Vox Nova at the Movies: The End of the Affair
This is an awful movie based on a fabulous book. Don’t see it.
The book, one of Graham Greene’s best, was perhaps the best exposition ever presented of what might be called the argument from hate (I hate God, and therefore must concede He exists). Bendrix, the protagonist of the book and film, is a writer during WWII whose lover, Sarah, has recently left him. When her husband approaches him and confesses he suspects her of adultery, Bendrix agrees to investigate, and eventually finds his suspicions confirmed, though not as he expected.
The film makes two chief errors. The first has to do with casting. While Ralph Fiennes does a passable job as Bendrix, Julianne Moore seems to have been cast mainly based on her physical resemblance to Greene’s real life mistress, Lady Catherine Walston. Much more troubling, the film alters the ending in a way that undercuts the whole purpose of the story. While I wholeheartedly recommend Greene’s novel, I cannot recommend this adaptation.
Comments are closed.
Thanks for the review. Sometimes short and to the point is all there is needed (like my Doctor Who review recently).
While it is possible that when a movie undercuts the intention of the author, it can work (Starship Troopers I think is the best example of this), in general, I find it annoying. Usually I wonder why someone adapts a film if they do not appreciate the source material.
Starship Troopers would probably be the classic example of where this sort of thing works. The Demi Moore version of the Scarlett Letter would be the classic example of where it doesn’t. In this case I don’t think that the change was something intentional. The folks who made the film really just didn’t get it.
I am puzzled — in what sense do you mean that the movie version of SST ‘worked’? It was virtually unrecognizable from the book (and far inferior in my opinion), but even worse, it did not ‘undercut the authors intent’, but instead demonstrated that it completely missed the point and had no idea of the auhor’s intent — it was more interested in parodying it’s own strawman. There was no evidence PV actually read the book at all — it looked more like he read a couple of reviews of it and figured he ‘got it’ enough to satirize it.
RM
BA,
You went to see a movie that was rated O by the USCCB Office of Film and Broadcasting? Don’t you check the ratings?
Robert M
While, in every sense of the word, Robert Heinlein was a generous man (as Philip K Dick would report several times), and while he was a man of many great ideas (again, PKD writes on this well), he was also very Americano-facist in his tendencies (PKD also writes on this quite well too), and the movie is a great satire of this.
Henry,
I am well aware that SST is considered ‘controversial’ and there is a whole school of thought bent on displaying it as a pro-fascist polemic etc. etc. Not that it matters but in my personal opinion it takes a very deliberate misreading of the text to arrive at that conclusion, but for purposes of this discussion this is more or less irrelevant since PV himself stated he did not read the book prior to making the movie.
Given that he never even read the source material, I fail to see how he could possibly have truly ‘satirized’ it. The truth is he didn’t — he satirized a second-hand caricature of the book which was described to him by others, and which bore only superficial resemblance to the actual work.
As such, I don’t see how it can be considered a ‘successful’ example of someone who ‘appreciates the source material’ and changes it.
RM
Robert
I didn’t say Paul appreciated the source material.
BA,
I am relieved to say I made a mistake above. The current film An American Affair is rated O, and I trust you will not see it The 1999 film. The End of the Affair was rated A-IV, a discontinued rating that is now L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling.
I think the ratings had much more of a psychological impact when they were put out by the Legion of Decency.
Henry,
I did get that impression from your first post…citing that movie (SST) as an example of when it ‘works’, and then contrasting it with those made by people who ‘do not appreciate the soruce material’. Sorry if I drew from that the conclusion that you thought PV did.
I just think it not possible to effectively satirize something if one doesn’t even know what it is. PV didn’t satirize SST — he just mocked an inaccurate caricature of it with an very simplistic/sophmoric ‘satire’. The film is so far removed from the source material other than in the most basic terms (space, soldiers, bugs) that it cannot function as affective satire. That’s all I’m saying.
Not to mention that it was a pretty awful movie in its own right, but that I realize is a matter of personal taste. :)
RM
Robert M
I used it as an example where a movie subverts the author’s own desires/interests and it works still as a movie in its own right; the reason is, imo, it wasn’t acting as a serious representation of the source material. I saw it more as a representation of Heinlein in general through the focus of Starship Troopers than it was with the book itself. And I have read many other Heinlein works (though not Stranger), and I think my position is like PKD with him — he had a lot of great ideas, and his work is respectable along “literary” lines.
David,
I’m afraid I don’t check the USCCB reviews before seeing a picture. Perhaps if the Legion were still in force it would be a different story.
I hope you are not letting your aesthetic judgment on the film be biased by ideological considerations.