Sunday 26 January 2014

Brief Encounter (1946)




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You know how it is when you read about a movie and you think, oh dear, this really does not sound like a film I would like. You read on and learn that this should be a real tear jerker, oh dear oh dear oh dear. Then as you watch the movie this turn out to be the most wonderful movie, painful in a sense, yes, but in that wonderful way that leaves you moved and you are so happy that you overcame that antipathy and saw the movie after all. That was my experience with “Brief Encounter”.


This is a British movie released just after the end of the war and directed by one of British films great directors David Lean, perhaps better known for such masterpieces as  “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) and  “Lawrence of Arabia (1962)”. “Brief Encounter” shares none of the fame of those later movies, nor a host of A-list actors. Instead it tells a narrow, but poignant story, carried out by actors who were the perfect choice for their parts.


Briefly the film is about a married woman, Laura (Celia Johnson) who meets also married Alec (Trevor Howard) in a chance encounter. There is immediate sympathy and they fall in love. However before this affair is allowed to impinge on their official lives they abort their relationship.


Uf, that was too brief, I know. The story is a lot more complex than that. Or maybe not.


The story has been seen as a critique on British morality in the sense that conservative conventions are keeping these two people from fulfilling their lives. My take on it is a bit different. I see the affair as a sort of day dream, a fantasy on the part of Laura. I am not denying that they are real people with real emotions, but this is a story told singularly from the point of Laura. Most dialogue is her narration as she relates what has happened in a fictional confession to her husband. Everybody else, even Alec, are just characters seen from her perspective. They have no more depth than she is giving them.


Laura lives a safe, if slightly boring life. She has a really nice husband. I may take some heat for saying that, but he is a really good man who is also more attentive to her than she may herself credit him and she loves him dearly in that homely fashion that you love family. She has two children whom she loves and cares for, though we hardly see them. Their roles are merely to tell us how settled in middle class normality she is.


When she meets Alec, and it has to be said that he is the active part in that relationship, she is responsive, beneath her self-control because he stirs something unfulfilled in her. He takes her on a dream, to a place she dares not go in reality and as long as it is just a dream that is fine. The problem is when the fantasy starts to have an influence on her reality, when it is no longer just a Thursday escape, but something that makes her lie to her husband and ultimately will require her to reshape her life entirely. At the cost, mind you, of practically all she holds dear.


She bails out, painful as it is, because she ends up acknowledging what is reality and what is fantasy. She has been on a dream voyage, which her surprisingly perceptive husband sense, though unaware of the particulars and he is there to receive her as she is coming back.


I think most people have their daydreams and flights of fancy, and while it is healthy to pursue some of them, others engrossing as they may be should remain fantasies. How far will we allow such double lives to take us? And how real is the gratification they bring? A healthy dose of fantasy may be what takes us through the normality of life and to some extend movies as a phenomenon serves that exact purpose. This movie explores that balance point and Laura almost loses her balance. She does not know Alec, she has no clue what a life with Alec would lead to, but that is almost beside the point for her. She is gratified and alive with him in an exciting way that is like a drug for her. Alec is just the person who triggers it and that is why I think he is not described with any particular depth. We have no clue what makes him ready to give up wife and children for an unknown woman and although he is the perfect gentleman there is a streak to him that makes him push their relationship that may not be entirely wholesome, but again, entirely beside the point. He is there to offer her that dream and as a character he is perfect for that dream.


In a later age’s optic the resolution may seem antiquated. The standard Hollywood message over the past five decades has been to pursue your dreams at all cost, but there I entirely disagree. I think this story is as relevant today as it was in 46, and that is not because I am particularly prudish. I think it is a common enough situation to stand at that crossroad and have to reject a dream because what you really want is not this dream as over powering as it is. The thought of what you really want with your life is important and immensely painful and rarely have I seen a finer example than in “Brief Encounter”.


What really works so well here is the normality of the people and the situation. These are really ordinary people like you and I. Nobody are shouting or venting unrealistic feeling. Oh, they feel, but they feel like normal people feel and I can recognize myself in these people. Maybe it helps that they are British. Although awfully eloquent the mentality of the characters are not far from Danish. In any case the drama is subdued, but no less intense.


The second factor is Celia Johnson. She is just amazing. Her face reflects her narration beautifully. It speaks volumes without words. It is happy, embarrassed, desolate or angry in such an artless and natural way that we almost do not need the narration. When the abhorrent Dolly interrupts their final parting Celia’s face could kill. We know that that woman is inches from strangulation even without the narration. Also in the recurrent glimpses we get in the home living room as she is recounting the story for us her face goes through all the emotions and that is not wasted at all on her husband. When he comforts her at the end we believe that he really does understand although he has not heard a word, because we have seen her face and know how well it tells the tale.


I am very impressed with this film and I feel like watching it again right away. I have not even commented on the subplots, but really they take second stage to the drama unfolding. I thank you, editors of the Book, for forcing me to watch this movie and promise I will be nicer to you in the future.  

12 comments:

  1. I unconditionally love this movie and am so glad you liked it. I wonder would have happened if the couple had not been interrupted in the friend's apartment? I think that was the event that woke Celia Johnson's character out of her dream.

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    1. Oh, definitely.That was the point of no return and it was not their design that it was interupted.
      It is a really good movie.

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  2. Ah, I love this one. Purely and without a hint of guile or anything else. It's sweet and tender and tragic and beautiful. I can't wait to hear what you say about In the Mood for Love when you get there, because it's the closest modern version of this story I can think of, although Before Sunrise comes close.

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    1. I vaguely recall having seen In the mood for love and that I liked it, but that is a long time ago. It may be some time till I get around to see it again though. In the meantime I am happy I saw this one.

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  3. You've commented in other reviews how the period a film was made in prevented it from having a more realistic ending, which was a little disappointing. That was my reaction to Brief Encounter. No, I don't mean leaving her husband would necessarily have been any more realistic; I mean that knowing when the film was made meant that there was not a chance in hell that there would be any ending other than her not leaving her husband. That killed any suspense for me and it just became a movie about the way(s) she would find to not leave him.

    Just to be clear - I liked this movie. I just know I would have liked it more had there been any suspense in it, even if it had the exact same ending to it.

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    1. We know already in the opening how this one ends so there can hardly be much suspense there. For me this film is all about the battle Laura fights with herself between her reality and her dream. There is plenty drama there.
      It is true though that many films end on the wrong foot because of a need for a certain ending. It can get rather awkward. In this I had no trouble with the ending. It felt right.

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  4. I really love this film, and like you, I love that she doesn't leave her husband. To me, it's so much more realistic this way. You're spot on with your statement that Hollywood romanticizes the idea of "follow your dream no matter the consequence." This film eschews that completely as it realizes that "following your dreams" just very well may end up hurting a lot of people. This is possibly my favorite angsty film of all time.

    Plus the Rachmaninoff... ALL THE RACHMANINOFF...

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    1. I think it is exactly the realism that makes this one work. I can relate to her feelings and worries because she is so ordinary and that makes the film very engaging.
      The music is pretty. I learned that the producer Noël Coward insisted that Rachmaninoff would be the only right music for this film. He was probably right.

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  5. I really enjoyed Brief Encounter, too. You and I are so on the same page about how wonderfully Celia Johnson expresses her emotions with her facial expressions and body language. I'm glad you got over your pre-viewing apprehension about watching this and felt how poignant a film this is.

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    1. Me too. I was even considering postponing it. It so did not sound like a movie I would enjoy. This was such a nice surprise. I would to see some more from Celia Johnson.

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  6. There are some critics who prefer the smaller Lean films to his later grand epics. As much as I appreciate Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia, it might have been nice for him to make a smaller scale film or two in his later years.

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    1. If Brief Encounter is typical for what he can do with a small scale film, by all means give me more. That said Lawrence of Arabia is one of the greatest pictures of all time. I would no have missed that for the world. Or The Bridge on the River Kwai.

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