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Rating:  - Up, Up and Away
Roger Michell, adapting Ian McEwan's novel, has directed three of the actors he used in the comedy "Notting Hill" in a disturbing film of psychological depth and daring, a movie for mature people who read books and hold conversations. Thus three quarters of DVD viewers will not have read "Enduring Love" and most certainly not have seen it. That's probably for the best. This quiet thriller is not for them. It subjects its characters to intricately layered themes and simply assumes we will understand them.
One (Rhys Ifans) of the men who aids a floundering hot air balloonist, causing an accidental death, begins stalking another, convinced that their shared experience has sealed a loving bond. The object of his affection, a writer and professor (Daniel Craig), ignores him as the creep he clearly is. The professor himself feels guilty, due to the death, but gets no support from the shallow sculptor he loves (Samantha Morton); she dismisses his distress, intuits his trauma but can't abide it, and asks him to leave.
That she also dismisses the danger is a source of satisfaction when she herself has a grim encounter with the stalker. Long before that, however, we have become increasingly apprehensive, held fast by the deliberate pace. The director may not be channeling Alfred Hitchcock but he certainly has seen "Vertigo" a few times. Michell's movie can be enjoyed as a thriller or a complex case study; indeed, at times it is impossible to separate the two.
McEwan (who executive produced) has had three novels turned into film, starting with "The Cement Garden" and including "The Comfort of Strangers" and "The Innocent," all with mixed artistic success and small box office. A similar fate awaits "Enduring Love," so faithful to the author's spirit and intent you almost can hear the pages turn. We must encourage producers who bring his peculiar but prize-winning books to the screen as well as they do. One hopes that "Atonement" is next.
PS 7/31/06: "Atonement" is indeed next (with Kiera Knightly in the cast), and Craig has become the new James Bond.
Rating: - God only knows where I'd be without you...
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Genre Grade: C+
Final Grade: B+
I thought this movie had a strong Hitchcock feel to it, even if the cinematography was very artistic. I wish they would have made this movie a little more mainstream because I think it had potential to be a classic film. The director (who also directed Notting Hill and The Mother) seemed to be trying some new camera styles during certain that just did not fit this movie at all. However, the first 10 minutes of this film are riveting enough (and suspenseful and disturbing enough) that I will forgive him for falling into some experimental techniques where they didn't belong.
If you enjoy slow but powerful stories and enjoy Hitchcockian suspense, you might like this movie. The part when the psycho character starts singing "God only knows where I'd be without you..." will send chills down your spine. This movie is definitely not for everyone, and it might take a second viewing to understand exactly what is going on, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Rating:  - "Will you pray with me?"
Enduring Love is all about chaos of love and how we must endure this chaos, in the form of chaotic romantic love, obsessive love, and perhaps also the love of faith. Chaos can suddenly strike at any time to derail love, even in the deceptively calm and tranquil English countryside. How do we survive love even when we don't want it, or even when we do? And, with everything that can and does go wrong with love and in the world, how does love ultimately sustain itself?
These are complex issues, which director Roger Michell admirably achieves in bringing to dramatic life in this intriguing, thoughtful, and dark psychological thriller. Incredibly ambitious on what was obviously a shoestring budget, Enduring Love is visually arresting, daringly scored, athletically and brilliantly acted, and powered at all times by an unstoppable edgy and uneasy spirit.
The story opens in a gorgeously serene green field somewhere on the outskirts of London where Joe (hunky Daniel Craig) and Claire (Samantha Morton) have gone for a picnic. Just as Joe's about to pop the cork on a bottle of Champagne when a red passenger balloon drifts near, its basket skipping across the ground. A man suddenly tumbles out and frantically tries to get at the terrified boy still in the basket.
After a beat, and the merest of hesitations, Joe and Claire race toward the balloon along with four men, each of whom has come running as though out of nowhere. Amid a flurry of rapid edits and blurred shouts, the five men manage to steady the balloon. Then a strong wind swoops in low and carries the balloon up with the men hanging off the basket. Realizing that they can no longer hang on, four drop to safety, but one tragically falls to his death.
It's a horrific sight, both for the onlookers and for us. The accident shakes Joe to the core. A university lecturer (although it's never really clear what he teaches), Joe just can't wrap his mind around the pointlessness of the disaster, and while he spends his days sprouting philosophy on biology and love, his nights are filled with violent nightmares and interrupted sleep. He begins to draw balloons on scraps of paper, and stares, transfixed, at oval-shaped vases and red apples, repeatedly insisting to Claire that they could have saved the man.
When Jed, (an extremely creepy Rhys Ifans) who was one of the other men hanging off the balloon, calls, Joe responds with a kind of harried inquisitiveness. He seems pulled to the idea of another witness, but there's something about Jed that leaves Joe uneasy - perhaps it was Jed's insistence that they both pray next to the body. For Jed, the accident came as a revelation of divine love, and possibly another kind of love, since he can't leave Joe alone, and can't stay away from his house.
Jed suddenly turns up when Joe is having lunch with a friend, and later when Joe is lecturing in the classroom. Jed begs Joe to reciprocate his feelings and to spiritually acknowledge the divine will of the accident. While Joe continues to view the accident with a kind of detached and disconnected cynicism, Jed becomes even more passionate and stalker-like, and as Joe's relationship with Claire steadily begins to unravel, Jed ratchets up the urgency and supplication, eventually turning into a kind of scorned lover and fully-fledged psychopath.
What is so terrific about this movie is the way that Roger Michell captures the grief and helpless rage of those who witness calamity about which they can do nothing. All the protagonists are powerless to help as the terrified man hangs by a rope, high atop the field. But more importantly, Mr. Michell manages to convey quite brilliantly, the universal theme of sexual longing, which constantly courses throughout the film - Claire and Jed both want Joe, who is too distracted and differently unavailable to both of them.
Joe, godless, has lost sense of the world, and when he's faced with Jed's profoundly spiritual reaction to the accident, he finds his suppositions about love and life gradually falling apart. The ensemble cast are a joy to watch with the lanky and loose-limbed, Mr. Ifans as Jed suitably unkempt and creepy with his fine flaxen hair that occasionally brushes into his eyes. But is it Daniel Craig who is the true standout as Joe - with his lean, sinewy body, piercing blue eyes, and restless physicality. Craig fits the role so beautifully that you actually believe in his crisis and that his spirit is irrevocably troubled.
A huge and unpredictable emotional force continues to build through this film, and while none of the characters imbue that much sympathy (they're all wine swilling psuedo-intellectuals with bad table manners), the audience will be weirdly convinced that all three of these people are right, even though each of their positions have significantly switched by the picture's end.
Nervy and complex, Enduring Love constantly teases the boundary between reality and hallucination. Is Jed just a part of Joe's psyche, a figment of his imagination? The viewer never really knows until film's end, and by then, love in all its forms has definitely and undeniably endured. Mike Leonard May 05.
Rating: - A Contemporary Tale
Polished, crisply written, with brilliant score and cinematography. A profound story simply told that does justice to yet another, of Ian McKwan's beguiling but sinister novels. Well acted with Daniel Craig as Joe and Samantha Morton as his live in girl friend Claire. Rhys Ifans is totally convincing as Jed the lonely misfit who finally succumbs to his demons by committing a disturbing and psychotic act of violence.
The film begins with a sweeping panorama of English countryside in summer, and ends on the same note when we see the identical shots passing before us in a montage -- Joe and Claire carrying a picnic hamper of wine, food and as we learn later, an engagement ring. But when a hot air balloon begins to drift toward them they have no idea that from this point on their lives will irrevocably change forever.
The balloon is in trouble, the ropes are tangled, and a small boy remains trapped, its sole occupant. Despite others rushing to the scene, Joe and Jed struggle to gain control and finally succeed until a fresh gust once again lifts the balloon into the air as Claire watches helplessly from the sidelines.
All four would-be rescuers now become airborne. Joe and Jed jump with a third man and manage to land safely. The fourth member of the group Logan, waits too long and is killed.
From this initial encounter a relationship springs up between Jed and Joe, as Jed tries to convince Joe that theirs, is a shared destiny. Joe, still in shock and feeling guilty over abandoning the balloon alternates between annoyance and amusement. But as Jed persists, he gradually realizes that he has become the object of Jed's obsession.
A visit to Logan's widow only compounds the problem, adding further to his confusion and remorse. The continuous and unwelcome presence of Jed now causes a rift not only between Joe and Claire, but between the couple's well-meaning friends as well. The relationship reaches a crisis when Claire asks Joe what he has done to encourage Jed's abhorrent behavior.
The Film's climax is a shocker, and the last scene but one comes full circle to leave us with more questions than answers about the power and terror of enduring love.
Rating:  - Real Tension, but Insufferable Characters & Unfocused Story.
"Enduring Love" is a combination psychological thriller, character drama, and exploration of the nature of love adapted from the novel by Ian McEwan. It would have been better off concentrating on one of those things. College professor Joe (Daniel Craig) and sculptress girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) are picnicking in a tranquil meadow when a hot air balloon with 2 passengers crash-lands nearby. A man is thrown from the basket, but his young son is still inside as the balloon threatens to take off again. Joe, Claire, and several bystanders rush to hold the balloon down. With some difficulty they seem to have succeeded, when a gust of wind launches the balloon into the air again with the men still hanging on. Most of them let go of the balloon before it's too late, but one man holds on and falls to his death shortly thereafter. Joe becomes preoccupied -if not obsessed- with the incident and blames himself for the man's death. Another man who tried to help with the balloon, Jed (Rhys Ifans), finds another meaning entirely in the balloon incident and begins to stalk Joe.
I don't know if this film's title was intended to imply "love that endures" or "suffering on account of love". Either idea would be suitable. "Enduring Love" might have been all right if it were simply a story about a delusional stalker preying on a man who initially indulges him out of a misplaced sense of guilt. Rhys Ifans' Jed is a genuinely creepy character. Unfortunately, Joe is an insufferably neurotic character himself who spends much of his time -and ours- desperately trying to find meaning in life's events while denying that they have any. He turns out to be as dysfunctional as his stalker. I don't buy his bizarre preoccupation with the balloon incident, his failure to understand his stalker's motives, or his reluctance to simply call the police, either. This is too bad, because Daniel Craig and Rhys Ifans generate a lot of palpable tension, and the conflict between the meaning that Jed sees in the balloon incident and the meaning that Joe so desperately wants to find is interesting. But both characters are repulsive, and there is only an hour's worth of material in this hour-and-35-minute film. Even the performances can't make "Enduring Love" worth sitting through, because it's just a film about someone's neurosis. Subtitles are available in English on the Paramount 2005 DVD.
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