End of the Affair, The (1999)

reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten


THE END OF THE AFFAIR
 Reviewed by Harvey Karten
 Columbia Pictures
 Director:  Neil Jordan
 Writer:  Neil Jordan, novel by Graham Greene
 Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore, Stephen Rea, Jason
Isaacs, Sam Bould, Ian Hart

Did you ever experience a devastating experience--your dog gets hit by a car, your lover leaves you, your grandmother is seriously ill, your plane is descending at ten times the normal speed, your spouse catches you in flagrante delicto--and you pray: "God...if you can make everything well again, I will a) always believe in you; b) never ever leave that individual's side again; c) leave that person and stop sinning with him?" Sure you have. Many of us have entertained doubts about spiritual matters, particularly about the existence of a divine being, but to coin a mixed metaphor, when the chips are down, there are no atheists in foxholes. If you experience a crisis more powerful than any you'd known, you are likely to make the most heart-wrenching promises to the Almighty if He will make everything right--or, as the song goes, "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away."

"The End of the Affair," Canadian novelist Graham Greene's most autobiographical novel in that it was inspired by the writer's adulterous affair with the American Catherine Walston, has been given a second screen adaptation. Written in the 1950's, "The End of the Affair" received cinematic life in 1955 by Edward Dmytryk, featuring Van Johnson as the Greene stand-in Maurice Bendrix and Deborah Kerr as Bendrix's neighbor, Sarah Miles. Filmed with the slow pace and patient style of the fifties, the movie was well received despite the feeling of some critics that Johnson and Kerr were mismatched.

Though the theme of adulterous liaisons with the jealousies, hatreds, and guilt feelings that ensue are universal themes, the current offering by Neil Jordan ("The Butcher Boy," "The Crying Game") comes across as too literary, too uncinematic, too darn old-fashioned for a contemporary audience. Nor can we quite understand the attraction that Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) has for the bored Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore) since Bendrix is, after all, not greatly different from Miles's colorless husband, Henry (Stephen Rea). While we can imagine the effeminate Ralph Fiennes in the role of a man whose principal claim to exertion is a workout on a smudgy-ribboned typewriter, we simply cannot see how Sarah could replace the antipathy she feels for her rising, career-civil- servant-husband with a passion for this delicate author.

Further marring the film, the elegant lyricism of the book-- which comes across, now and then in the film's dialogue and Bendrix's narrative--would serve us better on the printed page. On the large screen, the images that the words convey, best left to the imagination, are ploddingly displayed for the audience.

As Bendrix clacks away on the machine in his study, he tells us that he is a man full of jealousy and hatred, passions which only once come across toward the conclusion of the story but which appear to be so repressed in this man that such sentiments are difficult to believe. Through a number of flashbacks, Neil Jordan first shows us a meeting that Bendrix has in the ever-present English rain with his friend Henry Miles in 1946. Miles is depressed, lost in thought, wandering about the streets lost in thought. For several years he has surmised that he was emotionally losing his wife, Sarah, a woman he feels he cannot live without. When Jordan takes us back to 1939, we observe the meeting of Sarah and Maurice Bendrix at a party which Sarah's husband Henry is giving. The two fall immediately in love and begin an adulterous affair. During a raid by the Germans, Bendrix's house is hit by a bomb, knocking the writer down the stairs where he appears to be dead. Though Sarah and Maurice had promised each other that their love would last forever, Sarah inexplicably ends the affair on that day, leaving Bendrix hopelessly baffled, enraged, and jealous of the man who he believes has stolen her affections from him.

"The End of the Affair" is a film that takes itself so seriously that the few comic interludes are much appreciated. The light parts, such as they are, are supplied by a Mr. Parkis (Ian Hart), a private detective hired by Bendrix to follow Sarah everywhere to determine the source of her alleged new infatuation. But the chief rewards of this flawed film are religio-mystic theme--wonderfully underplayed given the hysteria that we've come to expect from the likes of "Stigmata," "Dogma" and "End of Days"--and the literate- philosophic dialogue produced by the novelist. "Do I exist for you when you are with him?" Bendrix wonders in what is almost a takeoff of the usual metaphysical query, "If a tree falls and no one witnesses the sound, did it indeed fall?" For her part Sarah contributes "People go on loving all their lives without seeing each other," while Bendrix, disagreeing, debates the point. Bendrix draws inappropriate laughter from the audience when, in adjusting Sarah's hosiery after a bout of lovemaking he remarks, "I'm jealous of your stockings because they kiss your whole leg...I'm jealous of your shoes because they take you away from me." Later on he continues the jealous lover bit by exclaiming, "We only made love: but you shop and cook and fall asleep with him."

This is heady stuff: a combination of Philosophy 101 with a basic course in Comedy Corner Improvs. "Happiness is harder to write about than goodness," complains the novelist at one point, to which we say, "Sometimes, writing is harder to put on the screen than in a book."

Rated R. Running Time: 100 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com


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