By Douglas Wood
Rated R
Currently streaming on Prime, Apple TV+ and YouTube
Starring a pre-James Bond Daniel Craig, Enduring Love is a unique genre-blending film that’s both an intellectual drama investigating the nature of love and a suspenseful stalker flick. Craig plays Joe Rose, a bespectacled Humanities professor who would surely eschew a shaken, not stirred martini in favor of a posh wine. He lives a comfortable life in London with his sculptor girlfriend, Claire, played by Samantha Morton (the endearing mute laundress in Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown).
Joe’s life is forever changed when an unexpected tragedy devastates his world. In a startling, highly cinematic opening sequence, his romantic picnic with Claire in the idyllic countryside outside Oxford is shattered when an errant hot air balloon drifts down onto the field. The pilot, having exited the balloon, struggles to control it, his foot entangled in the anchor rope. Joe and three other men rush to save the sole passenger, the pilot’s young son. A gust of wind catches the balloon just as the men attempt to secure the basket. They’re suddenly airborne, clinging to ropes, hanging on for dear life. The rescuers reluctantly drop to the ground, all except one, a doctor, who ascends high into the sky before plummeting to his death. We later learn the boy managed to land the balloon safely.
When Joe goes to retrieve the body of the doctor, one of the survivors, Jed Parry, asks him to join him in prayer. Jed is played by Rhys Ifans, stringy-haired and gaunt, in a stunning performance that’s both angelic and hair-raising. He fervently believes he and Joe shared something significant– a religious (and, as we later discover, romantic) connection that will bond them forever. “You know what passed between us,” he later tells Joe. “Love — God’s love. It was a sign.” Jed becomes obsessed with Joe, tracking him down, first by phone, then in person—at a bookstore, a restaurant, even at work. It’s there, in front of Joe’s students, that Jed croons a nerve-jangling, “God Only Knows What I’d Be Without You.”
If this sounds unsettling, it is, probably due to the fact that Enduring Love is faithfully based on the 1997 novel of the same name by Ian McEwan, once dubbed Ian Macabre. Enduring Love harkens back to McEwan’s early Gothic short stories and two subsequent perverse novels adapted into excellent films– The Cement Garden, and The Comfort of Strangers featuring Christopher Walken, a creepy actor at his creepiest. McEwan went on to write more mainstream work, including Atonement, which was adapted into the 2007 Oscar-nominated film.
McEwan’s premise is especially compelling because of the specific personality of his protagonist. Joe is highly cerebral and can’t help but overthink everything– after all, ethics are central to what he teaches. He’s ridden with guilt and at one point, visited by a surreal image of the doctor silently falling from the heavens. He’s also plagued by questions concerning the (literally) out-of-the-blue catastrophe that upended his life: Which of the Good Samaritans let go of the rope first? Who, ultimately, is culpable for the doctor’s death, and of course, what does Jed want from him? Did Joe do something, perhaps subconsciously, to attract this madman? Does he, in fact, really want someone to shake up his complacent life and destroy his relationship with Claire?
We wonder if the couple’s relationship will survive these events—unlikely, given Joe’s behavior as he transforms from mild-mannered professor to savage vigilante, highlighting Craig’s impressive range as an actor. Other relationships are also called into question as the film explores metaphysical issues such as fate, and whether love is real or just biological: Claire’s philandering brother’s illicit affair with a beautiful young au pair; Jed’s distorted love of God; and the married doctor who may or may not have been showing off to an unseen lover when he went to rescue the boy in the balloon.
Some of this might seem like familiar territory to fans of psychological thrillers. Enduring Love employs a few tropes from other films about obsession– Cape Fear, Play Misty for Me, and Fatal Attraction come to mind. The most obvious example is when Joe enters Jed’s empty flat in the slums of London to discover a collage of disturbing images on his wall–newspaper clippings about the accident, drawings of hot air balloons, and most distressing, a photo of Claire with her eyes gouged out.
Another quibble: it’s a mystery why neither McEwan, screenwriter Joe Penhall, nor director, Roger Michell (Notting Hill), couldn’t solve a nagging logic problem with the story: why Joe Rose doesn’t simply call the police once he’s being stalked. One could perhaps justify this by asserting that he needs/wants to control things himself, or maybe he’s too proud to admit he allowed a lunatic to hijack his life to such lengths. Nevertheless, we’re forced to suspend disbelief, as is often the case with subject matter such as this.
Something to consider: does the movie’s title express that love is enduring, i.e., long-lasting, or is love something the characters are forced to endure like a bad cold? Either way, Enduring Love should leave viewers satiated. But probably not the most romantic way to spend date night.