Review: The Sense of an Ending

Film adaptations are never as good as the book, are they? At best, the film makers have cast someone who doesn't quite look how you imagined the character. At worst? It's a horrible mess.

The Sense of An Ending is a competently made and well performed retelling of the key events of Barnes' book.  But it misses the point completely.

The book is a slightly jumbled series of half-remembered vignettes distorted by time, and protagonist's nostalgia and longing. It captures the mentality of the different life stages of boy and man well. Slowly, actually quite quickly as it's a short book, the picture becomes clearer.

Here Broadbent's character just comes across as implausibly, wilfully forgetful. That's partly a problem of pace, but also the visual nature of film.

Verdict: Cautionary tale.