Enduring Love – 2004 | 100 mins | Drama, Thriller | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Enduring Love is director Roger Michell’s loosely-based adaptation of Ian McEwan’s acclaimed bestselling novel. Despite promising much, Enduring Love is only a success on the level of routine thriller level and is reminiscent of Joseph Losey’s latent powder-keg drama Accident (1967).

An intellectual London couple, pompous university lecturer Joe (Daniel Craig) and his long-term artist girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) have gone to the countryside for a picnic. The idyllic summer atmosphere is suddenly shattered by the sight of a runaway hot-air balloon disrupts. There is a young boy inn the basket and a man on the ground desperately trying to rein it in. Amid the ensuing chaos several passers-by, including Joe, run up and grab the basket and dangling ropes to try and weigh the balloon down. But when a sudden gust of wind lofts the balloon upward, the men more or less simultaneously let go – except for one, a doctor who moments later loses his grip and hurtles fatally to the ground.

Following the tragedy the lives of everyone in its proximity changes dramatically.

Out of the blue, unnecessarily guilt-ridden Joe receives a phone-call from one of those present at the scene, a forlorn loner named Jed (Rhys Ifans). Joe is abrupt and dismissive of Jed, but the ragged misfit won’t be denied and begins relentlessly stalking Joe all over London with such obsession that his relationship with Claire begins to crack under the pressure. A violent showdown becomes all but inevitable.