Brief Encounter- the film

[Orangesandlemons77]

We watched this film on TV last night. DH confided in me he used to watch it years ago, over and over and had been in tears over it.

To be honest I didn't really like it. A bit boring. All about an emotional affair between two random people in the 1940s who meet in a train station and go to the pictures etc despite having husbands / wives and children at home.

It just went on and on and then finishes with them saying goodbye and her crying in the arms of her husband who she has been lying to throughout.

AIBU?

Bore off will you?

I didn’t say boiled meat, potato and rhubarb pie, so check your own grammar.

@FinallyHere

IIRC the supposed gay subtext was purported as a theory by a french critic or french audiences as they just couldn't understand why Alec and Laura didn't do the deed at the friend's apartment, so I think they thought the sexual attraction was between the friend and Alec and he came back early on purpose. I could be wrong but I think I remember that on a documentary.

It's one of my favourite films. I am fascinated by how different things were less than a century ago.

I think it was just a joke.

I absolutely love that film.

So did I.

@BusMumsHolidayI so agree. Love BE and Age of innocence has a similar theme though set decades earlier. The last scene when Newland Archer 'returns to his hotel alone' gets me every time. He know he can never recapture his lost love and though he never quite lived his best life, he did the right thing in returning to May. Duty versus passion again.

I can’t bear James Stewart. I’m always trying to analyse the reason - my sister loves him.

If anyone agrees and can throw light on this feeling, I’d be grateful. I’m usually pretty good at working out why I don’t like a performer.

I love this film, it’s one of my all time favourites. I love the accents, the clothes, everything.

He has this “aww shucks” way of acting that can be endearing but it could definitely be that which annoys people. Like he acts a bit stupider or slower than he is.

Thanks - and I think this is part of it. He was no slouch academically (Princeton graduate in architecture) but yes, he has a dumb, slow-witted acting persona which winds me up. His characters typically say “Why, just a minute!” before any utterance.

My unhappy grandmother was meant to marry my grandfather's best friend. Not an suspicious start. He went off to America to make his fortune and intended to come back for her. He asked grandfather to look after her for him. Classic mistake.

Things didn't get off to a good start, day GF went back to work after the wedding he was eating his breakfast and told her she could have anything she wanted she just had to ask, she'd left her job on marriage as was expected.

He got back home and was eating his dinner when she announced she could have what she wanted without asking as she'd got her job back. Apparently he wasn't impressed but it didn't last, within a year she was the mother of twins and trapped.

It was never meant to be was it.

I remember seeing him being on a chat show, maybe Parkinson. He seemed such a lovely man. If I remember his wife was with him. I remember him talking about his service jn the war, he joined the air force and was an officer.

He seemed like a genuinely nice man.

I absolutely think he was- it’s just his acting persona and the All-American roles he typically played.

Yes, similar story for me. I can't watch it now.
Oh, don't ever watch Bridges of Madison County😥

@TheignT it was very unusual for a woman to carry on working outside the home,.... it sounds as though she always wanted to wait for the chap in America but it didn't end up doing so. She must've thought 'what if'? a fair bit.

Why ask for the moon when we can have the stars...
Love now Voyager

Railway stations are very poignant places - places of goodbyes, exciting meetings and reunions etc. Airports too, I guess, but stations are more romantic. I think the steam trains helped!

I don't think the film is approving of emotional affairs at all. I love how it draws us from the early days, when the new friendship is bright and innocent and Laura actually tells her husband she met a nice man, through the development to a chaste romance and then to them being on the verge of becoming sexual, where the entry of an outside observer suddenly reveals them as tipping into the tawdry, and makes them feel sickened with themselves.

I love, love, love how the husband is gentle and understanding, and happy to live with his own uncertainty in order to preserve his marriage. I think we are meant to sympathise with Laura's boredom with her routine life, and with the excitement of falling for Alec, and for her decision to rebuild life with her husband and children. It is gently understanding rather than righteous. It is happy to paddle in moral ambiguity.

Of course, this was written in 1945 by a gay man, who certainly understood the pains and pleasures of secret love. That gives it an extra layer, a depth. And of course the music is amazing.

@Orangesandlemons77 YABU - sorry OP, but I'm also with your DH on this one and I love this film. I met my DH on a train (when they were still the slam-door variety) so it might have a particular resonance for me, but our encounter wasn't that "brief" - 44 years and still counting ...! 😍

Quite - it’s about real life as opposed to romantic fantasy. Lots of people’s relationships are a bit dull but life is complicated and nuanced - it’s rarely a simple case of ‘I’ve met someone I fancy more so I’m ditching the family without a backwards glance ’.

I think if they had got together it might have been dull eventually.

Isn't part of the excitement that you shouldn't be having lunch/going to the cinema together?

I'm team DH, it's a lovely film. Must be about time I watched it again.

But life is so different nowadays. Back then, when divorce was a disgrace to the entire family people often had to choose between their own personal happiness and the 'reputation' of themselves and their family.

Yes and also if the wife left she automatically lost custody of the children and her ex-husband could prevent her seeing them until they were 18. That was a powerful motivation not to leave.

@Ketzelethats such an important point about being written by a gay man in that time.