This week on MovieJawn, we are celebrating our favorite movies that turned 25 this year. All week long we are going to Party Like It’s 1999!

by Fiona Underhill, Staff Writer

The ‘90s were a very strong decade for period dramas–my favorite movie genre–and of course, the stellar year of 1999 was no exception to this, with Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley of course being the cream of the crop. Well-regarded and award-winning American period dramas released that year also included Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, James Mangold’s Girl Interrupted, Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile, Lasse Hallstrom’s The Cider House Rules, Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry, Norman Jewison’s The Hurricane, and Ang Lee’s Ride with the Devil.

As one of the few British writers (and with an Irish family background) here at MovieJawn, I always like to represent lesser-known British and Irish films, so from 1999  I want to shout out Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy, William Boyd’s vastly underrated WWI drama The Trench (starring Daniel Craig), Alan Parker’s Angela’s Ashes, Oliver Parker’s Oscar Wilde adaptation An Ideal Husband, and Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park (one of the best Jane Austen adaptations of all time, starring Frances O’Connor as Fanny Price). Interestingly, O’Connor herself went on to direct one of the best films of 2023–Emily, about Emily Bronte. But after Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley, the second-best period drama release of 1999 was a film very rarely ever discussed today–Neil Jordan’s Graham Greene adaptation The End of the Affair. 

Jordan’s film has a lot in common with Minghella’s deserved Best Picture winner, The English Patient (1996). The End of the Affair stars Ralph Fiennes as Maurice Bendrix, a man who shares many traits with his doomed protagonist of The English Patient. Bendrix is obsessed with a married woman, this time played by Julianne Moore, and is possessive and jealous. Set during the London Blitz of WWII, the lovers take advantage of the air raid sirens so Sarah (Moore) can steal away from her husband Henry (Stephen Rea, in one of his many collaborations with Neil Jordan). They dread the “all clear” signal, as this means Sarah must return home.

The film is mainly narrated by Bendrix, writing in his “Diary of Hate,” but in the second half of the film, we are re-shown scenes that we’ve already seen from Sarah’s perspective, via her own diary. Henry suspects that his wife is having an affair, but is torn as to whether to hire a detective to find out definitively. He reaches out to his friend Bendrix, who then hires the detective himself to discover if she has a new lover, and if this is why she inexplicably stopped seeing him two years previously. The wonderful British actor Ian Hart plays the detective Parkis, who uses his young son to aid him, and Parkis and Bendrix strike up an unlikely friendship.

Unsurprisingly, as Ralph Fiennes is currently on his way to maybe finally winning an Oscar for the highly entertaining Conclave, Fiennes’ central performance is the main highlight of The End of the Affair. Bendrix is highly flawed, but Fiennes can’t help but captivate us with his mesmerizing eyes and unpredictable line deliveries. When Bendrix sees Sarah again, after the two year absence, his barely concealed disgust mixed with longing, the hurt of betrayal, and the urge to reach out to her are all brilliantly communicated in just a few gestures by Fiennes–such as recoiling his hand away from her grasp, or turning his face away when she tries to politely shake his hand before leaving.

Aside from Fiennes, the film’s other biggest strength is Michael Nyman’s heart-wrenching score. Nyman’s 90s film scores are one of the all-time great works of art in any medium. He is best-known for 1993’s The Piano, but Carrington, Gattaca, Ravenous and especially Wonderland are all essential for both film and music lovers. Nyman’s score is present from the opening second of The End of the Affair, adding urgency and propulsion to Fiennes’ narration of the “Diary of Hate.” Tracks such as “Jealous of the Rain” are softer and more lyrical, and “Diary of Love” has a poignancy and regret, as Bendrix comes to fully understand Sarah and the reason she broke off the affair.

Any film that has a Michael Nyman score and also features costumes by the great Sandy Powell is always going to be a favorite of mine, and worth anyone’s time. Julianne Moore’s hats and coats are fantastic throughout, as are her shoes (which we get a good look at in the first love-making scene). Her accessories, such as art nouveau and art deco earrings, and fur stoles also signify her class, as the wife of a reliably stiff upper-lipped, but deadening and stultifying civil servant. Her color palette is mainly rusty oranges and dark wine reds, which compliment Moore’s red hair in much the same way as Powell dressed her character in Todd Haynes’ 1950s-set Far From Heaven (2002).

Irish writer-director Neil Jordan is best-known for the critically-acclaimed gritty crime dramas Mona Lisa (1986) and The Crying Game (1992), as well as his sumptuous gothic horror movies The Company of Wolves (1984) and Interview with the Vampire (1994). The End of the Affair certainly seems like a departure from his other work, but both his writing (in adapting Greene’s semi-autobiographical novel) and directing are to be commended for elevating this from a stuffy war-set drama. It’s a complex narrative, and the interweaving of the main timeframes juxtaposes the start of an affair, the end of the affair, and the rekindling of the affair. 

The restaurant scene, which occurs at the 20-minute mark of The End of the Affair, is probably the best example of both Moore and Fiennes’ performances, but also Jordan’s direction. The camera begins behind a glass partition to the left of Moore’s back, and then pans to the right, coming out from behind the partition to the side of the table, framing the estranged lovers in a two-shot. Moore is to the extreme left and Fiennes to the extreme right of the frame, with the table seeming like a huge expanse separating them. The camera continues to pan and ends up behind Fiennes’ shoulder. When Sarah begins to cough, only then do we get a close-up of Fiennes’ cold eyes starting to betray Bendrix’s true emotions. As she leaves, Bendrix has to politely accept a menu from the waiter, despite him clearly wanting to shout, scream, and chase after Sarah.

It is criminal that The End of the Affair is largely forgotten now, 25 years after its release, largely because it happened to come out in such a strong era for period dramas, and got lost in the shuffle. It absolutely is a highlight of both Fiennes’ and Moore’s careers, even when they both have such strong filmographies. The combination of Neil Jordan, Michael Nyman, and Sandy Powell along with the quality of the cast, all coming together to interpret a writer of the caliber of Graham Greene makes this an essential work which deserves far more attention. If you love films such as Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea (2011), as of course you should, then you should absolutely discover the sumptuous heartbreak of The End of the Affair.