Film Review of Enduring Love
Year: 2004 Reviewer: Chris Docker
In a film that does serious justice to the novel by Ian McEwan (it's a lot more interesting than the book), a romantic couple are disturbed from their picnic as an amateur balloon crashes, dragging a child off as the wind picks it up. A tragedy ensues and the lives of the couple are haunted by an obsessive character who was another of the strangers who appeared and gave a hand with the balloon. Enduring Love asks questions about the nature of love and forces the audience to try to answer them - is love just biology? an evolutionary set of response mechanisms designed to ensure the survival of the species? Science can explain most of the subjective 'love' sensations, quickening of the heart, heartache at the absence of a loved one, intense bonding and other symptoms in terms of hormonal or other chemical changes in the body. Are two people really 'meant' for each other or does life have no meaning being propagation? Going down such a train of thought can result in a fairly nihilistic view of love as nothing more than chemicals, but such an analysis misses a crucial point - we are used to accepting 'meaning' if given to us by some authority such as religious explanation, yet there is no reason why such meaning should be any the less valuable and valued if it is attributed by the individual (rather than by a supernatural being, an underlying mother nature or a divine creator).
A useful inspiration that might be drawn (or at least one I drew) from the film is, what is necessary for romantic love? Whatever analysis we come up with can be tested agaisnt the varying examples in the film. One component is that both people must feel the same way. Intensity alone is not sufficient. The other is viability - if the material and other mediums through which that love needs to operate are either not present or not going to be present then nothing will come of it.
I content myself with the thought that, however flawed such ruminations on the nature of love might be, it is a rare film that causes introspection about important issues, and perhaps one of the virtues and practical advantages of art is that it can so inspire us.
Rating: 8/10
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