

"He was bound to die saving someone," she says. She doesn't seem as grief-stricken as she should.


Logan ( Helen McCrory), widow of the dead doctor. The movie's questions about love take a turn when Joe goes to visit Mrs.

Such people take such small talk literally, and convince themselves you have made promises or, worse, sent them a coded message. The character of Jed is nicely modulated by Rhys Ifans in the early scenes, he's the kind of man you instinctively know you want to get away from, but you nod and are polite and agree in a perfunctory way to whatever they're saying, while edging away and hoping never to see them again. The movie, directed by Roger Michell, has been adapted by Joe Penhall from a novel by Ian McEwan it begins with ethical issues and then gradually descends into thriller material. And meanwhile, the specter of Jed and Joe's haunting doubts about the death of the doctor create a tortured space between Joe and Claire. But what can Joe do? He warns him away, he tries to elude him, he changes his daily patterns. He exists at the intersection of religious hysteria and erotomania, and confuses God's love with his own sudden love for Joe. "You know what passed between us," he tells Joe. He feels it is urgent that they know each other better. He is there when Joe visits the Tate Modern. He stands in the park across from Joe's home. His experience in the field undermines all he thinks he knows about such matters, and his classroom manner grows odd and tortured. Joe teaches a university class on love and ethics, and asks his students if love is real and ethics have meaning. Was he the one? When one let go, all had to let go if all had held on, he believes, the balloon would have returned to earth and the doctor would not have died. Joe becomes obsessed by which of the men was first to let go of a rope. The balloon landed safely the small boy was safe. The man who held on too long, he learns, was a doctor who happened on the scene entirely by fate. He is haunted by what happened in the field. We follow Joe home, where he is a university lecturer, and his girlfriend Claire ( Samantha Morton) is a sculptor. Joe explains that he does not much believe in prayer. This is Jed ( Rhys Ifans), stringy-haired, skin and bones, with an intensity that is off-putting. The others run through fields to the body of the dead man, and then one of the other survivors kneels down and asks Joe ( Daniel Craig) to join him in prayer. It literally shows death appearing from out of a clear blue sky. This opening scene in "Enduring Love" is implacable in its simplicity.
