Although not always explicitely, generically so, Neil Jordan's films are often framed as detective stories, and his latest film is no different. Here, there is a puzzle to be worked out, enlightenment to be sought, perception to be questioned. Graham Greene had a similar interest in the genre, and he used the thriller format as a means of exposing, if not always unravelling, the confused, the murky, be it personal or political. Both artists are literary men involved in film, and both have an interest in combustible relationships, historico-political investigation, and a Catholic background. So it seems strange that two artists so eminently suited to one another, both aesthetically and personally, should produce a film that, while never less than entertaining, seems, if I may say this under the IMDb guidelines, oddly pointless.
There are a variety of reasons for this. The first is the lack of real conflict. Nominally a story about an adulterous couple and a cuckolded husband, the latter is too passive, too gentle and kind (despite Sarah's protestations of coldness), too understanding, too ENGLISH to object, and any brief, ominous actions of his are quickly, bathetically explained away. The battle between a human being and God might interest some of a theological bent, but the Deity is insufficiently dramatised here (as is appropriate: Bendrix spends much of the movie refusing his existence; when he finally does, it's only to lock him out) to make this compelling. And the interior conflict within a person himself works better on page than on screen, as the failure of FIGHT CLUB demonstrated.
As an author, one would expect Jordan to be faithful to Greene's analysis of the act of writing itself, and this is the most satisfactory element of the film. It begins with a pan of manuscript, and Bendrix narrating the creation of his novel. The relationship with Sarah begins with reference to his writing, his 'stealing' Henry's wife being part of his project of studying Henry for a character.
One of the film's main structural devices is the visualising the same incident from different points of view, revealing the blinkered perception of protagonists who make decisive judgements without learning the full story. The problem with these scenes, it seemed to me, was that they weren't a Cubist device offering different perspectives on the same scene.
In each of these, there was an objective reality that each narrator agreed upon, which was later fleshed out by the provision of missing information - there was no essential unreliability, each character was inherently trusted as far as their limited knowledge went. This had seemed problematic - none of us see objective reality - until I realised that there was something that could absorb both Bendrix's and Sarah's confessional subjectivity - God.
Because it is unenlightened subjectivity that destroys everything in the film. Unfortunately, for this to work, there should have seeped into the film a sense of the unknown unavailable to even Greene or Jordan. The closing miracle is lovely, but this could simply be a typical Jordan moment, an example of the unsolicited kindness of strangers brightening the darkness.
So a film with three detectives (Bendrix, Parkis, and us) cannot contribute a plot, because there is an easily won, ungraspable solution. What else is there? Character study? I have always found Ralph Fiennes an unyielding actor, although there isn't much he can do with such an unpleasant, selfish, jealous, mean-minded, inward character, one very close to being a lunatic.
Julianne Moore, who can do so much with so little, has the opposite problem. Jordan has often been accused of an inability to portray women; Greene was often charged with sacrificing characterisation to schema. Moore's character suffers on both counts here, a rather odd throwback to Victorian values. The first, Bendrix-clouded, half of the film sees her cast as a duplicitous, sex-mad whore; the second, diary-aided, defence, white-washes her as a near-saint.
At no point does she come across as a real, vibrant, playful, complex woman like her real-life model, with whom Greene stayed for a good few years after writing the novel. She is even punished like a 19th century heroine (e.g. Violetta in LA TRAVIATA), killed for her carnality, ascending into heaven, conveniently out of the way, for her remorse. The sex scenes are shot with rare maturity and knowledge, even if Jordan frequently lights Moore like a Botticellian goddess, and the air-raid as sexual explosion was more convincing in THE CRANES ARE FLYING.
Stephen Rea is Stephen Rea, wonderful but, you know, the usual, untaxed, although there is humour in having an active republican playing the paralysingly archetypal Englishman. Ian Hart as the detective Parkis is a lovely creation, inept, understanding, resigned, desperate for friendship, bringing his beloved 'boy' in tow, but he seems somewhat sentimentalised for a Greene character.
Not even the historical recreation affords much pleasure. While it is entirely believable that an obsessional couple might block out the Second World War as a minor inconvenience, the lack of contextualisation makes their opting out seem like flailing in a vacuum. Jordan seems unable, whether through low-budget of ill-judged scale, to transform his materials into a vision of the past - too often we just see actors in period suits in what passes for period locales, not lived-in people trapped in a living environment.
Most curious of all, though, is how the mere act of recreating history and paying attention to detail makes shabby, dank, dusty, deceptive, murky, seedy Greeneland seem quaint and nostalgically pleasurable, thereby betraying it - because it was as much a state of mind as an actuality. Jordan's greet skill with the seaside and the carnivalesque does achieve a shimmering epiphany in Brighton of all places, making you wish this frustrating film had more oomph.
There are a variety of reasons for this. The first is the lack of real conflict. Nominally a story about an adulterous couple and a cuckolded husband, the latter is too passive, too gentle and kind (despite Sarah's protestations of coldness), too understanding, too ENGLISH to object, and any brief, ominous actions of his are quickly, bathetically explained away. The battle between a human being and God might interest some of a theological bent, but the Deity is insufficiently dramatised here (as is appropriate: Bendrix spends much of the movie refusing his existence; when he finally does, it's only to lock him out) to make this compelling. And the interior conflict within a person himself works better on page than on screen, as the failure of FIGHT CLUB demonstrated.
As an author, one would expect Jordan to be faithful to Greene's analysis of the act of writing itself, and this is the most satisfactory element of the film. It begins with a pan of manuscript, and Bendrix narrating the creation of his novel. The relationship with Sarah begins with reference to his writing, his 'stealing' Henry's wife being part of his project of studying Henry for a character.
One of the film's main structural devices is the visualising the same incident from different points of view, revealing the blinkered perception of protagonists who make decisive judgements without learning the full story. The problem with these scenes, it seemed to me, was that they weren't a Cubist device offering different perspectives on the same scene.
In each of these, there was an objective reality that each narrator agreed upon, which was later fleshed out by the provision of missing information - there was no essential unreliability, each character was inherently trusted as far as their limited knowledge went. This had seemed problematic - none of us see objective reality - until I realised that there was something that could absorb both Bendrix's and Sarah's confessional subjectivity - God.
Because it is unenlightened subjectivity that destroys everything in the film. Unfortunately, for this to work, there should have seeped into the film a sense of the unknown unavailable to even Greene or Jordan. The closing miracle is lovely, but this could simply be a typical Jordan moment, an example of the unsolicited kindness of strangers brightening the darkness.
So a film with three detectives (Bendrix, Parkis, and us) cannot contribute a plot, because there is an easily won, ungraspable solution. What else is there? Character study? I have always found Ralph Fiennes an unyielding actor, although there isn't much he can do with such an unpleasant, selfish, jealous, mean-minded, inward character, one very close to being a lunatic.
Julianne Moore, who can do so much with so little, has the opposite problem. Jordan has often been accused of an inability to portray women; Greene was often charged with sacrificing characterisation to schema. Moore's character suffers on both counts here, a rather odd throwback to Victorian values. The first, Bendrix-clouded, half of the film sees her cast as a duplicitous, sex-mad whore; the second, diary-aided, defence, white-washes her as a near-saint.
At no point does she come across as a real, vibrant, playful, complex woman like her real-life model, with whom Greene stayed for a good few years after writing the novel. She is even punished like a 19th century heroine (e.g. Violetta in LA TRAVIATA), killed for her carnality, ascending into heaven, conveniently out of the way, for her remorse. The sex scenes are shot with rare maturity and knowledge, even if Jordan frequently lights Moore like a Botticellian goddess, and the air-raid as sexual explosion was more convincing in THE CRANES ARE FLYING.
Stephen Rea is Stephen Rea, wonderful but, you know, the usual, untaxed, although there is humour in having an active republican playing the paralysingly archetypal Englishman. Ian Hart as the detective Parkis is a lovely creation, inept, understanding, resigned, desperate for friendship, bringing his beloved 'boy' in tow, but he seems somewhat sentimentalised for a Greene character.
Not even the historical recreation affords much pleasure. While it is entirely believable that an obsessional couple might block out the Second World War as a minor inconvenience, the lack of contextualisation makes their opting out seem like flailing in a vacuum. Jordan seems unable, whether through low-budget of ill-judged scale, to transform his materials into a vision of the past - too often we just see actors in period suits in what passes for period locales, not lived-in people trapped in a living environment.
Most curious of all, though, is how the mere act of recreating history and paying attention to detail makes shabby, dank, dusty, deceptive, murky, seedy Greeneland seem quaint and nostalgically pleasurable, thereby betraying it - because it was as much a state of mind as an actuality. Jordan's greet skill with the seaside and the carnivalesque does achieve a shimmering epiphany in Brighton of all places, making you wish this frustrating film had more oomph.