An Unexamined Life, Examined And Re-Examined: 'The Sense Of An Ending'

An Unexamined Life, Examined And Re-Examined: 'The Sense Of An Ending' Enlarge this image toggle caption Robert Viglasky/CBS Films Robert Viglasky/CBS Films The quietly momentous film The Sense of an Ending began life as a sublimely achy short novel by British writer Julian Barnes about an apparently unremarkable man with the aptly flavorless name of Tony Webster. Still, with playwright Nick Payne's respectful screenplay, Batra has made an absorbing, if somewhat stolid movie that's saved by a stellar cast led by Jim Broadbent, for whom the part of Tony might have been written — and not just because the actor can do cranky in his sleep. Governed by habit and low-level hostility to the many who annoy him with uncalled-for civility and friendliness, Tony's humdrum existence is rudely interrupted by a letter bearing news of a death that leaves him gifted with the diary of a fellow student who had dated Tony's former girl friend, Veronica, and committed suicide soon after. Where Barnes artfully stretches and collapses time to reflect how little memory has in common with chronology, Batra sticks with conventional flashbacks to carry us back to a key weekend that young Tony spent at Veronica's posh country seat, and where her twitchy, alluring mother issues a warning that he misconstrues with, he now learns, disastrous results.