'Love, religion and war' could just as easily be a summation of the 20th century as it is of Neil Jordan's powerful new feature, The End of the Affair. Adapted from Graham Greene's novel, which is set during and just after World War II, the film is one of the most poignant accounts of true love lost, regained and then lost again forever. From the title credit scenes the film spits forth a venomous a religious rant through its novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes), an athiest. 'This is a diary of hate', rails Bendrix in voiceover, pounding the keys of his typewriter as the rain beats against his window. The object of hate, we come to learn, is God, an interloper in an affair he's had with Sarah Miles (beautifully underplayed by Julianne Moore), a bored wife trapped in a loveless marriage with a friend of his, Henry (Stephen Rea).
One rainy night after the war, Henry and Bendrix meet in London and Bendrix reluctantly accepts the offer of a nightcap at the Mileses. Henry confides in Bendrix that Sarah may be having an affair, but would like to find out for sure by having her tailed by a private investigator. Yet for proprietorial reasons, Henry cannot bring himself to do this, so he asks his friend Bendrix to act in loco uxoris. What Henry is blissfully unaware of is that Bendrix had not, until that night, seen Sarah since their own tempestuous affair finished abruptly at the end of the war. Sarah had been ready for an affair then, describing her role for Henry as 'the shadow he walks around'.(Bendrix later on is blunt with Henry, describing him as 'a habit she's formed; you're her security' while still unable to fully explain the reason for the end of the affair.) Enlisting the aid of a private detective, the deferential and scrupulous cockney Mr Parkis (delightfully played by Ian Hart) who brings his young son Lance (Samuel Bould) on assignments, Bendrix gets Sarah tailed. Parkis, essentially acting as the story's conscience, chronicles Sarah's movements and reports back to Bendrix at regular intervals. The exchanges between the two men from opposite social strata transcends the master/servant relationship that was breaking down even as the war was ending, and it is only through his exchanges with Parkis that Bendrix eventually dredges himself from the all-consuming mire of anger that he has self-inflicted.
Throughout the film there's a fiercely raging tension percolating beneath the surface that's counterpointed by the manner and reservedness of speech that epitomise most of the characters. Fiennes plays Bendrix in a manner that will recall many of his other screen roles, yet the angry and frustrated outbursts of the tortured, spurned writer reveal the depths of his suffering. Moore gives the role of Sarah a delicacy that imbues her character with far more sensitivity and understanding than an adulterous wife might have been seen to have, while Stephen Rea plays the socially inept civil servant with a world-weary, fatalistic resignation. Greene's book had already been adapted in 1955 by Edward Dmytryk, and at first glance this film, which has echoes of Brief Encounter and trysts of another era, might appear anachronistic to today's audiences. Yet the universal traits of trust, loyalty, love and belief - and all their contradictions - are present in this carefully plotted film. Greene, who wrestled with the nature of catholicism throughout his life, used the religious element in this story as the kink which derailed the passionate affair that Bendrix and Sarah had been having, and the explanation that Bendrix had been waiting for at the film's end. In a novel way, Jordan inverts the whole deus ex machina notion to make a key incident the fulcrum of the entire story, from which the estrangement and bitterness ensue. This device is revisited on two more occasions and its meaning revealed to us only late in the story, to devastating effect.
In less capable hands the interweaving of the film's integral flashbacks could have confused the intricate storyline which straddles the war, but Jordan manages to maintain the pacing through subtle temperamental changes in characters and tactful editing rather than relying on conventional flashback trickery. Jordan has recently described the film as one 'about Britishness, about rain and about God.' Yes, the rain: a cleansing or purifying element in one sense, as when Bendrix confesses his affair to Henry while they both sit soaking on a park bench; or functioning, perhaps, as a metaphor for the tears that the characters could not shed because of social diktats. Jordan also noted how making the film was 'almost like making a film in another language - the language of emotion.' There is more said in the gaps and silences between Parkis and Bendrix than either of them could ever show, while Sarah's exchanges with Bendrix were charged with emotion that manifested itself in their vigorous lovemaking. As he did with the internalised world of The Butcher Boy, Jordan has wrought a marvellous script, taut with passion and tension, from an internalised novel, one of Greene's finest works.
While the adaptation of the book has, of necessity, omitted or compounded certain characters or characteristics (Sarah's affair with Bendrix is not the first extra-marital tryst that she's had, and the co-habitation of all three of them never actually occurs in the book), Jordan's masterful interpretation draws out the pain and passion of the love that Bendrix and Sarah have for each other and, by extension, ultimately for those around them. Roger Pratt's muted lighting perfectly suits the sombre tone that permeates much of the film, while Tony Lawson's editing is crisp enough to keep the time changes apparent without making the seams visible. Michael Nyman's score is also suitably understated, never overwhelming the film's restrained tone.