The Sense of an Ending is an adaptation of Julian Barnes’s 2011 Man Booker prize-winning novel starring Jim Broadbent (we love Jim Broadbent), Harriet Walter (we love Harriet Walter) and Charlotte Rampling (we love, love, love Charlotte Rampling). With such a cast, you’d be minded to think it can’t fail, and it doesn’t in this respect. The performances are transfixing throughout. But it does not satisfy emotionally, as the ending of The Sense of an Ending makes no sense. It’s a (Non)Sense of an Ending. Same with the book, which, on completing, I think I threw across the room with a: what? Is that it?
As directed by Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox), and as set in a London where you seem to be able to get from Highgate to a south-west postcode in a jiffy — I couldn’t help noticing; sorry — the film has Broadbent playing Tony Webster, who is divorced, runs a small vintage-camera shop, and is melancholic, grumpy, wry.
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