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Enduring Love

2004, Movie, R, 100 mins

Enduring Love: Review

ENDURING LOVE
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In one of the more felicitous match-ups of filmmaker and source material, restrained English director Roger Michell adapts icily intelligent British novelist Ian McEwan's creepy 1999 bestseller into a cerebral thriller that dares to ask a fundamental question: What, exactly, is love? Celebrated science writer and die-hard Darwinist Joe Rose (Daniel Craig) believes it's nothing more than an biological expedient that ensures we as a species continue to procreate; whatever greater meaning we choose to attach to l'amour may make for great art, but it's ultimately irrelevant. Or so this super-rationalist thinks until a freak accident in the English countryside forces him to reconsider everything he's ever believed. One windy afternoon, while picnicking with his live-in girlfriend, Claire (Samantha Morton), Joe is startled to see a grounded hot-air balloon carrying a young boy (Jeremy McCurdie) and his grandfather (Bill Weston) blown across an open field. Joe and three other men, including a straggly stranger named Jed (Rhys Ifans), rush to their aid, but no sooner do they grab hold of the basket then a strong gust of wind lifts them all clear off the ground. One by one the men let go — all except for a doctor named John Logan (Lee Sheward), who's carried high into the clear blue sky. When his grip finally slips, Dr. Logan plunges to his death. Deeply shaken and haunted by the moral implications of the doctor's seemingly senseless fate — did Joe's letting go condemn a far better man to death? — Joe is further unbalanced by the sudden and persistent appearance of Jed, who begins to pursue him relentlessly all over London. Jed insists that tragedy is never without meaning — a notion Joe the atheist finds repellent — and claims with all the conviction of the insane that the doctor died so Joe could be brought to God and Jed, whom Joe clearly loves even though he won't admit it. Joe realizes that Jed is mad, but could he be dangerous as well? Unlike most literary adaptations, which attempt to juice up the original material by slugging in a lot of unnecessary action, Michell and his screenwriter, playwright Joe Penhall, reduce McEwan's narrative to its bare minimum and concentrate instead on Joe's own rapidly deteriorating mental state. They're also able to further develop Joe's worsening relationship with Claire, abetted by Craig and Morton's excellent performances. In that respect the filmmakers actually improve on McEwan's novel, a rare achievement indeed. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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