September 9, 2004

The first clear sign that Enduring Love is coming from somewhere unexpected is the sound. It is a sharp, crisp kind of sound, yet empty of distraction. Thinking about it, I am reminded of Japanese photographer Araki, who talks about early portraits he did on the streets of Tokyo from which he removed the backgrounds, replaced by nothing but a sea of white. "It forces you to focus on the people." In Enduring Love the sound is, it seems to me, a function of the focus of the people. Like a car wreck that seems to be in slow motion from the stressful perspective of the driver, Joe (the central figure of the film, played by Daniel Craig) hears it all quite sharply…but he can't understand what he is hearing. And the sound gets so loud, not for the audience, but for this man, that he can barely stand it anymore.

Like love, this film will mean many things to many people. It is part of why Roger Michell's work here - in harmony with the Joe Penhall adaptation of the Ian McEwan book - marks him as a director of vision, fearless about bringing his powers to bare. Is the film about the randomness of life? Is the film about a gay stalker? Is the film about religious epiphany? Is the film about the fragility of love relationships? Is the film about guilt? Is the film about faith in science? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.

Ian McEwan's novel is wondrous in its own right, but the film asks more from the audience and answers fewer questions. There are small jagged edges all over the place. For a viewer, those crags can scrape and irritate or they can be footholds from which the audience can scale the higher peaks of the film. For instance, why does Joe keep calling Jed by the wrong name, Jes? It might be a spoiler for me to offer my opinion on that. But the point is, you can overlook something like that or you can wonder, "Why did the filmmaker add this to the film when the novelist didn't include that detail?"

The film is carried, by necessity, by Daniel Craig. He is surrounded by the fine performances of Rhys Ifans and Samantha Morton, but they are planets circling his sun. Craig plays a man who cannot see his own desperation until Ifans' character drags it out of him. Morton is the true love to whom he can't seem explain anything clearly, slowing pushing her to change too.

It would be easy to say too much about Enduring Love. It is the kind of movie that sneds people into the streets talking about its meaning and more importantly, its meaning to them. I have had such long conversations with people about the film, I feel as though I have already written 5000 words on it. And I probably will eventually. But only after you all have a chance to experience the film and offer your perspectives.

There is one image in this film that will always stay with me. There is, at one point, a dead body. And when we come upon it, it is just there. We know that death is in our midst, but Michell never shoves it in our faces… he never moves in on the corpse. The image is too clean and too horrible at the same time. Your mind wants detail. Your heart wants to turn away. The camera lens never flinches… it never relieves… and it never tells you how to feel.

Just as Sideways has to get past people who can't see the brilliance of the second and third act for the giddiness of the first, Enduring Love must overcome the simplicity of those who wish to label it "a gay stalker movie." It is so much more. It is astonishing.

READER OF THE DAY: THE HOT-STORIAN writes: "Yesterday someone from the Philippines asked whether filmmakers do any research on historical accuracy. Absolutely. Historical filmmakers (in recent years, anyway) usually spend a lot of money hiring consultants and getting the look, the context, the costumes, etc. right.

But their overriding concerns are to make a good film AND to keep to their budget. And they will consciously sacrifice accuracy if they feel that it interferes with the story, OR if it's cheaper/easier to do it "wrong" and they believe that the mistakes won't be noticed by most of the film audience.

I think the appearance of Tagalog-speaking extras in the two movies he mentions is the latter example. Examples of the former are everywhere. In Mel Gibson's "The Patriot," the producers carefully cultivated the fields with flax rather than cotton, since that' more accurate for the era. Yet Gibson's character is an 18th-century South Carolinian plantation owner who has black paid workers rather than slaves. Wildly inaccurate, but I can see that making it more accurate would create a pretty unsympathetic hero.

By the way, these are the kinds of questions I discuss in my newspaper column. If you're interested, here's my recent piece on the history in "Vanity Fair:" And here's my piece last May on the history in "Troy."

E ME: Epiphanies are a dime a dozen, right?