Tough choices haunt 'Enduring Love'

In a grassy, sunlit field, the lovers Joe and Claire spread out their picnic lunch and open a bottle of champagne. Just then a hot air balloon appears in the sky. It drifts down and lands, and a man jumps out, leaving a small boy inside. A gust of wind catches the balloon. The man tries to hold it down with a rope, but it is away. Joe runs to grab at another rope. Other men appear and grab ropes, but the balloon inexorably rises. One by one, the men let go and fall safely to earth. One hangs on too long, past the point of no return. As the other stare silently at the long, quiet ascent of the balloon, this man hangs on as long as he can, and then he falls to earth, and is shattered.

This opening scene in "Enduring Love" is implacable in its simplicity. It literally shows death appearing from out of a clear blue sky. 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. This is Jed (Rhys Ifans), stringy-haired, skin and bones, with an intensity that is off-putting. Joe explains that he does not much believe in prayer. Jed implores him.

We follow Joe home, where he is a university lecturer, and his girlfriend Claire (Samantha Morton) is a sculptor. He is haunted by what happened in the field. The man who held on too long, he learns, was a doctor who happened on the scene entirely by fate. The balloon landed safely; the small boy was safe. The doctor died unnecessarily. Joe becomes obsessed by which of the men was first to let go of a rope. 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. "We let him down," Joe tells Claire.

Joe teaches a university class on love and ethics, and asks his students if love is real and ethics have meaning. His experience in the field undermines all he thinks he knows about such matters, and his classroom manner grows odd and tortured. There is another problem. Jed starts to stalk him. He stands in the park across from Joe's home. He is there when Joe visits the Tate Modern. He feels it is urgent that they know each other better. "You know what passed between us," he tells Joe. "Love -- God's love. It was a sign."

Jed is clearly mad. He exists at the intersection of religious hysteria and erotomania, and confuses God's love with his own sudden love for Joe. But what can Joe do? He warns him away, he tries to elude him, he changes his daily patterns. 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.

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. 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. Such people take such small talk literally, and convince themselves you have made promises or, worse, sent them a coded message.