The Sense of an Ending (15.)
Directed by Ritesh Batra.
Starring Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter, Charlotte Rampling, Billy Howle, Freya Mavor, Joe Alwyn, Michelle Dockery, Matthew Goode and Emily Mortimer. 108 mins. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from Studiocanal on August 14th.
There are two reasons why this is getting reviewed. Firstly I have read, and liked, the Julian Barnes novel (or novella) that it is taken from, a spontaneous selection from the library prompted by not having read anything much of his previously and it being agreeably short. Secondly, I was supposed to review its theatrical release but went to the wrong cinema, and sat there on my own thinking its a bit quiet tonight and ended up seeing Paddy Considine's very fine boxing drama, Journeyman, which has since disappeared off the release schedule.
A third reason might be that it is directed by Batra, who made the exquisite Indian drama The Lunchbox, a film I did go to the right cinema to see, but with heaped reluctance. I had no interest in it, needed one more film for the paper that week and ended up being totally beguiled by it. This is not India though: a BBC Films adaptation of Booker Prize winning novel/ novella, (let's just settle on book), starring Jim Broadbent, about the unreliability of memory, days at public school, the regrets of the old, is about as English as you can get. I will admit that the thin streak of UKIP in me doesn't like it being done by foreigners. I'm not that keen on it being done by the locals either, but if there must be English inconsequential literary misery, let's try and keep it contained within the coasts and borders of the motherland.
Broadbent is a retired divorcee, happy enough, who is prompted to re-examine his past after receiving the bequest of a diary in the will. The diary belonged to an old school friend; the will is that of the mother of his first girlfriend, Veronica. There are flashbacks to public school days and university, with lots of fine young thespians in sixties garb. In the present Broadbent seeks advice from his ex (Walter), helps out with his daughter's (Dockery) pregnancy and hunts out the first girlfriend, who has grown up to be Charlotte Rampling.
The theme is the haziness of memory. But even allowing for the tricks memory plays on us, is it really possible that the perky blonde of the flashbacks (Mavor) will grow up to be Rampling, or that the handsome Howle will become Broadbent? The cinema always has problems with dramas that span chunks of centuries because nobody has found a way to convincing age young actors and if you cast two actors in the same role there's rarely any palpable connection between the two. Here though the disconnect is enormous, and not helped by both the older performers having had very long careers. We know what Rampling looked like in the 70s; and Broadbent in the early 80s from his National Theatre of Brent days, or his appearance on Not The Nine O' Clock News: and they looked very much like they do now and nothing at all like slightly older versions of these young performers. The decision to cast nothinglikeys in the roles is presumably to emphasis the theme of the unreliability of memory but it just shoots a big hole in its credibility.
(The film is a little hazy on its own time frame. Though mostly happening in the present day it has a character refer to the Millennium Bridge over the Thames as the wobbly bridge and Broadbent's character has to be educated on the internet.)
The film appears in most aspects to be a quality production but the essence of its subject slips from its grasp in a number of ways, the most obvious one being that the events in Barnes's book, or rather the relevance of those events and the gradual revelation of the relevance of those events, don't translate to the big screen. I think people who haven't read the book are not going to buy into the importance of the trip to Veronica's parents. The casting of Charlotte Rampling rather hammers this home. Last year she appeared in the film 45 Years, which covers, if not exactly similar, than tangential ground, and does so much more effectively because it was written directly for the screen.
Overall the film seems gentler and more forgiving than the book. Or perhaps I'm misremembering it. The book seemed unduly harsh at times, but the ending here is so soft it is like it has been through a very thorough risk assessment and neutered to such a degree that you look back and wonder what ever was the point of the previous tale. Where is the sense in that ending?
Extras.
Interviews with all the major actors, plus the director and the writers, Barnes and his adaptor Nick Payne.
Directed by Ritesh Batra.
Starring Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter, Charlotte Rampling, Billy Howle, Freya Mavor, Joe Alwyn, Michelle Dockery, Matthew Goode and Emily Mortimer. 108 mins. Out on Blu-ray and DVD from Studiocanal on August 14th.
There are two reasons why this is getting reviewed. Firstly I have read, and liked, the Julian Barnes novel (or novella) that it is taken from, a spontaneous selection from the library prompted by not having read anything much of his previously and it being agreeably short. Secondly, I was supposed to review its theatrical release but went to the wrong cinema, and sat there on my own thinking its a bit quiet tonight and ended up seeing Paddy Considine's very fine boxing drama, Journeyman, which has since disappeared off the release schedule.
A third reason might be that it is directed by Batra, who made the exquisite Indian drama The Lunchbox, a film I did go to the right cinema to see, but with heaped reluctance. I had no interest in it, needed one more film for the paper that week and ended up being totally beguiled by it. This is not India though: a BBC Films adaptation of Booker Prize winning novel/ novella, (let's just settle on book), starring Jim Broadbent, about the unreliability of memory, days at public school, the regrets of the old, is about as English as you can get. I will admit that the thin streak of UKIP in me doesn't like it being done by foreigners. I'm not that keen on it being done by the locals either, but if there must be English inconsequential literary misery, let's try and keep it contained within the coasts and borders of the motherland.
Broadbent is a retired divorcee, happy enough, who is prompted to re-examine his past after receiving the bequest of a diary in the will. The diary belonged to an old school friend; the will is that of the mother of his first girlfriend, Veronica. There are flashbacks to public school days and university, with lots of fine young thespians in sixties garb. In the present Broadbent seeks advice from his ex (Walter), helps out with his daughter's (Dockery) pregnancy and hunts out the first girlfriend, who has grown up to be Charlotte Rampling.
The theme is the haziness of memory. But even allowing for the tricks memory plays on us, is it really possible that the perky blonde of the flashbacks (Mavor) will grow up to be Rampling, or that the handsome Howle will become Broadbent? The cinema always has problems with dramas that span chunks of centuries because nobody has found a way to convincing age young actors and if you cast two actors in the same role there's rarely any palpable connection between the two. Here though the disconnect is enormous, and not helped by both the older performers having had very long careers. We know what Rampling looked like in the 70s; and Broadbent in the early 80s from his National Theatre of Brent days, or his appearance on Not The Nine O' Clock News: and they looked very much like they do now and nothing at all like slightly older versions of these young performers. The decision to cast nothinglikeys in the roles is presumably to emphasis the theme of the unreliability of memory but it just shoots a big hole in its credibility.
(The film is a little hazy on its own time frame. Though mostly happening in the present day it has a character refer to the Millennium Bridge over the Thames as the wobbly bridge and Broadbent's character has to be educated on the internet.)
The film appears in most aspects to be a quality production but the essence of its subject slips from its grasp in a number of ways, the most obvious one being that the events in Barnes's book, or rather the relevance of those events and the gradual revelation of the relevance of those events, don't translate to the big screen. I think people who haven't read the book are not going to buy into the importance of the trip to Veronica's parents. The casting of Charlotte Rampling rather hammers this home. Last year she appeared in the film 45 Years, which covers, if not exactly similar, than tangential ground, and does so much more effectively because it was written directly for the screen.
Overall the film seems gentler and more forgiving than the book. Or perhaps I'm misremembering it. The book seemed unduly harsh at times, but the ending here is so soft it is like it has been through a very thorough risk assessment and neutered to such a degree that you look back and wonder what ever was the point of the previous tale. Where is the sense in that ending?
Extras.
Interviews with all the major actors, plus the director and the writers, Barnes and his adaptor Nick Payne.
