The End of the Affair: Collector's Edition (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Dolby Digital Trailer-City Theatrical Trailer Audio Commentary-Neil Jordan (Director) Audio Commentary-Julianne Moore (Actor) Featurette-Making Of Biographies-Cast & Crew Isolated Musical Score
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	97:29
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (53:54)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Neil Jordan
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Ralph Fiennes Julianne Moore Stephen Rea Ian Hart Jason Isaacs
Case	Brackley-Trans-No Lip
RPI	$39.95	Music	Michael Nyman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Isolated Music Score Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English German Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Swedish Turkish German Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary German Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This portrayal of a war-time romance is actually a rather gloomy piece, with few smiles to be had by the characters or the audience. The set design and costumes, however, are magnificent to behold. They effortlessly transported me into the story, and thus I found myself walking the streets of war-torn England with the characters.

    For those of you who have seen Interview With The Vampire, you should recognize the actor who plays Henry Miles (Stephen Rea). He is a conventional man who appears to have little or no sexual passion for his beautiful wife Sarah Miles (Julianne Moore), despite loving her intensely. We first meet Henry walking in the rain without an umbrella. Enter Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes), who also happens to be walking in the rain this night, but who has had the sense to take an umbrella with him. Not surprisingly, we soon learn that Henry was miserable even before he went out walking in the rain and got drenched to the bone. Henry believes his wife is having an affair, but he does not have the courage to hire a detective to find out for sure. Bendrix offers to hire a detective - "I could pretend to be a jealous lover. Jealous lovers are less ridiculous than jealous husbands". On the surface this seems to be an offer of kindness, but in fact Bendrix's real motives are far more selfish - he wants to find out who Sarah (his former mistress) left him for.

    Since Sarah left Bendrix approximately two years ago, he has become bitter and hateful. Through the unfolding story we learn that he was always a jealous lover while they were together. This was primarily because Sarah would not leave her husband (Henry) to be with him, even though they loved each other dearly.

    At first we only see the affair through Bendrix's eyes, but later on we start to see the affair through Sarah's eyes too. This is beautifully done, as we get to see the same scenes from both perspectives. Eventually, we found out why Sarah left Bendrix, even through she loved him so much she thought she would wither and die without him!

    Early on in the movie you get a pretty good idea of how this movie is going to end ((SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) which is badly - romantically speaking - but you may have already guessed this already). Strangely, this does not seem to detract from the story. There aren't any big surprises in this movie, but the story is presented in such a wonderful way that it kept me interested throughout.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is extremely clear with an excellent amount of foreground detail. At 2:03, I gasped in amazement at the extraordinary amount of detail contained in a close-up of Ralph Fiennes' face. The background detail tends to be softer, but I imagine that this is due to the style of photography that was used during filming. A number of scenes have a surprising lack of deep black. This is almost certainly due to the way these scenes were filmed. This lack of deep black was not distracting or detrimental to the picture quality, it was just something that I found to be unusual about this particular movie's presentation. No low-level noise, excessive edge enhancement or edge bleeding was noticed.

    Overall the colour is excellent. Many of the outdoor scenes used a slightly muted colour palette, which I imagine is in keeping with colours of the 1940s. This for me created such a look of realism that I found myself transported back to England with the characters. Perfect skin tones and deep reds and blues are plonked smack dab in the middle of all of this drabness. The overall effect was so realistic that many scenes became breathtaking to behold.

    There was no grain or pixelization that I could put my finger on, but I got the distinct feeling that it was there...somewhere.

    No MPEG artefacts were noticed. No aliasing was noticed, either. Film artefacts were very rare, with just a handful of small specks noticed.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring between Chapters 17 and 18, at 53:54 on a scene change. This is an excellently placed and executed layer change. I was only just able to detect it while watching the movie and actually had to go back to confirm that it indeed was the layer change and not just my imagination.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    I would like to praise Columbia Tristar for using the superior 448Kb/s audio stream, instead of a more standard 384Kb/s audio stream.

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout the entire movie, except for one occasion where Julianne Moore is whispering at 86:50.

    No audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer. No distortion or over-compression was heard, either.

    Michael Nyman's musical score suited the movie well, and the theme song in particular eloquently portrayed the movie's sombre tone.

    The surround channels were predominantly used for music and ambience with the occasional directional effect. There are also quite a few scenes where the surround channels are used to great effect - 31:17, 45:27, 46:18 (best) and 55:25. For much of the movie the sound is subtly enveloping, with excellent placement within the sound stage.

    The subwoofer has little to do for most of this movie, with just the odd occasion where it is used to add some impact to the soundtrack, like when the buzz bombs are exploding. Given the content and the genre of this movie, the limited but perfectly integrated .1 LFE channel use is more than adequate.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Theatrical Trailer (1:38 minutes)

Featurette - Making Of (6:58 minutes)

Talent Profiles

Commentary - Neil Jordan (Director)

Commentary - Julianne Moore (Actor)

Isolated Musical Score

• Trailer for The Remains Of The Day
• Additional Pan & Scan version

• Nothing

    The video quality is superb.

    The audio quality is excellent.

    There is quite a good selection of extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall