Review: The End of the Affair
It does begin at the end, or at the beginning of yet another end. "This," novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) types, "is a diary of hate." Bendrix is a man consumed by it - is it hate for himself? For his lover Sarah (Julianne Moore)? For her husband Henry (Stephen Rea)? Or, as he ponders, something else that was to be revealed to him?
Bendrix, for the life of him, cannot understand why Sarah broke off their affair so suddenly. They were passionate lovers during the war in England. From the start, there was an instant attraction, and to think they never would have met had it not been for her husband, a civil servant on whom Bendrix is basing his latest character on. "Henry prefers habit to happiness," she informs Bendrix, a sentiment he repeats to Henry later on: "You were a habit she formed."
Bendrix believes it may have been his own jealousy that prompted Sarah to leave. His was particularly suffocating - he was jealous of everything: of her stocking, of her shoe, of the rain…things that either clung on her when he couldn't or things which took her away from him. Yet he was right to be jealous of the rain…
However, it was their unknowingly final day together that ended it. Ironically, it was love that destroyed their love. After another tryst in Bendrix's flat, there is an explosion which sends Bendrix down several floors. When a frantic Sarah reaches him, she finds him amidst the rubble. He is unconscious and she believes him to be dead. She rushes back upstairs, kneels by the bed and prays - if God lets him live, she promises never to see Bendrix again. To her surprise, Bendrix is behind her, bloody and shaken and very much alive. "You're alive," she says. "You sound disappointed," he jokes. Before she departs, she turns and tries to make him understand without revealing the real reason. "Love doesn't stop existing just because we don't see each other," she says. "People go on loving God even if they don't see Him." "That's not my kind of love," he replies. "Maybe it's the only love there is," she offers. And that was the end of the affair - he had lived and somehow disappointed her. How little Bendrix knows and how much he will discover when almost two years later, he runs into Henry in the rain.
What an absolutely rapturous film this is. Director Neil Jordan, who adapted Graham Greene's novel, crafts a film that succeeds on every level - storytelling, execution, acting. I understand that Jordan tweaked around with the events and diluted much of Greene's religious philosophizing but no matter: the role of religion and God as a factor in the thwarting of Bendrix and Sarah's affair is significant, pronounced and sublimely resonant.
Jordan unravels their story in layers, hopping from past to present and often replaying key moments. The replays offer new insight and further details are revealed. So an expression which appeared glacial upon first viewing is now revealed to be a mask to disguise heartbreak. It's also fascinating to see the marked difference between the couple. Where intimacy once came so effortlessly now resides an awkwardness, an unbearable desperation to not be with one another. Even when Bendrix tries civility, he can't help but dispense barbed comments.
What's also commendable is that all three characters go unjudged, if you will. No one is the bad guy - they are all simply human beings who are caught in emotional wars. Rea, Moore and Fiennes are all superb: Rea garners our sympathy while proving that Henry is unexciting, Fiennes injects a healthy dose of bitterness, cynicism and self-loathing into his dashing lover and Moore embodies the saint within the sinner with immaculate clarity.
The End of the Affair
Directed by: Neil Jordan
Written by: Neil Jordan, adapted from Graham Greene's novel
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, Stephen Rea, Ian Hart
