I Am The Lord Your God, Whether You Like It Or Not

The film The End of the Affair did a superb job of bringing a Graham Greene novel to life. The acting is a major reason for its success, and part of what drew me to the movie in the first place. Ralph Fiennes (Maurice Bendrix) and Julianne Moore (nominated for an Oscar for her role as Sarah Miles) were both actors I had heard of and liked, and Stephen Rea (Henry Miles) and Ian Hart (Parkis) were actors I was unfamiliar with, but were very good in their respective roles. The director and writer, Neil Jordan, also did a good job of juggling the time jumps in the plot, especially early in the film. It was fairly easy for me to tell whether an event was before or after the critical bombing scene, whether Maurice and Sarah were in or beyond their affair. This, I think, is at least partly due to the acting I mentioned earlier. Fiennes and Moore’s attitudes towards each other in their exchanges were dead giveaways as to the status of their relationship, making the potential pitfall of time jumps a non-issue. I thought a weakness of the film was that the audience was unfamiliar with Maurice’s agnosticism, nearly atheism, until halfway through the movie. If this had been revealed earlier, it might make Maurice’s increasing hatred of and partial catharsis with God more powerful.

Before a bomb nearly kills Maurice, religion had barely been a part of the story. Leaving aside Maurice’s quick exchange with Fr. Smythe after seeing Parkis’s pictures of Sarah with Smythe, the film contains no real encounters with God or a character’s faith in Him until the bombing scene. However, at that point, God is not only mentioned, but nearly becomes a character in the story. Greene, in the novel, and Jordan, in the movie, want the audience to remember this scene; it is apparently what the title references, namely the end of the affair between Maurice and Sarah. Therefore, it seems fitting that God enters the story here, especially in the dramatic way that He does, with a literal bang, breaking through the wall of security and threatening to expose their affair. It is in this scene that Sarah makes her promise to God that if Maurice lives, she will not see him again. Her prayer is answered, but she writes in her diary that “if [Maurice] was alive, then [she] was dead.” Sarah tries to soften the impact of the apparent end on Maurice, and perhaps herself, by likening their love to that a person has for God: “love doesn’t stop because we stop seeing each other. People go on loving God…all their lives without seeing him.” This scene is the most important in the movie, not because it is the end of the affair (it is, in fact, not the end) but because it introduces God as an actor in the story. God is revealed to be a catalyst for several subsequent events, including Sarah being caught with Smythe (during a confession) and Lancelot’s birthmark. But most strikingly, Sarah is diagnosed with a terminal illness the exact same night that she sleeps with Maurice, breaking her promise to God.

God’s actions in the story are important to analyze, as they come in a movie based on a work by a “Catholic” novelist. One of Greene’s central themes is, in fact, the work of God in a character’s life. We saw the main characters of The Power and the Glory and “Hint of an Explanation”, both priests, keep their loyalty to God through their trials. Loyalty to God is further supported in The End of the Affair, as Sarah is forced to decide between holding her end of the bargain with God and seeing the man she loves. Upon choosing the latter, she invites God’s punishment. However, this doesn’t leave many options for the reader when paired with the whiskey priest’s story in The Power and the Glory. Sarah rejects God and the priest embraces God, but both end up killed. Additionally, Greene presents conflicting results when God reveals Himself to others. In “Hint of an Explanation”, the boy’s experience with the Eucharist has a positive impact on him, and he decides to become a priest. On the other hand, after God shows Himself to Maurice in the removal of Lancelot’s birthmark, Maurice is inspired to ask God to “leave [him] alone forever.” Assuming Greene did not accidentally contradict himself in The End of the Affair, the religious theme we can draw from his work is, simply, the mystery of God. Greene shows the reader both the good and the bad, so we might attempt to understand Him for ourselves.