Enduring Love | Review

From fear of emotions to fear of heights, Michell instills excessive terror in post-traumatism behavior.

When a hot air balloon decides to plop itself down into the middle of a grassy field- the events ultimately shatter the livelihoods of a couple of good Samaritans minding their own business. While some live through the horror, the resentment, the immense of guilt and the continual what if’s? (Daniel Craig – Sylvia), there are those who gain a deeper sense of connection to the events with a sort of divine intervention (Ryan Ifans – Danny Deckchair). The beautifully edited sequence in question, perhaps the year’s most intense five minutes in film, is followed by a film narrative that witnesses what a maddening series of destructive after-events can do to a relationship. In this case, it tears into a relationship with a future-wife-to-be (Samantha Morton – Code 46 ) but also re-victimizes the victims leaving everyone involved (including a former relationship) hanging by a cord…or for that matter a thread.

No two people act or re-act the same – and this notion becomes the basis director Roger Michell’s mood-swung adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel. Making it 2 for 2 in ‘04 for near fatalistic love attractions, Michell is interested in how the psychological clock ticks before the internal combustion. One person’s failure to properly rid himself of guilt and another person’s inability to detach themselves’ from an event is matched by the letting go of the rope, which also symbolically addresses the notion of obsessive love. Such as in The Mother, (also with Michell) Craig once again ventures into an atypical movie role – he delivers a true sense of internal anguish and true confusion towards being shadowed by the shaggy Ifans character.

Michell thwarts the narrative from falling into an archetypal case of following the mentally distraught stalker on a psychopath to destruction – rather, he extracts from plenty of genres – characters confront one another in crowded restaurants or have hushed arguments in bookstores. The element of surprise is key to Enduring Love, the film certainly moves to a different beat. The engaging introduction of the film is met with a collection of mounting sequences that branch into ethical questions and show the characters reading from the manual of how of to disintegrate one’s soul. The final charge towards the end is like the bunny boiling in the rabbit sequence found in Fatal Attraction, there is ill-developed, ill-placed and absolutely cold, gut-wrenching denouement. The surcharge in mood at the end thus bookends a psychological thriller which is perhaps a departure from the novel but is also a giant mood swing in an obsessive love-story. Stay away from hot air balloons.

Rating 3 stars