Sara Myles (Julianne Moore).
From "The End of The Affair" (1999).
Screenplay by Neil Jordan, from the
Novel by Graham Greene.
I rarely quote movies on this blog (I have a different blog for that); but with such a well written script, I love to quote these characters. Now, the movie is different from the novel, but both are excellent, I think...and author Graham Green says that his book was based on something that actually happened to him.
Could having an affair cause someone to begin believing in God? Even if you're an Atheist?
(spoiler alert).
Sara and Henry have been wed for ten years. Henry is fond of Sara and comfortable. Sara is compliant and sensitive, but dying for something more. Maurice Bendrix is a writer who's wanting to "study" Henry for a piece he's working on. He's invited to a drinks party, and at the end of the evening, an affair has begun with Sara. One of Bendrix's books has been made into a movie. Bendrix offers to take Henry and Sara, but Henry, being too busy with his work, tells his friend to take Sara instead. Here is the love Sara has always wanted...but she belongs to someone else. In the middle of WW2, ravaged by bombs, the two see each other in secret. When a bomb hits the house where the couple is staying, Bendrix is knocked unconscious and almost killed. Sara, in complete panic runs downstairs and tries to revive him, but cannot. Being sure he is dead, in a desperate effort to save him, she runs back upstairs, drops to her knees, and prays to a God she has never known. She tells God that she promises never to see her love again, if his life could only be spared.
At that moment, Bendrix, cut, bruised and bleeding comes up the stairs behind her and says her name!
"Oh my God...You're alive??"
"You sound disappointed."
"You're hurt."
She gets up off the floor and comes to wipe his bloody forehead with a rag. But he takes hold of her hand and puts it down at her side...
"What were you doing on the floor?"
"Praying."
"To what?"
"To anything that might exist."
Sara quickly dresses, while explaining that she'd prayed for a miracle. Bendrix is confused. Why was she in such a hurry to leave him? She'd made a promise. Of course, the love of her life does not know that... and he is left thinking that she really does not care about him. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
Sometimes, we must do without the one thing we want the most, because God desires that we desire him. What a mystery to think of God "emptying" us of the things that would seem to bring us closer to him. The neat thing is that we get to see Him fill the "space" he creates with something else that is much better for us. Wow!
