The Sense of an Ending

I'd watched lunchbox twice. and this film compelled me to watch it again. The fact that it plays at a pace that is reminiscent of the protagonist's existence will be tough for a bit. but then it is in fact endearing. it has its own pace that you come to respect. I haven't read the book. So this story of a man who's inner working are released, whose meanness is let go off so late in life because an incident in which he thought he was wronged has turned out so much worse for someone else that he learns compassion. And that compassion for his own past translates into his present. This core story was beautiful. The ending made me cry the first time, and weep the second. Like a flower that has forgotten to bloom this flower finally blooms probably just a few years before wilting away permanently. Like a passenger who gets onto a train at the absolute last minute, the film gives us the simple truth that its never too late for change, that it's never too late to bloom and how empathy towards another can lead to empathy towards oneself and vice versa. Fantastic casting with Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling and Harriet Walter. Loved every bit of their time on screen.

Something rare in British cinema these days; a highly intelligent, highly literate film based on a highly intelligent and literate book by Julian Barnes, (it won the Man Booker Prize). It's one of those films in which people think everything out before acting on their feelings, sometimes shelving their feelings altogether in favour of a purely intellectual approach. It's mostly told in flashbacks by Jim Broadbent's cynical old curmudgeon to his ex-wife Harriet Walter as he recounts the events of his past and his relationships with a potentially unstable girl, her family and his best friend. Dramatically not a great deal happens and yet, as they say, all human life is here but it is so well written, acted and directed you cling to every word and it's a real pleasure to hear such good dialogue delivered as beautifully as it is here. Broadbent hasn't been this good in years and Walters is wonderful as his ex-wife while Charlotte Rampling, in what is really just a cameo, is her usual outstanding self as the older version of Broadbent's first love. The younger players are also very fine; Billy Howle as the young Broadbent, Joe Alwyn as the friend, Downton's Michelle Dockery as a heavily pregnant daughter. It's also very touching and very funny; something of a real treat in fact.

This film tells the story of an old man, who receives a letter saying that a diary of left to him by his ex girlfriend's late mother. He sets out to find this diary, and in the process finds memories from fifty years ago. There are many flashbacks in the film, containing quite a few characters. Some characters appear only for seconds, and yet have pivotal role in the story. As a result of my lack of knowledge in such matter, perhaps I have been unable to pick up plot points and follow who is who. Only by reading about the story was I able to follow it. It is a story with much emotional impact. Perhaps I'll need to watch it a second time to get the most out of this film.

Slow,depressing and based on a thin storyline. Don't let all the luvvie comments fool you. Story lines like this are shown every week on soaps in the U.K. The movie is about a group of uninteresting clinically depressed people who make up the guilt complex of a sad old man. The film drones on for an hour and 38 minutes which feel like five hours. It is all in the ending, but I can tell you that there is nothing intriguing or even noteworthy about the ending. Watch an old movie instead.

The film's primary theme is quite explicit: Our memory shapes our lives into a narrative that may serve to deceive ourselves as well as others. We remember what we want to, to serve what we need. The flashbacks present carefully nuanced versions of the same scene. Though retired, Tony still runs a camera repair shop that his ex-wife Margaret sees is a shrine to his first great love, Veronica, who gave him his first Leica as well. Hardened by that loss, he remains closed off from his emotions and distant from Margaret and their daughter Susie. The latter's pregnancy draws them closer, especially when he assists her pre-natal class. But he does not fully connect to his emotions until he learns the truth about his loss of Veronica and confronts his ugly response at the time. When Veronica left him for his more impressive and confident friend Adrian, Tony sent them a vituperative note, cursing their progeny. The death of Veronica's mother Sarah and her bequest of Adrian's diary leads to the breakthrough in Tony's understanding, even though Veronica burns the book before he gets it. Tony learns that Adrian's mysterious suicide was his response to his having impregnated his lover (a motive he suggested for an ill-fated classmate). But that was Sarah, not Veronica. Sarah's sexual appeal was first noted by her son, then by Tony and apparently by Adrian, who succumbed. Tony seems to have carried his attraction unacknowledged, for his Margaret resembles Sarah, especially in her hair colour and style and in her brisk firm character. In one memory of Tony's departure he remembers Sarah's son ushering her into the house. Later he corrects that: she stands alone, sending him a furtive flat wave from below her waist. Sarah's bequest surfaces Tony's obsession with Veronica, to the point of stalking her. He is appalled by the note he'd written, all the more when he learns that Adrian's son Adrian (Veronica's brother, not son) is mentally afflicted, as if bearing Tony's curse. So far the film is the British version of the traditional "Why men just don't get it": They over-intellectualize. Their thinking paralyzes their feeling. (Well, now that you ask, the American version is "Cuz a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." Their action precludes sentiment.) But the film is even more interesting as a symptom of current British culture. It's an exercise in national nostalgia. In its exclusive focus on the white privileged public (i.e. private) school landed gentry, it could have been made in its present form at any time since 1950. There is not a scintilla of reference to any current social issue in Britain. Unless. Unless the film embodies the nation performing the same transforming memory trick the characters do. As Tony looks back complacently upon his college days the film ignores the current complexities to fantasize a simpler, more controllable time. The film then plays as a Downton Abbey version of Brexit: the desire to recover a lost glory and innocence. Not that the period's innocence holds up. In that privileged patriarchy the mother is driven to find sexual satisfaction among her daughter's beaux. That lordly estate harbours a considerable embarrassment and hypocrisy. But the Edwardian grandeur and dignity persist. The film's archaic atmosphere and plot are especially significant when we note the director is not British himself, but Ritesh Batra from India. In his earlier feature, The Lunchbox, an elderly man and a young housewife develop a fantasy relationship, in the realistic streets of Mumbai, through notes left in the daily delivery of a lunchbox. In his second feature the Indian director reimagines the British colonial power as again an obstruction to feeling and the honest exchange of emotions. The ending the film's title senses is not just to Tony's illusions but to the British as well.

Based on the Booker Prize-winning novella by Julian Barnes (which I have read), inevitably this film adaptation is different from the original work. The structure of the book was a section of the (unreliable) narrator's time at school and university followed by the present day coming to terms with revelations of that earlier period. The film is set in the present with lots of flash-backs to the past and that works well. More questionably, the movie version of "The Sense Of An Ending" has a different ending which is not that of the author Julian Barnes or even that of the scriptwriter, the playwright Nick Payne, but essentially that of the director, Indian film-maker Ritesh Batra (who made the delightful work "The Lunchbox"). The film offers us a conclusion which is more definitive and more upbeat that the novel but that is perhaps the nature of this different medium. "The Sense Of An Ending" is slow and serious but not all films can be "Fast And Furious". The pacing allows the viewer to admire the wonderful acting, primarily from Jim Broadbent as the narrator, retired and divorced Tony Webster, but also from some fine actresses, notably Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter and Emily Mortimer, plus some new young actors. Like the source novel, this film is a challenging and moving examination of the malleability of memory. As Tony puts it: 'How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts?' How often indeed ...

The best I can say about this film is it seemed real and the emotions were well portrayed. Jim Broadbent is a great actor and he was the film. There were no light moments in the film at all. Not one. Therefore it made me feel heavy and flat and I did not particularly enjoy it. It was watchable but not entertaining in the true sense of the word. Really a film I sat through to simply see how it ended. Waiting for the DVD to come out is a better option rather than seeing it at the cinema. This is one of those films that probably should have gone straight to DVD. Disappointing considering the great actors in it.

What is this doing on the big screen? It's a television play, poorly adapted from a prize-winning novel. It gets round the book's first person narrative by having the protagonist tell his ex-wife the story, which is a clumsy and unlikely device. The public school scenes are unconvincing (I am the same age as him). There are some annoying jumps: how does he find out Veronica's name? Why does he end up staying at his ex-wife's flat after she has said he can't? Some of the details are inaccurate: there were no seat belts in the '60s and if you know the London Underground system the journeys don't make sense. Parts of the plot are incomprehensible: who is the man who comes into the camera shop? Since we never see the shop again are we to assume that all of the following scenes take place at weekends? Why can't his wife get to the hospital more quickly? But the real frustration for me was that the denouement left me puzzled and unsatisfied, so I felt I'd wasted my time sitting through the movie.

After somewhat iffy reviews and some discouraging interviews I was really pleased by this movie. The novel has great depth and touches on weighty topics, leaving certain unresolved issues in its wake. Payne (scriptwriter) and Batra take on a very challenging job and with the help of a stellar cast they make as good an adaptation as anyone could reasonably expect. Broadbent is magnificent as the male lead and all the female ones are excellent. The cinematography is outstanding with some exterior shots that take your breath away, indeed Batra lingers on them a bit too long, though one can see why! There is a good deal to admire. The interweaving of past and present is highly skilled, the recreation of sixties milieus authentic. The school scenes rang true - I went to an all boys grammar school in the sixties and they get it right with the exception of the swearing. Incredible as it may seem to some people, swearing was unusual fifty years ago. I loved the way the painful weekend at Chislehurst - central to the mystery - was handled. There were a few lapses of judgement and taste but overall I would rate this as one of the best movies I have seen in the past year. It deserves awards.

Indulgent film. If it's meant to be a "treatise" on a life, it merely serves to portray the meagerness and bleakness of a humorless life unfolding from the protagonist's formative years. Significance is limited to a fraction of life in what appeals rather than what actually exists. Cast choices are also questionable. Sorry, not passable.