julian barnes the sense of an ending explained

She has willed him an item that Veronica, whom he hasn’t seen in over 50 years, now refuses to give him. It turns out the mother of his first love, Veronica, a vivacious young woman he met in college, has died. The arrival of a certified letter disrupts his routine.

And the two share a strong bond with their daughter, Michelle Dockery’s matter-of-fact Susie, who’s extremely pregnant and on the verge of having her first child on her own. (“Why did you leave me?” Tony asks Margaret at one point she rolls her eyes at him in response.) She is the voice of reason-the one connected to the outside world, a force Tony clearly still needs in his life. He still has a cordial relationship with his ex-wife, Margaret (Harriet Walter), and the scenes in which the two banter with a warm familiarity are the film’s finest. This is a man who’s clearly very particular about everything but Broadbent, great as always, imbues the character’s loneliness with an awkward sweetness. Batra efficiently establishes the quiet, daily rhythms of his isolated existence: the tidy home where he brews a coffee pot for one in the morning, the park bench where he eats lunch by himself in the afternoon. But when you stand back and consider the truth Jim Broadbent’s character is chasing, it’s hard to understand why it matters now, after all this time.īroadbent stars as Tony Webster, the divorced owner of what has to be the tiniest and most specific shop in all of London: a narrow storefront where he fixes and sells classic Leica cameras.

Characters and bits of dialogue from one period intriguingly appear in the other to signify the fluid nature of memory. Director Ritesh Batra’s film, based on a script by Nick Payne, jumps back and forth in time as the pieces of a previously unexamined life snap into place. Barnes’ 2011 novel, at just 163 pages, has been acclaimed for its elegance, precision and for the gripping nature of its unreliable narration. What they’ll get will be mildly satisfying: a film that’s well-acted but tastefully restrained to a fault, with gentle humor about aging and a central mystery that isn’t all that engaging.

Not to sound derisive, but there’s definitely a target audience here.

Julian barnes the sense of an ending explained