Endless Life is a Northern
Irish independent film made on location in Belfast on a budget of £2,000. With
an emphasis on improvisation and open-ended resolutions, it recalls the work of
John Cassavetes, an oddly enduring influence throughout Ireland (see also: What Richard Did and Dollhouse). Where other locally produced films,
though undeniably admirable for getting made at all, have been less than
successful – Kieran Majury’s Deadville and Michael McNulty’s Toothbrush
– does Endless Life hold up in its own terms?
Eva (Karen Kinghan) is a young
woman who lives in Belfast with flatmate Claire. As Claire’s career and her
relationship with her boyfriend David become more serious, it becomes evident
that Eva, still very much interested in parties and drinking, will have to move
out. The prospect of a place opens up when her ex-boyfriend Will (played by
Michael MacBroom, the writer and director) returns from aboard. Eva and Will
had an acrimonious break-up following a miscarriage the year before and Eva’s
friends wonder if the rekindling of this relationship is the best thing for the
increasing hedonistic and directionless Eva.
Deadville and Toothbrush
failed primarily was in their inability to maintain a consistent tone. Deadville
had a few moments of surprisingly bleak drama that were ruined by some
really terrible masturbation gags and Toothbrush was all over the place.
Endless Life improves on these
two by its clear artistic purpose and by its seriousness, surprising since a
lot of the film seems to be improvised by the cast. MacBroom clearly wants to
make a film that will be taken seriously, not one that will merely amuse his
mates.
Endless Life is
essentially a portrait of a young Belfast woman on the verge of responsibility
– she knows she has a limited time left to emulate her student days before life
takes over. The obvious counterpoint is Claire, with her career, her fiancée
and her dinner parties in which the other guests are, significantly, older.
However, MacBroom is not such a dogmatic filmmaker and he does allow life’s
messiness into his fiction, since there is the much more ambiguous figure of
Eva’s best friend Liza – who has a job yet manages to match Eva almost drink
for drink. MacBroom does not offer any overt explanations for Eva’s behaviour and,
most refreshingly, does not make any judgements. When Will confronts Eva about
her lifestyle, it is difficult know why he is so angry or towards whom MacBroom
himself is most sympathetic. Endless
Life tries to tackle humanity as a
multifaceted and constantly fluctuating series of moods and desires, which are
often unpredictable, even somewhat unknowable. The film’s ambiguities are less
the result of a conscious stylistic choice and more a means of expressing the
complexities of life. Never clear-cut, Claire’s dinner party, for example, is
played for laughs but throughout maintains a degree of uneasiness and an
underlying sadness. Meanwhile, a scenic holiday ends up being so
self-consciously romantic that it becomes awkward, almost bitter.
This leads us to the main flaw in Endless Life, or,
possibly, as in Cassavetes, where a second viewing will help most – the film
becomes so ambiguous as to be rather vague. Will shifts from not expecting
anything from Eva (though this is hard to believe even as he says it) to
complaining about her disregard of him much too fast. There are two scenes in
which this shift can be seen to be developing, in which Will talks to a friend
who acts as his sounding board, but they are fairly inexpressive. Similarly,
the film’s ending is a little too open, with too many inferences cancelling
each other out, leaving it feeling unintentionally meaningless. Endless Life may have been better if it had been longer, having the benefit of more
time to develop. That said, MacBroom finishes with a nice little touch of
wiping the protagonist off the screen just before the end, of which Antonioni
(see Blow-Up, L’eclisse and The Passenger) would have
approved. The only other flaw, fairly minor, was technical – the sound levels
were set much too high, making Eva’s laughter hurt the ear and the closing of a
car boot sound like an explosion.
Endless Life is an
ambitious and serious film by a local independent filmmaker who has proved
himself to be someone to watch. It is great to see that, in Northern Ireland,
there is an independent voice to counter the disappointingly mainstream Jump and Good Vibrations, especially one that is open to the
complexities of real life instead of generic or post-modern references. I look
forward to his next film and wish him luck with it.
Endless Life was screened as part of the
Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and now has a website.
See also: Husbands
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