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End of the Affair Review by
Cynthia Fuchs
On
its surface, Neil Jordan's film of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair
is about love. In particular, it appears to be about heterosexual love, or maybe
the similarities and disjunctions between spiritual and physical manifestations
of such love. As there would be in most any film based on Greene, there's much
talk here about God and faith and how you can know that love is real when you
can't see the object of your affection. Maurice
Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) is the Greene-ish stand-in, a novelist and essayist in
London who falls into deep and rather desperate love with another man's wife,
just as WWII commences in 1939. What with all the ardor flying and bombs
dropping, it's inevitable that several crises will mount. Though Maurice is
clearly smitten and wants very much to give himself over to the passion he
thinks he feels (he's a writer, after all, and prides himself on having read a
good deal as well), he's incapable of such selflessness. In a word, Maurice is a
bit stodgy. But seeing as he can't admit that to himself, he blames his distrust
on his supposed paramour, the lovely Sarah (Julianne Moore). The film actually
begins several years after their affair has ended (hence the film's title), but
he's still brooding and writing about his rage and raw emotional wound. The
first words of his narration are, in fact, spoken as he pounds on his manual
typewriter: "This is a diary of hate." Hateful
as Maurice may be and dominant as his narration may seem, the film doesn't
remain fixed on his point of view: after a first half that shows the sudden
break-up through Maurice's eyes, the second retells the story of the breakup
from Sarah's perspective, revealing her reasons for telling Maurice that she can
never see him again. In both versions, Maurice seems a tiresome fellow. Even
when he's supposedly in the throes of Eros, he's doubting Sarah and pestering
her to pledge her devotion. She, on the other hand, believes in their love with
a near-religious fervor. In fact, as the film shows, her extraordinary capacity
for belief is precisely what leads to the end of her affair with Maurice: during
one of their wartime trysts, a bomb falls on their building and she sees him
laid out and bloody, as if dead. She prays for a miracle, promising to
"give him up" if he might live, and voila! he comes back to life.
Thrilled and horrified at what her prayer has apparently effected, Sarah tells
Maurice it's over. Back
in the present, Maurice remains a hard nut, in part because he stands in
constant comparison to the ever-sweet Sarah. She appears at first as a kind of
untouchable ideal (softly lit, perfectly appointed in styling forties suits and
matching pumps), but soon reveals that she is also hungry for love and even
occasionally lusty (as several heaving bosom shots suggest). Sarah does have
reasons for her infidelity, namely, her husband Henry's devotion to his career
as a civil servant and general cold-fish demeanor. As played by sad-eyed Stephen
Rea (who also starred in Jordan's overrated Crying Game and excellent Butcher
Boy), Henry seems defeated by definition, bereft of sensuality and slightly
dazed by the idea that his wife might want sex along with companionship. The
film doesn't show much of their marriage, but it's clear enough that they've
developed a pattern over the years: she starts to pull out, either by active
resistance or withdrawal, he pleads with her to stay, and she agrees, tearful
and wonderful. Sarah, according to the film, is the devoted angel who keeps both
her partners' frail emotional selves intact, and whenever she even thinks about
making a decision based on her own desires, one or both of the men becomes
petulant or needy or downright demanding. The End of the Affair is, in
this sense, focused on repeated ends of affairs, or more precisely, ends of
promises and hopes. And Sarah's at the center of all this roiling emotion,
serving as the locus for the men's guilt and frustrations. She never enjoys a
stable moment, vacillating continually between Maurice and Henry as they seem
constitutionally unable to trust her or themselves. All
this makes for a lot of wallowing, especially by Maurice, working on his diary.
he's inspired to take his grief further when one night -- in the film's present
-- while walking and moping in the rain, he accidentally runs into Henry,
engaged in the same activity. Henry confesses that he believes Sarah is having
an affair, and wishes to employ a detective to discover the details. Maurice
convinces Henry to let him handle such uncouth business, and then becomes
obsessed with monitoring the detective he hires, a fussbudgety and mostly
efficient Mr. Parkis (Ian Hart). Around
the same time, Maurice himself approaches Sarah, ready to inflict as much pain
as possible, but soon finds himself back in her arms, when -- after her own
diary reveals the truth behind her previous cruelty -- she confesses her endless
love for this self-centered little man. Henry acquiesces to the new arrangement,
wanting only Sarah's happiness, and soon the three are residing together in
Henry and Sarah's home. Henry's generous response highlights his emotional and
spiritual difference from Maurice, to be sure, but also sets up the movie's next
movement, which is basically grand melodrama, complete with the tragic death of
one member of the threesome. The
End of the Affair,
then, is structured as a series of overlapping and intersecting investigations
and pursuits, of truth, love, and self-knowledge. While Sarah's self-examination
takes up much of the film's emotional space (as a woman, she gets to cry and
fret in more overt ways than the men, though she's certainly no ham), it is the
male characters who receive the full brunt of the movie's inquiry into
relationship anxieties. What makes this inquiry interesting is that it never
assumes their possessiveness or prerogative. Instead, it examines their sense of
entitlement and property, and questions Maurice's belief that love must be
manifest to be "real" -- a belief that is, of course, hypocritical
when he is engaged in the undercover affair with Sarah, though it would explain
his determination to make the relationship legitimate, that is, visible to the
world. Perhaps
appropriately, the film leaves unspoken what may be the most visible love
relationship in the film, between the two men. While the men's meetings to
discuss Sarah's "affair" suggest they share a common -- if covetous --
concern, and are arranged in the frame to underline their similar dispositions
and creeds, later scenes -- when the three are living together -- expose their
increasing intimacy, most often in visual compositions, as Sarah, in the
background, looks quite small between them or they appear together performing
various domestic chores. The truth of Maurice and Henry's relationship seems to
be that they can only imagine it with a woman in the picture (to insure their
heterosexuality), but at the same time, she's the vehicle for their coming
together. This makes sense in a story that is, on its surface, about sacrifice
and piety. For it seems that any of the film's "affairs" must end, for
they are all earthly, but such ends lead to the greater love and glory that
Sarah envisions but consciously relinquishes when she reneges on her deal with
God, to give up Maurice in exchange for his life. Sarah sees herself as
"weak," but she's the very model of strength and conviction, according
to her men. The trick is, the movie presents her as the means for Maurice and
Henry to become their best selves, their angel and their light. As seems to be
the fate of many women trying to make sense of organized religions, it's not
quite clear what she gets out of the bargain. Contents | Features | Reviews
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