In “The Sense Of An Ending,” Jim Broadbent is Tony, a man in his late 60s who owns a little camera shop in London. One day, he finds out that an old friend has died and left Tony a diary.
This makes Tony think of his youth, when he spent lots of time with his friend at boarding school, and we flashback to see him getting involved with a woman named Veronica. They spent some time together, but she eventually left him. He ended up marrying someone else, who he’s now divorced from, but he’s always thought of Veronica. Now it turns out that she’s the one who has the diary, and she won’t give it to him. That’s about all the conflict you get out of this drudgery.
Veronica is played by Charlotte Rampling, who (for no good reason) was nominated in 2015 for an Oscar for her role in the similarly boring “45 Years.” I never got the whole Charlotte Rampling thing, all the way back to “The Verdict,” and I didn’t care about Tony or Veronica or anyone else in this movie — which should have been called “46 Years.”
When you name your movie “The Sense Of An Ending,” you leave yourself wide open to easy shots from critics. For example, I wish this movie actually had an ending. Or, I was worried that it would never end. Or, sitting through this made me wish I’d lost my senses of sight and hearing.
You get the sense I didn’t like it? You’re right. I give it a 2 on a scale of 10.