Enduring Love (film) - discussion guide

 
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Summary

In the peace of a countryside picnic, Joe is about to open a bottle of champagne prior to proposing to his girlfriend Claire when a vast red hot-air balloon scoots into the ground before lifting off the ground again. A man jumps out and struggles to pull on a rope to bring the balloon to rest, shouting to his grandson inside the basket to pull a rope to let the air out. As the balloon is dragged across the field, Joe rushes to his aid, as do a number of other men coming from different points around the field’s perimeter. The men grab onto the basket and have almost brought it to rest when a strong gust of wind blows it up into the air with the men still gripping the ropes. Most of them let go before the balloon gains too much height, but one man stays hanging on – until high above the ground his grasp fails and he tumbles to his death.

The others stare in disbelief, until eventually Joe announces that he’s going down the hill to the body to see if anything can be done. A rather dishevelled man named Jed Parry goes with him. Confronted with the horror of the man’s smashed body, Jed suggests he and Joe pray. Joe declines, but Jed insists until Joe grudgingly relents. That evening, over dinner with close friends, Joe goes over the events of the day and is troubled by the thought that maybe he had let go of the balloon first, and was therefore responsible for the man’s death.

A few days later, Jed telephones Joe, telling him that they need to talk. He’s standing in a small park just across the road from Joe’s flat. It’s the first of a series of troubling encounters with Jed who keeps pressing Joe to, ‘Just say it’ – admit to something which is obvious to Jed but completely invisible to Joe. Joe becomes increasingly disturbed by his stalker, and his relationship with Claire soon begins to show the strain. It’s beginning to look as though Joe is the one who is unhinged.

Background

Based on the novel of the same name by Ian McEwan, Enduring Love was scripted by Joe Penhall and directed by Roger Michell who previously directed Notting Hill and Changing Lanes. On the DVD featurette, ‘The Novel and the Film,’ McEwan admits that, ‘It's not the movie I dreamt they would make.’ But Roger Michell says:

‘Ian was our kind of Godfather on the project. We showed him drafts as they developed at script stage, and he made his views very clear - some things he liked, some things he didn't like. We changed what we thought we could change. He was extremely benign, if not always without criticism of what we were trying to do. He was extremely constructive about it. He also came and saw us filming stuff - he was particularly interested in the hot air balloon sequence [at the beginning of the film]. It wasn't until he came to see an early cut of the film that I feel that he really got what we were trying to do. I have a lot of sympathy for him, because it must have felt that we were taking his child and cutting it into pieces and putting it in a different order. He's very pleased with the film.’( www.bbc.co.uk/films)

Leading actor Daniel Craig previously worked with Michell on The Mother. Michell says of him:

‘Daniel has an unorthodox way of dealing with the lines, and he can be terrifying to watch. You're never quite sure if he's going to go absolutely insane, and in that way he's rather like Jack Nicholson. But not in real life of course.' (www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment)

 

Questions for discussion

1. What impact did the opening sequence of the balloon accident have on you?

2. ‘It's not the movie I dreamt they would make.’ (Ian McEwan)

If you have read Ian McEwan’s novel on which the film is based, how do the two stories compare?

3. To what extent is Joe right to be troubled by feelings of guilt?

4. Why do you think Joe felt he had to visit the widow of the man who died? What effect did this visit have on both of them?

5. Did Jed really love Joe – or was it something else? What is the difference between love and obsession?

6. Do you think Joe was slow to catch on to Jed’s attraction to him? How well do you think Joe handled the situation? What do you think he should have done?

7. How do Claire’s feelings about Joe change during the course of the film? To what extent do you think she was justified to act towards Joe in the way she did?

8. How did you feel about the ending of the film? How would you expect the story to continue?

9. What do you think the title of the film is primarily referring to – a love which endures, or enduring someone else’s love?

10. What does Joe understand by love? To what extent does Joe live by the philosophy he teaches?

11. How do the people around Joe feel about his views? What is your opinion of what he says?

12. What positive examples of love are there within the film? What makes them positive?

13. Enduring Love is ‘a deliberation on love and you take what you wish from it’ (Roger Michell)

Do you think the film as a whole has a particular perspective on love? What do you understand love to be? How do these perspectives compare with that in the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 13?

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