Death and Rebirth
FILM: The End of the Affair
DIRECTOR: Neil Jordan
STARRING: Ralph Fiennes, Julianne Moore
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THE STORMY AFFAIR BETWEEN SARAH (JULIANNE MOORE) AND MAURICE (RALPH FIENNES) LEADS TO CONFLICT AND REDEMPTION IN THE END OF THE AFFAIR.
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Something spiritual is afoot in our land. In the course of a single month,
we've seen the arrival of two profoundly religious films, first Paul Thomas
Anderson's Magnolia and now Neil Jordan's The End of the Affair, both devoted
to the notion that God is an active presence in modern existence, a force
calling humankind to acts of devotion, self-sacrifice and redemption. The
latter, more recent film lacks the innovative sweep of the former, but it's
still a picture that ponders such important questions as the nature of love,
the healing magic of forgiveness, and the twisting course of faith.
Based on the Graham Greene novel and written for the screen and
directed by Jordan, The End of the Affair is the story of a torrid love affair
that gives bloom to spiritual conversion. The setting moves back and forth
between the war-torn Britain of 1939-44 and a subsequent year of dislocation as
Europe tries to adjust to peace. In 1946, after a two-year estrangement,
well-connected English novelist Maurice (pronounced Morris) Bendrix (Ralph
Fiennes) becomes reacquainted with Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), a high-ranking
official in the British government. Maurice and Henry first met in the
mid-1930s, and years later Maurice had an affair with Henry's wife, Sarah
(Julianne Moore). The affair ended in 1944. Upon their reunion, Maurice learns
that Henry is suspicious that Sarah is involved with someone else. Pretending
to act on Henry's behalf, Maurice engages a private detective agency to have
Sarah followed. And as the cockney gumshoe Mr. Parkis (Ian Hart) begins to
bring Maurice reports of Sarah's activities, the writer recalls the days of
their five-year affair.
Until her involvement with Maurice, Sarah and Henry maintain a
correct marriage, loyal, cordial, fond even, but without a hint of passion.
They are genial hosts for huge dinner parties. They treat each other with
kindness and respect. But whatever sexual relationship they ever enjoyed has
long since ended completely. Henry, it seems, does not miss the physical
connection, but Sarah does, and when she falls in love with Maurice, they know
repeated stolen afternoons of rapture.
Despite Sarah's frequent declarations that her heart belongs solely
to Maurice, she refuses to leave Henry, returning to their home every night,
standing by his side at every public occasion. Maurice becomes increasingly
impatient with this arrangement, and gradually his relationship with Sarah
frays. They begin to spend as much time arguing about Sarah's loyalty to Henry
as they do making love. In an erotically charged scene that is at once sad and
fraught with tension, Maurice dresses Sarah as she prepares to go home. He's
jealous of her stockings, he says, because they get to embrace her legs for
hours, jealous of the button on her garter belt because it gets to serve her
all the while she's dressed, jealous of her shoes because they carry her away
from him and back to her husband. In short, Maurice is jealous of Sarah's
cuckolded husband, jealous of all the incidental time they spend together,
preparing for the day each morning, dining, attending to errands, etc. Sarah
protests that despite her staunch determination to remain married to Henry, she
loves only Maurice and she will love only him forever. But he is not
mollified.
And then comes the event that changes the course of both their
lives. Just after making love one afternoon during the German rocket attack of
1944, an explosion rips through Maurice's apartment, knocking him down a flight
of stairs and leaving him unconscious for an unspecified period of time. When
he awakes, he finds Sarah on her knees praying. He had not known she was a
believer, presuming that she was, like himself, an atheist. Sarah seems
relieved to find Maurice alive, but she's otherwise mysteriously distant. And
shortly later, the affair ends amid considerable acrimony; Sarah is vague but
resolute that she must stop seeing Maurice, who turns angry, bitter and
vindictive.
As any competent fiction writer knows, it is easier to convey
conflict than harmony, easier to depict hatred than love. That's probably why
Jordan doesn't even try to establish the virtues Sarah and Maurice identify in
each other. They meet, they are beautiful, and they fall in love. We must take
for granted that there are reasons to cherish each other. Comparably,
explaining Henry's emotional blankness likely would have required far more back
story than Jordan deemed worthy. So we must simply accept the blandness of
Henry's personality and the coolness of his effect. He is the kind of man you
want to run your business: calm, intelligent, efficient and thorough. He is
probably the kind of man you want in your foxhole in that he thinks before he
acts and stands by those to whom he owes allegiance. He is not, however, the
kind of man you'd want to go drinking with, and he's obviously not the kind of
man a woman would want for her bedmate. Why Henry is so emotionless, we never
discover, but Rea's hangdog portrayal makes clear he is a man almost utterly
empty of enthusiasm for anything.
I fear that Jordan overworks his visual metaphor of rain. Surely,
London would wash directly into the Thames if it were hit with a storm that
lasted for years, as this one seems to do. In addition, I wish that the story
didn't ultimately resort to having one of its major characters die as a
mechanism for resolving its narrative and thematic complications. I also regret
that the revelation of certain secrets require the hoary device of a pilfered
diary. And I couldn't quite make out the purpose of the Reverend Smythe (Jason
Isaacs). Yes, he's Sarah's confessor and defender, but the nature of her
religious impulse is almost completely divorced from the institution of the
church, so Smythe seems not only unnecessary but incorrect.
Otherwise, however, the film handles its plotting quite nicely. The
filmmakers score an important point early on by establishing that the
accumulation of evidence doesn't always point directly to the truth. And, at
its most powerful moments, the film offers keen insights about the way humans
discover God. We cry out to God in times of need. We wish for miracles. We
offer whispers of thanks for undeserved good fortune. We pray when no other
action is possible. And, sometimes, prayers are answered precisely as we wish
them to be. Henry finds God through a love of which he didn't know himself
capable, and, through love, he accomplishes the grace of forgiveness. Sarah
finds God through the helplessness of yearning. She doesn't find clarity, and
she attains only limited strength, but she recognizes the refuge of
self-sacrifice on the road to redemption. Maurice finds God in the oddest way
of all, through rejection and defiance. And it's the genius of this film that
it makes us understand Maurice's defiance of God not as a conclusion but as a
radical turnabout. Being angry at God is a common human phenomenon. Yet,
ironically, it can become the first step in knowing God's embrace.
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