Hated this movie

Martini,

Interesting point. I will not be able to say how I would have felt about the film if I saw it as a youngster, since I did not and that opportunity is gone. Heh.

But it does seem this film speaks to whatever is mature in my present awareness, and certainly what I like to think of as my own maturity. The review IMDb has put on the main page said it quite well - we all seem, in this modern world, torn between the two poles of on one hand the desire for certainty, and doubts about how and I might add even whether that can be achieved, and on the other between our desires to enjoy life and the nagging doubt that any mere enjoyment realized through the realization of our physical desires can bring any real transcendence.

Despite the evident conflict as described, the ending somehow, to me, anyway, provided a resolution of sorts. No doubt Shannon and Maxine will not proceed from the ending into a life free of conflict. But the optimist in me, and I think the film provides a plausible basis for thinking as much, believes there is a way for this couple to achieve a resolution of that conflict. Maxine I think recognizes in the conflict Shannon was going through an example of a similar conflict she had experienced. Yesm while the overt (or as the Existentialist Martin Heidegger would say ontical) examples and surface reality of Shannon's experience very much differed from her life's course, nonetheless the underlying ontological nature of his life mirrored hers.

Shannon, perhaps more conventionally, seems to have within the context of his fall from grace, at least in the everyday world's view accorded him by the Anglican hierarchy, explores the range of examples of possible female partners in his quest to move forward with his life. Some might argue the example on one end of the spectrum of Charlotte as the personification of lust and willingness to pursue pleasure despite the censure of society is too pat. On the other end, Shannon is intrigued by Hannah's particular answer, or apparent answer, to her own search for a principled, even moral, framework and way of being. But he ultimately arrives at the conclusion that it is Maxine who, as it were right before his eyes without at first (within the film, of course - the film alludes to their past, their having had a past) seeing it, that is "the answer" he is looking for.

(I do not mean to say that the role Charlotte's character plays in the film is in fact "too pat". I am not sure I am prepared to take a position on this. Is this in fact a weakness in the film? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Frankly I would like to see the film again, and soon, to think about some things such as this some more. In any event Charlotte's role clearly serves an important purpose in the film.)

But to me the nature of Shannon's analysis, his search for meaning in the care of others, in this case in a search for love with a romantic partner, is persuasive, and works. That search also proceeds against the backdrop of the current and present manifestation of the hectoring, essentially corrupt, and more to the point ultimately empty and unhelpful censure of conventional society embodied by the personage of Judith Fellowes. She serves not only the plot device of moving, literally, the story forward, but also as a reminder of the stakes involved in Shannon's search.

All in all a great film, one I cannot today explain why it took me so long to get around to seeing, but which I am very grateful for the revelation it finally is now that I have seen it.