Review

“God is in the details,” says Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore) to Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes), and the details are exquisite in Neil Jordan’s screen adaptation of Graham Greene’s "The End of the Affair."

Bendrix is a writer in London. Seated at his typewriter he bashes the keys and sets the tone with his opening sentence: “This is a diary of hate.”

In a waltz of flash-backs, we learn how he met his neighbors Henry (Stephen Rea) and Sarah Miles in the summer of 1939 and how he and Sarah embarked on a passionate affair made possible by the ensuing war. Their bond is such that the booming of bombs and the clatter of falling plaster doesn’t distract them one iota from the imperatives of exploring physical desire.

A civil servant enamoured of routine and habit, Henry is a good provider but more than a bit dull. The sedate, un-carnal nature of their marriage is neatly summed up when Henry enters the house just as Sarah exudes a shriek of adulterous pleasure on the upper level, causing Maurice to clap his hand over her mouth and ask, “What if he heard?” Sarah replies, “He wouldn’t recognize the sound.”

Maurice finds himself consumed with jealousy. He badgers Sarah for constant assurances of her boundless love. The blaze and cacophony of the Blitz is a muted second to the pounding of blood in their temples and the roaring beat of their hearts.

“Love doesn’t end just because we don’t see each other,” Sarah says. “People go on loving God their whole lives, don’t they, without ever seeing him?”

Believed to be the most autobiographical of Greene’s novels, “The End of the Affair,” written in 1951, takes its title from an event set in 1944. Sarah walks out of Maurice’s life, seemingly dropping him as the Nazis dropped bombs on London. Cut to the quick, Maurice does a slow burn, nurturing hatred and resentment, unable to grasp how someone he held so dear could remove herself from his grasp.

A chance meeting with Henry after the war sets in motion a strange chain of events in which a private investigator (Ian Hart in a splendid turn) ends up tailing Sarah and reporting back to Maurice. What he learns — and the halting, nearly mystical manner in which he learns it — makes this one of the great love stories, be it on the printed page or the silver screen.

Moore illuminates every nuance of Sarah’s emotional make-up as she struggles with her joint allegience to her husband and her lover before admitting a third candidate into her heart. Rea is stoic and touching. Thanks to Maurice’s sense of observation — he is a writer after all — we are carried along by his misconceptions and missed opportunities, rooting for him to seize his best chance at contentment and joy.

I brought a pin with me into the cinema and pointed it at the screen. I counted hundreds of angels dancing on its head as the closing credits rolled. Bittersweet and beautifully made, a film this good is cause for rejoicing.

FilmFestivals.com reporter
Lisa Nesselson