The Sense of an Ending (2017)
IMDB Rating 6.8/10 (as on 02.04.2017)
A man becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a
mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life.
Director: Ritesh Batra
Writers: Julian Barnes (novel), Nick Payne (adaptation)
Stars: Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter
PG-13 | 1h 48min | Drama
Julian Barnes' short,
penetrating novel about how we self-protectively edit our memories receives an
intelligent, low-key, necessarily diluted big-screen treatment in The Sense of
an Ending. Ritesh Batra, in his first outing since making an international name
for himself four years ago with The Lunchbox, does a subtle, nuanced job in
dealing with the old folks' unearthed primal issues, even as his film settles
for reassuring lessons learned rather than challenging provocations.
The mildly grumpy but mentally
alert septuagenarian lives comfortably enough while maintaining a
hole-in-the-wall camera store that exclusively stocks secondhand Leicas. He
rather uselessly accompanies his heavily pregnant lesbian daughter, Susie
(Michelle Dockery), to birthing class and seems devoid of any consuming
interests or close friends.
Sending his serene autumnal
cruise into choppy waters is the arrival of a legal letter revealing an
unexpected cash bequest from a late school chum, as well as a promised copy of
the man's diary, which is nonetheless not forthcoming. Thus is unleashed a
spray of flashbacks devoted to Tony's college years and beyond, covering his
intense admiration for the handsome and brilliant Adrian (Joe Alwyn, recently
of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) and his equivocal courtship of the alluring
but elusive Veronica (Freya Mavor), who later paired up with Adrian.
Debuting screenwriter Nick
Payne nimbly shuffles the dramatic deck with the aim of fleshing out the
protagonist's late-in-life progression from mildly cranky old bloke to one
willing to re-embrace life's mysteries and his own past — which means confronting
some unsettling revelations and adapting to new emotional realities. But what
were painful cuts to the quick on the page are reduced to mild lessons learned
on the screen, making for a passably involving experience, rather than an
indelible one.
That said, the lineup of fine
actors keenly registers minute details about the passage of time with humor,
wisdom and a sharp sense of how moments of rash or just misguided behavior can
forever dictate a life's path (no matter how one rearranges things to sweep regrets
under the rug). Nor can one have any idea what the consequences of one's
actions have truly meant to the others involved at the time.
Batra moves the action along
briskly and smoothly — perhaps a bit too much so to let some of the story's
bitter truths have the bite they should. The director extends sympathy and
understanding to all the characters, a talent shared by many great artists, but
the courage to confront terrible ironies would also have been required to fully
render this tale on the screen.
Broadbent is smooth,
self-effacing and something of a subtle ham as the old-timer whose view of
himself and the past acquires significant clarity. Walter, Dockery and
Rampling, playing women who have differing issues with Tony, are tautly
spring-loaded with repressed feelings they're mostly loathe to express, while
Emily Mortimer has her moments as the young Veronica's frisky, hard-to-read
mother.
Read full review at Hollywood reporter
Adapted from a brief but
emotionally potent 2011 novel by Julian Barnes, “The
Sense of an Ending” initially honors its source material by taking clever,
inventive cinematic liberties with it. The book, a first-person account of its
aged protagonist, Tony Webster, has a bifurcated structure: “how I remembered
these events” and “what really happened.” Flashbacks arrive in
blink-and-you-miss-them bursts that then expand to explain the significance of
a look or a gesture; memory becomes a form of time travel, putting Tony (Jim
Broadbent) inside his own recollections, taking the place of his young self.
An unexpected legacy touches
off reminders of his student days, his first love, his most significant
friendship. All of these seem far away from the life he has come to live, as a
tidy, proper and emotionally detached camera shop owner, mostly in the company
of his ex-wife (Harriet Walter) and daughter (Michelle Dockery).
Freya Mavor and Charlotte
Rampling are hauntingly enigmatic and ravishing as his former love, young and
old, and Joe Alwyn as the ex-friend is charismatically cerebral. Directed by
Ritesh Batra from a screenplay by Nick Payne, the film maintains intrigue and
emotional magnetism as its mystery unfolds. Unfortunately, it goes wobbly in
the last quarter, as Tony’s refusal to face up to his past actions begins to
look less willful and more stupid. The film then totters into a redemptive
sentimentality that wouldn’t even play if it were made to seem more earned.
Read full review at New york Times
Movie rating ★★★☆
By Ann Hornaday
As good as the book? No, but
it is an excellent adaptation.
“The Sense of an Ending,”
Julian Barnes’s elegant Man Booker Prize-winning novel, receives a tasteful if
necessarily limited adaptation in Ritesh Batra’s film. Tasteful, because few
could argue with Batra’s genteel, reserved tone and approach; limited because
no movie can do justice to the interiority and ambiguity that have been
polished to a high sheen by Barnes over the course of his decades-long career.
The inherent superiority of the written word notwithstanding, Batra has done a
credible and even commendable job of translating Barnes’s intricate prose to
the screen, opening up some of its corners, burrowing into its time shifts and,
most gratifyingly, elaborating on a few otherwise marginal characters.
Thematically, “The Sense of an
Ending” bears more than a passing resemblance to “Atonement” (written by
Barnes’s contemporary, Ian McEwan) in that both stories center on the rashness
of youth, a moment of wanton destruction and the tidal pull of final
reckonings. Unlike Joe Wright’s often bold adaptation of McEwan’s book, Batra
has given “The Sense of an Ending” a well-heeled, understated screen treatment,
with Broadbent inhabiting Tony’s set ways with curmudgeonly bemusement and
dashes of acerbic humor. He’s a joy to watch, especially when sparring with
Margaret, who calls him on his most self-flattering narratives and goads him
into a more honest appraisal of his past actions.
Margaret is one of the
characters that screenwriter Nick Payne has wisely beefed up; the filmmakers
have also given more of a story line to Tony and Margaret’s daughter, Susie
(Michelle Dockery), whose impending single-motherhood sometimes feels like a
conceit, but still airs out a story that might otherwise seem too precious and
solipsistic. Batra, whose 2013 romance “The Lunchbox” was an
art house sensation, skillfully navigates the play of present and past in
Tony’s life, gracefully introducing shards of memory in flashing moments of
magical realism. The film only gains more life force when the magnificent
Charlotte Rampling arrives on the scene in a role that’s both enigmatic and
bracingly clarifying.
“The Sense of an Ending” looks
terrific, suffused as it is with British manners and
everything-in-its-placeness. It’s a cozy movie with a decidedly un-cozy message
— about the perils of resuscitating our pasts, and the even bigger risk of
leaving them be. Some may continue to wonder whether the truth hurts more when
it’s fallow, or furrowed and unearthed. For Tony, however, the answer to the
question winds up being shocking and exhilarating.
Read complete review at Washington post
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