raygirvan-86231 I don't suppose it's a spoiler to say that the main character acquires a stalker; this is the crucial point of the film, and of my impressions of it. The scenario is interesting: the explosion of consequences on a group of dysfunctional Londoners' lives after their involvement in a ballooning accident. But the development of the plot depends on continually unfeasible choices of actions. Nobody seems to have heard of stalker fans. Nobody except the immediate victim, Joe, seems much bothered about it, or even inclined to believe Joe about it. Joe takes none of the obvious steps for dealing with the situation - asking shop staff to remove the person pestering him, solicitor, police, restraining order - or even the dramatically likely outcome of thumping the guy and letting the situation come out in court. The film would probably make sense in a universe where a stalker was an unheard-of phenomenon. But on Planet Earth, it just doesn't work.

maxcobain Having massively enjoyed Ian McEwan's original, I decided to watch the film adaptation, and was thoroughly disappointed. Roger Michell's decision to leave out two of the best scenes in the book, and to largely alter the ending, left me feeling cheated. Parry's assassination attempt on Joe's life in the novel is hugely important in building suspense to the final scene, and Joe's purchase of a gun injected some humour into an otherwise very bleak plot. Missing these two scenes, and curtailing perhaps the most important scene, the balloon accident, which takes up over a chapter in the novel, to a matter of minutes, made some of the later incidents unbelievable, as it did not seem convincing that Joe would be so traumatised by something portrayed as being so fleeting. While some of the acting (Rhys Ifans) redeemed the film to an extent, it still remained unsatisfying. To anyone who did not enjoy the film, I would still recommend that they read the novel, as it is hugely enjoyable, very well written, and most importantly, a very different experience from the film.

rowmorg I saw the Jed figure as existing in Joe's imagination, welling up from his unconscious mind to haunt him. Yes, Jed was at the triggering event but he haunts Joe without reference to anyone else, and challenges him on the most difficult subject for many English intellectuals: love for thy neighbour. Joe dismisses love publicly in his lectures and privately to friends: according to him it's just "biology". Naturally, this conviction makes him unaware of insulting his live-in lover. He is trapped inside his inability to love. Jed's professed love makes Joe extremely uncomfortable, and he uses all sorts of evasions to escape it. This passage of the film, roughly the first half, was rivetingly significant to me. It is dealing with a central English issue. As the plot developed and Jed emerged from the shadows into Joe's life I thought the film lost its way a little. Joe never confronted his inability to love, and Claire left him. The symbolic representation of this disaster was brilliantly theatrical, but raised some difficult issues of plot resolution that were uncertainly handled. To call this picture a stalker film is like saying Hamlet is about mental health: the more you see the stalker and the less a haunting, the less the film will entertain and challenge you.

pc95 Without getting into supreme spoilers, Enduring Love opens so well and exhilaratingly I doubted if the movie could live up to it's superb beginning subsequently. The disappointing answer is - it didn't - not quite. There's a bit of stale air in the derangement and lost sanity of the main character. (spoiler) This is in no small part thanks to a clichéd stalker-esquire mood that grows tiresome. Why cant the main character simply goto the police and report the weirdo? Guess that must be too logical. Some of the better parts of the movie though involve the dialog and how it examines love and/or how the main character looks at it vs. his tormentor, lover, and class. Daniel Craig is an excellent actor and holds the picture together pretty well. The acting of the support is satisfactory. At the conclusion, you may feel a bit disappointed, but you can help wipe that away by recalling the first 15 min of the film - that alone makes the movie more than average fare.