The novelist & the director
Baumann, Paul
as I love You? Or was it really You...
...Her way- our disbelief, our love or even our hate...
...many found disturbingly weak-willed chestrated plot and themes of Greene's The direction in which Jordan takes and unfaithful to its source...
...Sarah's diary, neither of which is easy to grave having kept her promise to God, As Sarah confides to her diary in the translate to the screen, the director/ and her determination to give up sexual novel: "Did I ever love Maurice as much screenwriter needed to rearrange and love and consolation for a spiritual relationship becomes the source of miraculous interventions after her death...
...The force of Sarah's character, her fate (and that of the two men in her life), and the central irony and piteousness of the story, all flow from Sarah's determination to keep her promise," wrote Commonweal's Richard Alleva (January 28, 2000...
...Instead of and stop me if you can, stop me if you plausible variation on Greene's design...
...In his way, Jordan was faithful to Grt't'rle God's inscrutability and omniscience, the mystery of belief, and the transitory nature of human love are Greene's abidWe've just completed Lent, spiritual elements of the novel...
...If of her promises-either to her husband do before I did"-knew that she would God has made us in his own image, Benor to God...
...Both Greene and Jordan tell us that God reveals his infinite "cunning" by using the passion of illicit sex to bring Sarah and perhaps even Bendrix to beAndrew Greeley lief...
...God that if her dead lover, Maurice Ben- lives take a path not of our own choos- Jordan seems to have imaginatively drix, is brought back to life-he appears ing and that along that path we are for- expanded on this and similar passages...
...Earlier "A lively, controversial and stimulating Sarah had asked, "What kind of a God hook...
...God stops her, Greene would my novels are about Good and Evil," perhaps the crucial lines in the novel...
...Jordan then emphasizes the again...
...Bendrix reading from the diary, this can," she writes...
...Still, I don't think Jordan is as the story-away from attributing Sarah's The controversy over The End of the willfully destructive of Greene's inten- miracles to her steadfastness in chastiAffair concerns Jordan's decision to tions as it may seem at first...
...This strong sense of predestina- "twisted" God is very much alive in Jorfutility of Sarah's moral resolutions by tion is a characteristic element in Greene s dan's movie...
...Sarah's later ty-is rooted in the novel...
...In the novel and film, Sarah Miles, enigmatic aspects of Greene's fevered days...
...confess as she makes her deal for Ben- our weakness or our strength, our faith or Jordan puts the pieces of his recon- drix's life...
...matic and religious logic of Greene's rects our attention to some of the more "I just want him like I used to in the old story...
...I can't bring us to faith are not strictly moral...
...to have been killed during a German ever encountering God in the most un- Because so much of the novel takes place bombing raid-she will "give him up expected guises-in the midst of adul- in Maurice's head and is revealed in forever...
...However, in Jordan's film, Sarah breaks her vow and is reunited, if only for a few days, with her lover...
...She can't keep that mian flavor...
...Critics charge that the hard edge of Greene's theological drama-his portrait of heroic sanctity and unblinking insistence on what God demands from us-is vitiated in the film...
...I fell into love...
...Greene's his wishes...
...structed ending together carefully...
...the novel...
...This seeming amorality is the great fesses that she is "too weak" to keep any her life, that God "knew what I would paradox of Greene's "religious" novels...
...I've never loved before weakness, manifest in her receptivity to In The End of the Affair, Greene is intent as I love you, and I've never believed in God, is the most perplexing yet com- on showing how the fierce passions that anything before as I believe now...
...Could I have touched You if I hadn't touched him first, touched him as I never touched THE NOVELIST & THE DIRECTOR Henry, anybody...
...Did I touch You Paul Baumann when I touched him...
...I want ordinary an adulterous wife, makes a promise to and heterodox religious vision: that our corrupt human love...
...It is not Following in Father's Footsteps the cheap stagecraft of removing the boy's disfigurement that startles...
...They are not about Good "I've caught belief like a disease," she plead with her to stay...
...I'm not at that would seem to contradict the dra- acter...
...In short, Bendrix compels her commit adultery, renounce her adultery, drix speculates in the novel, he may be to return and Sarah merely accedes to and (at least in Jordan's version) sin yet as "twisted as we humans are...
...Just wardness is inseparable from her pro- He is not a set of ideas, but a felt presbefore going back to Bendrix, Sarah con- found sense that God has taken hold of ence...
...Booklist is a face forever marked by the cruelly loving hand of its creator, and made all $24.95 hardcover at the more human by the transitory nabookstores or order 1-800.822-6657 ture of its beauty...
...I want Maurice...
...he concluded...
...I'm going to make tination in the novel, I would argue that he brings the lovers together again and him happy, that's my second vow, God, Sarah's broken vow in Jordan's film is a invents a deathbed scene...
...and Evil, but about human beings....1 do tells her lover...
...Make me believe...
...fathomable grace is as promiscuous as his Neil Jordan's recent version of Graham Alleva and Kauffmann are right...
...Jor- lovers, while God's mercy, as Sarah tells Greene's The End of the Affair, a movie dan plays havoc with the carefully or- us, "sometimes looks like punishment...
...In my case, broken gious theme, why bother with the Commandment...
...rupt human love" that must end, who -Michael Hout,author of gives us life only to take it back...
...But her decision is to "One gets so tired of people saying that scene allows Sarah to speak what are no avail...
...fought belief for longer than I fought do anything of myself," Greene has her Greene's God will work his will through love, but I haven't any fight left...
...This idea of God's cunning or doubleness also explains why the miracle The Catholic Imagination Sarah is held responsible for at the end of the movie-the curing of a child's facial disfigurement-is so affecting...
...And without that dilemma, the story ultimately doesn't make sense...
...Moreover, Jordan's decision di- peace any more," she writes in her diary...
...The New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann (December 27, 1999) was even more severe, accusing Jordan of "ravaging the Commonweal 15 May 5, 2000 add to the dramatic furniture of the book...
...as responsible to marry Bendrix...
...puts that God on screen...
...Sarah's broken vow "finally dissolves Graham Greene's central premise and relieves Sarah of her theological dilemma...
...What startles is how, at the moment Bendrix's "A perceptive examination of the promi- hatred for God reaches an apex at Sarah's nent role played by ritual, imagination, cremation, Jordan focuses our attention and spirituality in the everyday lives of on the everyday miracle of an ordinary both practicing and nonpracticing child's face, seen as if for the first time...
...There, Sarah also decides to Given the pervasive sense of predesHe devised a way to keep Sarah on stage: return to Bendrix...
...have us believe, by having her husband Greene noted...
...She's thought of this vow into my mind and I he is for its diminution and loss...
...I pelling aspect of her personality...
...Robert Bellah, coauthor of would do such a thing to a child...
...If he exists, then he put the for the exhilaration of sexual passion as vow either-God won't let her...
...0 www.ucpress.edu UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Paul Baumann is Commonweal's executive editor...
...novel...
...For Greene, God's unpromises also bring to mind director book...
...The Habits of the Heart answer, of course, is the same God who makes for any of us an "ordinary cor"This book is a tour de force...
...The same sort of move is found in hate him for it," Sarah says in the novel...
...Jordan dying...
...Or was it really You I loved all the time...
...Commonweal 16 May 5, 2000...
...Greene's Sarah change the ending of the novel in a way broken vow is not, after all, out of char- all but falters many times...
...In the book, Sarah goes to her tery and other deceptions, for example...
...He is as implacable in givhaving her make yet another promise- work and explains much of its antino- ing life as he is in taking it...
...I've fallen into belief like The paradoxical strength of Sarah's not wish to judge any of my characters...
...If Jor- ing concerns...
...The End of the Affair is not a for many of us a reminder dan felt obliged to squeeze and to dis- story about Sarah's moral striving or the of how feeble the will can tort-almost to apologize-for the reli- penalty exacted for violating the Sixth be...
...It Catholics...
Vol. 127 • May 2000 • No. 9
