The Sense of an
Ending. Dir.
Ritesh Batra. Based on the novel by Julian
Barnes. Cast: Jim Broadbent, Charlotte Rampling, Harriet Walter, Michelle
Dockery, Emily Mortimer, Billy Howle, Joe Alwyn, Freya Mavor, Matthew Goode,
Edward Holcroft, James Wilby. UK, 2017.
Vi
hace unos años esta película, y me gustó, y sin embargo la había
olvidado completamente. Me he acordado de ella al leer la novela de
Julian Barnes en la que se basa. Sobre un jubilado divorciado que vuelve
a contactar con una novia de hace cuarenta años, a la que dejó plantada
o quizá más bien le dejó plantado, y empezó a salir con un amigo de
él... Con las muchas iluminaciones y desilusiones que trae la
retrospección. Un pasaje característico:
Her
attitude towards me, now that I looked at it, had been consistent — not
just in recent months, but over however many years. She had found me
wanting, had preferred Adrian, and always considered these judgements
correct. This was, I now realised, self-evident in every way,
philosophical or other. But, without understanding my own motives, I had
wanted to prove to her, even at this late stage, that she had got me
wrong. Or rather, that her initial view of me — when we were learning
one another's hearts and bodies, when she approved of some of my books
and records, when she liked me enough to take me home — had been
correct. I thought I could overcome contempt and turn remorse back into
guilt, then be forgiven. I had been tempted, somehow, by the notion that
we could excise most of our separate existences, could cut and splice
the magnetic tape on which our lives are recorded, go back to that form
in the path and take the road less travelled, or rather not travelled at
all. Instead, I had just left common sense behind. Old fool, I said to
myself. And there's no fool like an old fool: that's what my long-dead
mother used to mutter when reading stories in the papers about older men
falling for younger women, and throwing up their marriages for a
simpering smile, hair that came out of a bottle, and a taut pair of
tits. Not that she would have put it like that. And I couldn't even
offer the excuse of cliché, that I was just doing what other men of my
age banally did. No, I was an odder old fool, grafting pathetic hopes of
affection on to the least likely recipient in the world.

Krapp's Last Tape