The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending is a film tailor-made for a demographic to which I do not belong, and as such, its charms are effectively lost on me. That’s not to say that I don’t recognize its appeal to an older audience — and dynamic performances from Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling go a long way to maintaining interest in a narrative that is principally focused an aging narcissist with a questionable grasp of reality — but the film’s cardinal sin is that it explores an interesting conceit that probably functioned more effectively in its literary source material than it does on screen.

Broadbent plays Tony Webster, a divorcee whose days are defined by engrained routines which mostly consist of being rude to the occasional customer at his vintage camera shop or being a mild annoyance to his long-suffering ex-wife and pregnant daughter. The monotony of his existence is disrupted by an unexpected letter from the mother of his first love, including the bequest of a long-dead school friend’s diary. This leads him on a solipsistic journey down memory lane, in which he’s forced to reexamine his relationship with his old flame (Rampling) and his role in a love triangle with tragic consequences.

It’s this sense of solipsism that is challenged over the course of Tony’s character arc, with the women in his life challenging his autobiographical narrative and calling into question his revisionist history. Based on a novel by Julian Barnes, Ending’s story is rooted in the concept of the fallibility of memory and its susceptibility to alteration in the interest of ego preservation. While unreliable narrators can work well on the written page, the transition to screen can be a thorny problem when it comes to adaptation. Director Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox), working from a script by playwright Nick Payne, makes a valiant attempt to visualize this inherently literary device by placing the adult Tony into his own flashbacks as he reexamines his youthful decisions and their impact on the lives of those around him. This works to an extent, but the mystery at the core of Tony’s navel-gazing is a bit lacking, and his ultimate character turn feels distinctly contrived.

Despite the film’s narrative shortcomings, Ending does provide a compelling examination of advancing age as defined by a sense of wistful nostalgia and regret. This capacity for self-examination is valid, and Broadbent and Rampling contribute a level of nuance and complexity to characters that would have come across as distinctly two-dimensional in the hands of lesser performers. There is no doubt audiences that will gravitate toward Ritesh’s film on the basis of its affirmation of their worldview and life experience alone, but I personally found it too difficult to reconcile my inability to relate to Ending’s largely unlikeable protagonist with its lack of narrative momentum. Maybe it’s a film that I’ll find more resonant in a couple of decades, but from my current perspective, the film could stand to sacrifice its sense of an ending for an enhanced sense of a point. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, a violent image, sexuality and brief strong language. Opens Friday at Fine Arts Theatre.