This is one fantastic looking film. Nearly every single shot is gorgeous and many are borderline breathtaking despite the fact that most of the film is handheld. That's pretty damn high praise from me seeing as how despicable I find handheld camerawork in film (television is a bit different; I'm willing to cut it a bit more slack given the time and budget constraints). I just can't get over how fucking orgasmic every shot in this film is. And it's not even a very good film. Make a print from any single frame and you could hang it on your wall but I doubt there are very many people in whose DVD collection you'll find this one. I suppose it'll reside in mine but I'd almost rather watch it in silence.
That's not to say that there isn't some good stuff in the film. But it's an "adult" film. The sort of thing that critics like to say we need more of but that mostly just bore the shit out of everyone. All the leads give great performances. And the tone is creepy as all get out. But in the end, Enduring Love is more interested in its pat ruminations on the biological imperative towards love than it is in the visceral shock value of its stalker plot.
There's also the fact that Samantha Morton pisses me right the hell off. There are certain actors (or writers or directors or producers, I'm looking at you Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer) whose name on a film is a clear signal that this is a certain type of film. The genres may be different, the settings may change, even the tone may be different, but if you walk into a Kevin Costner film you know you're going to get some overly sentimental ode to living well in later life. And if you sit down to watch to a Clint Eastwood film you'd better be prepared for a quasi-spiritual meditation on death wrapped in a crowd-pleasing piece of populism. And then you have Samantha Morton who is always and unfailingly in a film that requires her to be long suffering and cut off from the world so she can hang her head and avert her eyes. Maybe, just maybe, she'll have a few moments of joy but everything must always be tempered with sadness because no film that features Samanatha Morton will ever fully embrace happiness 'cause the world's just so durn sad. If I happen to go into a film not realizing that she's in it (as I did Enduring Love), my heart sinks to find her big forehead and droopy eyes waiting to tell me how horrible the world is. Maybe that's unfair. Or maybe right now I'm just more interested in films that embrace the joy of storytelling. Or maybe she's just one of those people I don't like looking at. Whatever the reason, her presence makes the film that much harder to love and that's an additional hurdle this already overburdened film cannot clear.
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