Graham Greene is my favorite writer, and The End Of The Affair is in in my top 3 books ever (along with The Catcher In The Rye and Winnie-The-Pooh).
One of the many amazing things about Neil Jordan's version is that he changed the ending of the narrative, and yet it works as well as Greene's original.
Here's what I jotted down in notes after first seeing the film a decade ago (January 21, 2000 to be exact):
A beautiful movie. Graham Greene’s meditation on the power of love, and faith is wonderfully rendered here. It’s a film in which love is so important that there are scarcely any moments dealing with anything extraneous. It’s a film that manages to be both somber and passionate, and it is quite an achievement. There’s one big stumble – Moore’s manner of leaving after the bomb blast comes across as a literay conceit, it doesn’t feel true. Jordan’s compression of Smythe and the priest works well, and though his having them resume their affair is debatable, on the whole, it seems more real and natural and certainly much more human. Beautifully acted – certainly no one does haunted passion better than Fiennes, and Moore is quite exquisite. Rea finds just the right notes for not making Miles a sad sack but still not making him too sympathetic, and Hart gives a really lovely performance. Michael Nyman’s score is a tremendous asset. It’s also a superb rendering of time and place. As it goes along, it rather walks a tightropoe with all its heightened emotionalism, and you’re not sure if it’s going to click or not. But the final scene with Lance’s birth mark gone is miraculous, one of the most extraordinarily moving endings of any picture ever. And it also makes you believe in miracles and the power of goodness. A heartwrenching and utterly splendid film.
Edited By Damien on 1266135076
The End of the Affair
Carter Burwell's score for Being John Malkovich is one of the finest I've ever heard. His work on Fargo, Gods and Monsters, and Rob Roy are excellent pieces of work as well. Without any formal education pertaining to music terminology, I would liken Burwell's best work to melancholic dirges. For a film of abstract and yet ironic tone like Being John Malkovich, that's a very bold musical choice and a lot of the successes of the film belong to the tone that it sets.
To borrow a phrase from Peter Griffin, Michael Nyman's score insists upon itself too much.
To borrow a phrase from Peter Griffin, Michael Nyman's score insists upon itself too much.
"How's the despair?"
Sabin wrote:(well deserving its nomination; I've yet to see Snow Falling on Cedars, but I'm mildly apathetic to Richardson's lensing, and this may be my choice)
For me, Robert Richardson's work on Snow Falling on Cedars was easily the best of the five. But it was a very a solid lineup overall, and even if the least impressive work won, I don't have many complaints about American Beauty's cinematography. (It's everything else that I have complaints with.)
Agree about Moore being the one element that doesn't quite work. So many other actresses would've been better-suited to that role. It's been years since I've seen the movie, but I do remember liking Nyman's score. I wasn't quite sure why you had suggested that Carter Burwell would've been a better choice, but then last night I happened to see some of Rob Roy, which he scored, and it clicked. He would've written a great score.
Need to give The End of the affair another look, especially since the Netflix Instant Play thing keeps recommending it, and they have it in HD.
Edited By dws1982 on 1266120840
Sabin wrote:I think that somewhere between The English Patient and The End of the Affair, there is one of the greatest films ever. There is no doubt in my mind what the former has that the latter doesn't: Kristen Scott Thomas. Julianne Moore struggles bravely but fails to convey Sarah Miles' inner-life beyond frigid constipation. She's just not vivacious enough. Had this been a more stylistically probing film, she might fare better. But Neil Jordan is a classicist in top form. Moore does well in roles where she deflects the outside world like Safe or Boogie Nights. Her face is like porcelain ready to shatter against the weirdness she's subjected to. There's more than a dash of Cecilia Johnson in this role, but it's too studied. The final act of this film feels like a dirge towards the inevitable and that wouldn't be the case with Kristen Scott Thomas. She's just not alluring enough for Fiennes.
It's easy to take Ralph Fiennes for granted, but this is a great performance by him. He has plummier moments in The English Patient, but this is what he does distilled down to a stronger through-line. He plays a far more obsessed and interesting character here, and he finds strong foils in Ian Hart and Stephen Rea. While The End of the Affair is gorgeously shot by Roger Pratt (well deserving its nomination; I've yet to see Snow Falling on Cedars, but I'm mildly apathetic to Richardson's lensing, and this may be my choice), Jordan is not making a stylistic film but a somewhat distanced one of religious probing. The affair itself may just as well be that of agnosticism, and it ends on a note I've rarely seen: I HATE; THEREFORE, YOU ARE. In the final stretch of the film, it could have used either some truncation or some variance in tone.
I also think that Michael Nyman's score (with a few exceptions) is too whiny for a movie of mad inner-life. This is a film about obsession worming and redemption perceived through the eyes of martyrdom. This can all too easily be one-note stuff, but Neil Jordan has fashioned a film of uncommon conviction and it's ill-set by Nyman's score. It's rather annoying, all told. Save for a few moments that is. Carter Burwell would have slammed this out of the park.
You are right about Moore not being vivacious enough as Sarah Miles.
Apparently both Miranda Richardson and Kristin Scott Thomas were initially considered for the role by Neil Jordan until Julianne Moore personally wrote him expressing an interest in the part. Her method worked and she got the part.
You should watch Edward Dmytryk's version of The End of the Affair (1955) as a comparison. While Van Johnson is miscast (but not bad), Deborah Kerr and Peter Cushing are both very good as Sarah and Henry Miles. John Mills is the character played by Ian Hart in the Jordan remake.
Edited By Reza on 1265783436
I think that somewhere between The English Patient and The End of the Affair, there is one of the greatest films ever. There is no doubt in my mind what the former has that the latter doesn't: Kristen Scott Thomas. Julianne Moore struggles bravely but fails to convey Sarah Miles' inner-life beyond frigid constipation. She's just not vivacious enough. Had this been a more stylistically probing film, she might fare better. But Neil Jordan is a classicist in top form. Moore does well in roles where she deflects the outside world like Safe or Boogie Nights. Her face is like porcelain ready to shatter against the weirdness she's subjected to. There's more than a dash of Cecilia Johnson in this role, but it's too studied. The final act of this film feels like a dirge towards the inevitable and that wouldn't be the case with Kristen Scott Thomas. She's just not alluring enough for Fiennes.
It's easy to take Ralph Fiennes for granted, but this is a great performance by him. He has plummier moments in The English Patient, but this is what he does distilled down to a stronger through-line. He plays a far more obsessed and interesting character here, and he finds strong foils in Ian Hart and Stephen Rea. While The End of the Affair is gorgeously shot by Roger Pratt (well deserving its nomination; I've yet to see Snow Falling on Cedars, but I'm mildly apathetic to Richardson's lensing, and this may be my choice), Jordan is not making a stylistic film but a somewhat distanced one of religious probing. The affair itself may just as well be that of agnosticism, and it ends on a note I've rarely seen: I HATE; THEREFORE, YOU ARE. In the final stretch of the film, it could have used either some truncation or some variance in tone.
I also think that Michael Nyman's score (with a few exceptions) is too whiny for a movie of mad inner-life. This is a film about obsession worming and redemption perceived through the eyes of martyrdom. This can all too easily be one-note stuff, but Neil Jordan has fashioned a film of uncommon conviction and it's ill-set by Nyman's score. It's rather annoying, all told. Save for a few moments that is. Carter Burwell would have slammed this out of the park.
It's easy to take Ralph Fiennes for granted, but this is a great performance by him. He has plummier moments in The English Patient, but this is what he does distilled down to a stronger through-line. He plays a far more obsessed and interesting character here, and he finds strong foils in Ian Hart and Stephen Rea. While The End of the Affair is gorgeously shot by Roger Pratt (well deserving its nomination; I've yet to see Snow Falling on Cedars, but I'm mildly apathetic to Richardson's lensing, and this may be my choice), Jordan is not making a stylistic film but a somewhat distanced one of religious probing. The affair itself may just as well be that of agnosticism, and it ends on a note I've rarely seen: I HATE; THEREFORE, YOU ARE. In the final stretch of the film, it could have used either some truncation or some variance in tone.
I also think that Michael Nyman's score (with a few exceptions) is too whiny for a movie of mad inner-life. This is a film about obsession worming and redemption perceived through the eyes of martyrdom. This can all too easily be one-note stuff, but Neil Jordan has fashioned a film of uncommon conviction and it's ill-set by Nyman's score. It's rather annoying, all told. Save for a few moments that is. Carter Burwell would have slammed this out of the park.
"How's the despair?"