Enduring Love (2004) Reviews

• Not easy viewing but interesting and engaging. Oh, and viewers calling it a 'Fatal Attraction rip off' are just missing the point

  bob the moo2004-12-04

  Out in the country for a nice picnic, Joe and Claire get involved in a ballooning accident that leads to the death of one of the men who came to help. Joe seems to get over it but he does obsess over whether or not he could have done more. This obsession is fed when he begins being stalked by one of the men who was also involved in the accident – Jed, who appears to believe that Joe and him are close and belong together as a result of what they shared. As Jed continues to get close, Joe appears to be coming apart, putting a great deal of strain on his relationship with Claire. When I went to see this film I had no idea whatsoever what it was about and the first four minutes of the film had as much of an impact on me as I'm told the start of the book did. With the accident (that is frighteningly convincing) the seeds are sown for a film that is about love, mental health and about a sort of Fatal Attraction vibe. I use the last description with reservations because I don't think this is comparable to Fatal Attraction because this has so much more to it than just the bunny boiler stuff. Instead the story mixes it with Joe's own sanity crumbling at the same time as Claire's 'enduring love' for him is put to the test. I have not read the book, but for my money the film did this pretty well, producing plenty of good dialogue that meant the film was more about the character of Joe than it was about Jed. This is not say it is totally perfect because it isn't; the fatal attraction thing easily takes the focus meaning that some parts of the audience may feel that this is the whole ball game and that all the 'talking' is what gets in the way. For me, I felt the other way, the fatal attraction thing weakened the film when it is the focus and, for this reason, I didn't like the extra ending during the credits because I felt that the open ending had done fine on its own. The writing is good but the film relies very heavily on the performances and, luckily they are all good where they need to be. Craig is fast becoming someone who is headed for big things, not only does he have the body of a star but he can really act too. Here he is a convincing 'normal' person and his initial polite bemusement by Jed is realistic, as his gradual descent into instability himself. Morton may have less time but she is equally convincing and realistic in showing that love always has limits everywhere except in the movies. Ifans is good even though he has the roles of the religious fanatic, mentally ill, homosexual stalker to deal with. Whether or not it was wise to link all those aspects or not is one matter but Ifans still does well – never really resorting to showboating or easy 'mad man' stuff. I wasn't totally won over by him because Craig was my focus, but he still did well. Support from Nighy, Lynch etc is OK but really they are minor roles and not anywhere near the centre of the film. Overall this is a strange film and anyone who dismisses it as being a rip off of Fatal Attraction has totally missed the point. Instead the film looks at love, at sanity and relationship all in a well-written script that is well delivered by a couple of very good actors in the lead roles. Not to everyone's tastes then and not the easiest one to really put into a nutshell but interesting, moving and satisfyingly lacking in gloss throughout.

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• "Gripping throughout with a great modern British cast."

  jamesraeburn20032004-11-29

  A freak balloon accident in the Oxfordshire countryside involving five men and a child results in the death of an Oxford GP. One of the men is a writer-teacher called Joe (Daniel Craig) who is obsessed with the fact that love may be a science and on top of that he is finding it hard to come to terms with what happened at the accident. This is causing tension between him and his sculptor girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) and the situation is worsened when he is contacted by one of the other men in the accident. The man is a loner called Jed (Rhys Ifans), a homosexual who believes that the accident was meant to bring him and Joe together and he begins stalking him wherever he goes with ultimately dangerous results. ENDURING LOVE adapted from a novel by Ian McEwan is a long and complex thriller, but one that never fails to grip the audience with NOTTING HILL director Roger Michell skillfully blending the mixture of themes including Joe's obsessive theories about love (which are ultimately turned upside down), the impact of the stalking and how it affects the relationship between Claire and Joe and the latter's guilt about the accident. Michell is ably assisted by a first rate cast including Daniel Craig as Joe who was brilliant in this year's British gangster blockbuster LAYER CAKE and Rhys Ifans from NOTTING HILL is splendid as the gay stalker. Samantha Morton also deserves praise as Joe's lover and it is sad to know that ENDURING LOVE isn't likely to find an audience beyond the art-houses. It is well above the quality of some of the hopelessly pretentious offerings our country has turned out in recent years like TRAUMA and THE RATCATCHER.

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• Unusual

  BrandtSponseller2005-05-09

  If I could sum up Enduring Love in a word, it would be "unusual". Not in the sense of "bizarre", but just very "unique"; it doesn't do many things the way a "normal" film does. The first highly unusual aspect is that it begins as a quirky "art-house drama" from which emerges a surreal, tragic event in the opening, and which gradually transforms into a thriller ala Brian De Palma, all while keeping one foot firmly planted in the art-house drama arena. If you know nothing of the plot beforehand (and that's the way I prefer to watch films, if possible), it's extremely difficult to predict where this one will go. The focus of Enduring Love is Joe (Daniel Craig), a young professor who is courting a young sculptor, Claire (Samantha Morton). The opening images of the film are beautiful landscape shots of English farm country. Joe and Claire are about to enjoy a picnic when a hot air balloon comes almost "crashing" down in the field near them. A man is trying to stop the balloon by holding on to a rope attached to the basket. A young boy ends up in the basket alone. Joe runs to help, as do a number of other men who happen to be nearby. Just when they think they have the balloon under control, it takes off again, as if by a large gust of wind. They can't hold it down and everyone lets go except for a doctor who was driving by when he witnessed the beginnings of the incident. The boy is still in the basket, and the doctor hangs on until he's too high to let go. Eventually we see him fall to his death. Joe and Jed (Rhys Ifans) go to find the body, and Jed asks Joe to pray with him. Joe is uncomfortable with this, but finally acquiesces. After everyone's lives are getting back to "normal", Jed suddenly contacts Joe and says he needs to talk. He hints at Joe knowing what he wants to talk about, but won't say exactly what it is. Jed won't let up. Joe keeps running into him in odd places, day after day, but Jed won't just speak straight with him. What does Jed want, and what will Joe do about it? Enduring Love is based on a novel by Ian McEwan, and many people have criticized the film for being "different than the book". I think that's a mistake (please see my "novel to film mini-rant", marked in bold red in my user profile). This is a fine film that should be judged on its own merits. It's not flawless in my opinion, but it commendable for its uniqueness, among many other assets. Much of the film hinges on the mystery of what Jed wants, or what is "wrong" with Jed. One of the benefits of watching without any knowledge of the plot is that it opens up a wider field of possible answers for Jed. One of my favorite genres is "rubber reality" films, ala Mulholland Drive (2001), eXistenZ (1999) and so on. If you're acclimated to those films, there are strong intimations that maybe Jed is going to turn out to be Jesus, or a guardian angel, or the devil, or something similar, and metaphorically, perhaps he does turn out to be some of those things. On the one hand, it sometimes feels like substantial swaths of cryptic dialogue go on far too long in the film, but on the other hand, such dialogue is necessary to sustain a high level of suspense. Director Roger Michell also keeps us somewhat in the dark about Joe. We can see that he's a professor of some sort, but it's not clear what he teaches. He could be a philosopher, a sociologist, a psychologist, or some other kind of scientist. We only know that he's written a book (naturally enough in the era of "publish or perish") and that he buys the basic tenets of sociobiology ala E.O. Wilson (Wilson is an entomologist often crediting with initiating sociobiology in his books, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, 1975, and On Human Nature, 1978). Scriptwriter Joe Penhall includes a lot of dialogue in the film, including Joe teaching, where he expresses a (somewhat naïve) sociobiological view of things like love and meaning. This is just one way that Michell sustains a subtext related to the title of the film. Other ways include the fact that most major characters are having some relationship problems, and of course the principal conflicts are related to the title. Joe can be somewhat cryptic in his emotional arcs--the point was probably to undermine the veracity of the sociobiological view. In any event, Craig does a great job with the character. Ifans is excellent, also, but that's to be expected. Just as unusual as the plot is the cinematography. Director of photography Haris Zambarloukos provides consistently intriguing and varied visuals, from the expansive, bucolic landscape shots to an unusual, claustrophobic fish-eye with blurred edges sequence during one of the most crucial moments of the climax. The cinematography isn't usually "showy", but it is unusual nonetheless--you just have to pay more attention to it if you want to notice it. I also loved Jeremy Sams' score, which had a Carter Burwell flavor. Sams is able to provide emotional momentum when the film otherwise cannot (see below), but it still perfectly fits the austere atmosphere. Like Burwell, Sams has a knack for unusual harmonies and disarming simplicity. For me, the only real flaw to the film is that it is sometimes not very engaging. Perhaps it's ironically appropriate to the subtext/theme, but Michell often keeps the film a bit cold and aloof feeling. If Sams score wasn't in place during certain sections, they might feel almost leaden. But even with that flaw, Enduring Love is a good film, well worth watching if you're looking for something different.

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• Just misses out from being the sum of it's parts

  davideo-22005-04-12

  STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs One day,novelist and science lecturer Joe (Daniel Craig) takes his girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) out for a picnic in the beautiful English countryside.He has an ulterior motive-he means to propose to her.But then,suddenly and completely without warning,their lives are changed irrevocably forever when a red hot air balloon falls from the sky and a desperate struggle ensues to save the people on board.A man is killed and Joe is plagued with feelings of guilt and failure for sometime after.After a while,he does his best to put the incident behind him and move on with his life.But there's one person for whom doing that obviously hasn't been so easy for-fellow rescuer Jed (Rhys Ifans) who begins obsessively following Joe everywhere,leading him down a nightmare path of fear and madness. All of the cast do exceptionally well.Craig crafts a perfect portrayal of a retiring English gent desperately ill-at-ease with the troubling situation in front of him.This is the making of a promising new English talent we are seeing here,following on from his success in the lead role in Layer Cake.Ifans,usually a comedic actor (sometimes even in films where the tone is pretty serious),here successfully starts to broaden his range with an impressively unhinged portrayal of a man unable to let go and desperately trying to make sense of the demons burning inside him.Supporting players Morton and Bill Nighy are also very good back up to these two actors who are shining their socks off. The film has an impressive use of the camera,with inventively flashy visuals here-and-there and still shots that skillfully add to the tension of the story.This is complimented with a clever use of soundtrack that further revs up the story some notches. Sometimes the story doesn't come together that well,and the plotting goes a bit wavey.Also,some of the dialogue and delivery can't help but feel a little uninspiring.But for the most part,Brit director Roger Michell has crafted a film that hangs together very well and proves to be very intriguing,as well as further high-lighting some fine British talent that deserves to go much further.***

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• Enduring Pretension

  tigerfish502014-06-21

  On the brink of a marriage proposal as they picnic in a country meadow, a college professor and his girlfriend are blind-sided when an out-of-control hot air balloon drops from the sky with a terrified young boy in its basket. Strangers arrive from nowhere to grab hold of the tethering ropes, but a gust of wind lifts the balloon back into the air. Everybody lets go - except for one man who plunges to his death shortly afterward. From this melodramatic beginning, 'Enduring Love' quickly descends into a quagmire. The professor's romance begins to show signs of strain as he agonizes over his role in the accident, and one of the strangers from the field starts to stalk him. Characters converse in an artificially obscure manner, shout at one another and walk about in pouring rain to demonstrate their inner conflict. An intrusive soundtrack, glib camera techniques and jumpy editing provide more annoyance until another melodramatic episode resolves the stalker issue. Several years later, some of the characters return to the meadow to discuss how past events have affected their lives - while most viewers will reflect how a pretentious director and screenwriter have wasted 100 minutes of their time on such specious nonsense.

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