Laura (Johnson) and Alex (Howard) are both happily married. She is a housewife; he, an ambitious doctor. But after a chance meeting together as they wait for trains to their respective homes (in opposite directions) they discover a strong connection between them that soon turns to love. It is only on her once-weekly visits to town that they can meet, for lunch, an afternoon visit to the pictures, or perhaps a jaunt to the country. It's an affair, but with none of the sordid connotations that now have come to be understood with that word.
Every single stage of the relationship is charted with exceptional delicacy and attention to detail. Lean does not palm off the viewers with cliches or frivolity; Laura is pained throughout - she has a husband she loves and in falling for Alec, she knows that she is in essence doing something underhand and dirty, however virtuous and 'right' she may feel it is. The twist to the telling is added through a simple device: Laura narrates the entire story, in her head, as a monologue to her husband, Fred. She wishes she could talk to the one person who would give her reasonable and well-considered advice. Of course, he is the one person she can never tell of her love for Alec.
Brief Encounter strikes at such core questions concerning love: do we only have one true love? can we, perfectly happy and contented, fall out of love because of another? is choosing passion over stability intrinsically irresponsible for the modern person? Brief Encounter is built around its time, a time when women's freedoms were very much more restricted, and indeed the idea of divorce far from many couples' minds. But the ideas seem timeless; the risk of falling for someone else, the pressures forced upon us by a relationship, and perhaps most importantly, the unbearable pain associated with love where there are strings attached.
A wonderful, touching, agonising film.
***
1945
Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard
Dir. David Lean
No comments:
Post a Comment