Truly Dreadful Film

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I have a few problems with this movie and that's why I just rate it as an average movie. One of my issues is that the movie is way too long. It could easily have been done half on hour shorter. Then the movie would have been better. Now the first 45 minutes are just boring to watch. I thought the movie was going nowhere at one point and yawning was the only thing I did for almost an entire hour. The best part of the movie is the end part. That was worth watching. You can't really blame Jim Broadbent for anything, he did his best trying to make it an enjoyable movie to watch. Too bad the beginning was so boring, because the revealing of the mystery was good. But that's just not enough to make it a good movie.

My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library. When it was over I commented that "it is sort of like reading a novel" and she agreed. That observation is neither good nor bad, depending on what kind of movie one likes to view.Old favorite Jim Broadbent always seems to create very interesting characters, as he does here. He is Tony Webster, retired but running a camera repair business in London. He also specializes in antique Leica cameras and sells them for handsome prices. This is not just an incidental detail, it has a connection to his college days and the girlfriend who introduced him to cameras and photography.The hook in this story is when the mother of his former girlfriend, Veronica, dies the will leaves Tony one item, the diary that belonged to Adrian, his former college friend who took up with Veronica when she and Tony broke up. But the solicitor seems to be having difficulty actually getting the diary to give over to Tony.Tony is persistent, he looks up Veronica's brother and finally finds Veronica, who is very mute about what all is going on, but when pressed she says she burned the diary. All this creates an air of mystery about the whole thing. What is going on? What is she trying to hide? Why is she being so cold to Tony, her old boyfriend?Charlotte Rampling is effective as the current time version of Veronica Ford, as well as Emily Mortimer who plays Veronica's mother back in the 1960s. The thrust of the story in the movie is that our memories are what we make of them, what we choose to believe, what we think the truth was. In his fading years Tony re-lives much of what has happened in his life and gains some new perspectives.SPOILERS follow: The movie uses multiple flashbacks to tell of Tony's past, and in one we learn that Adrian actually killed himself, using razor blades in the bathtub. In his sleuthing Tony observes older Veronica hugging a special needs man, also named Adrian, and he assumes it is her son. But it isn't, it is her brother, older Ardian before his suicide had impregnated Veronica's mother, herself a flirt, and we might assume the realization of that drove Adrian to take his own life. Plus the diary Tony never got to see probably had contents about Veronica's mother, things she didn't want others to read.

'The Sense of an Ending' is quite a demanding film. Its target audience is the mature + age, those who have in their minds and souls enough memories that have had the time to be forgotten or intentionally buried. It also demands some patience, as its characters, as many, probably most people in life, do not reveal themselves immediately and are neither exuberant, not very empathetic. It takes time to discover the human motivations of many of us, it takes cinematographic time to discover characters like the one of Tony Webster, the quasi-retired owner of a small shop of vintage cameras in London, who once aspired to become a poet. But then, in cinema as in life, you may be highly rewarded.The story, inspired by the Man Booker Prize-winning novel by Julian Barnes, puts on screen a slow build-up of the young days of the main hero, who suddenly receives a small heritage from the mother of his ex-girlfriend, probably the great unfulfilled love of his university years. The almost forgotten affair with a girl named Veronica from presumably a higher class family is discovered by viewers and re-discovered by Tony, as his memories come back, some of them extracted with difficulty, exposed because of the need to share and despite the will to leave some of them forgotten. Actions in the past have had unknown consequences on the lives of other. Veronica was some kind of a mystery for the young man, maybe because of the class differences, maybe because men never fully understand women, or maybe because some dark family secrets that are never fully revealed and do not become more evident even after 40 or more years. The ambiguity of the details is part of the reason I liked the story, as in life out of books and screens not everything can and will be explained. However, the pieces of the puzzle come together and build for the hero and for the viewers an alternate, even if partial, version of the past. The final moral of the story is that changing the past can change the present or even the future. We are not only what we wish to be, we are also what our memories determine to make of us.The British style of living and being, its discretion and understatements fit so well this story. Director Ritesh Batra is only at his second big screens film. I hear that his debut in India with 'The Lunchbox' was kind of a sensation. He succeeds to lead with skill his wonderful team of actors, plays well the card of ambiguity, and seems to understand to details the soul and dilemmas of the characters. Attention however, it's also a personal story, so what we see on screen is always what the hero, Tony Webster sees, what we know is what he can and in some cases chooses to remember. Jim Broadbent is a wonderful actor and succeeds with talent and discretion in the lead role, even avoiding from us to become to engaged with him until he deserves it. I can be only sorry that Charlotte Rampling spends so little time on screen in this film, she is an artist I love and respect. Keeping the mystery around her character is however what was required by the script and needed here. The only more severe fault that I could find is that the younger actors playing the decades back flashback episodes do not resemble in physiognomies or characters their older selves. I could not recognize at all ones in the others. This gap left apart, 'The Sense of an Ending' provided me with one of the most sensible and thoughts-provoking cinema experiences lately.

Here is everything for a good movie experience, a strong drama with some of the best in terms of actors, director, script, etc. But nevertheless, the movie is never really good. I just don't get it. The film alternates between the present and the past. It works fine. But the story is made more complicated than it actually is, and it is said too constrained and complicated. During the film I was waiting for clarifications, that come to late. Another problem with this movie is that it's too slow and long- lasting. It could certainly have been the cut, without it having been at the expense of the story. I also had problems getting to understand the main character, and to sympathize with him. He is too bland and it takes too long for the audience to understand what he wants and his reactions when the story is told. The best thing about the movie is a strong message and the good actors. Having said that, I still notice that Charlotte Rampling's character does not quite come true, and she becomes a figure I did not really understand and get to know. Maybe that's the meaning? Far from the best British drama.