Maurice takes it upon himself to
hire Parkis (Ian Hart) a private investigator to find out more. The results
though give him profound and affecting insights into both the present and the
reasons for the end of his own affair with Sarah.
Jordan’s adaptation gets so much right, it’s almost more of
a shame that it gets things wrong as well. The atmosphere of the film is simply
perfect. It looks and feels exactly like a classic slice of Greeneland, with
its dreary London, rain-soaked settings and gloomy period setting. Roger
Pratt’s Oscar nominated photography is perfect for the tragic beauty of
Greene’s work, and its matched with a sublime musical score from Michael Nyman
that wrings every inch of emotion from the story.
Ralph Fiennes is also the perfect idea of a Greene hero –
slightly imperious, bitter, arrogant with an air of prep school smugness mixed
with an underlying sense of grim inferiority. It’s hard to imagine any other
actor – maybe except Colin Firth – better suited to the slight air of
dissolute, not obviously sympathetic world-weary struggle that a Greenian hero
needs to exhibit. Fiennes barely puts a foot wrong and could have practically
walked off the page.
Equally good is Julianne Moore, who nails a very English type
of person, a woman determined to do her best and to set standards, but who
carries just below the surface a deep well of emotional pain and sorrow that briefly
is allowed to peek through. It’s a heart-rending performance of a person desperate
for happiness, but hiding that longing under a veneer of acceptability, who
sacrifices what she wants from life to meet the obligations of her faith.
Because, it being Graham Greene, Faith is the big issue here
– the idea of the private deals we make with God and the cost that those impose
on us, the sacrifices of our own happiness in surface of something higher than
ourselves. Greene’s novel intrinsically understand the eternal struggle felt in
Catholicism to do the right thing, to accept the love of God into your life
even if it means turning your back on more earthly loves and passions. How
these journeys can be hard – unbearable even – but carry a level of reward in
themselves.
It’s that feeling for God – who Bendrix grows to believe has
cheated him from happiness on earth – that powers his “diary of hate” that he
is writing as the book opens. It’s an idea the film only fitfully engages with.
Jordan deviates from the novel’s real intention at a key point, in particular
“correcting” a dramatic error he feels Greene makes by having Sarah die “off
camera” in the book, of a sudden cold, after confessing to Bendrix her reasons
for ending the affair, her pact with God.
This narrative change allows a sequence in Brighton as the
two reignite their affair – but it also undermines the tragedy of the book,
that suddenness of loss, and also makes Sarah’s death feel like a tit-for-tat
punishment for going back on her word. More to the point, the affair restarting
has the air of an atheistic view of the Catholic complications here, an idea
that these can be easily brushed aside because the “heart wants”. It’s to miss
the point of Greene’s world thinking and undermine the small everyday tragedy
in favour of something more conventional and “epic”.
It’s a major tweak that undermines the strength (otherwise)
of Jordan’s work here – his directing and scripting is otherwise largely
faultless. Other changes to the source clarify the message – I think changing
Smythe (a gently but arrogantly certain Jason Isaacs) into a priest rather than
an atheist Sarah is using to test her faith makes sense, even if it does
suggest that she acts under the influence of someone else rather than on her
own opinions. Making Bendrix a Spanish war veteran rather someone suffering the
effects of a childhood illness adds a political and moral romanticism to the
character entirely absent from any of the rest of his personality. But it’s
fine.
Jordan’s film has many strengths. Its tone is excellent and
it’s passion inspiring (the tender explicitness of the sex scenes landed it
with a bizarre and controversial 18 certificate) and there are superb
performances, not just the leads but Stephen Rea excellent as the meek but
noble husband and some lovely comic work from Ian Hart as a haplessly efficient
private eye. But the film slightly misses, in the end, the point of the novel –
which is a real shame. If Jordan had stuck to the book, and its complex themes
of guilt and grief and Catholicism we could have really had something here.
No comments:
Post a comment