The Sense of a Never-Ending Delusion

Abstract

Julian Barnes in his novel The Sense of an Ending (2011) depicts an old man who is confronting some instances of his young age. In the process of remembering, he is dealing with the unreliability of his memory. This is both because of the nature of memories and some buried realities of his narrative. The film adaptation of the novel released with the same title The Sense of an Ending (2017), directed by Ritesh Batra and written by Nick Payne, represents sections from the past and the present of this man, Tony Webster, who tries to revalue his life by telling his life story. The film adaptation of the novel presents the subjective narrative of Tony through certain flashbacks, which carry significant traces of some annoying memories. The film adaptation keeps the novel’s concerns about old age including some deviations within the plotline, yet it also contributes to the evaluation process of the slippery recollection of the memories that are shaping the present self of the mature individual. In this article, the film The Sense of an Ending adapted from Julian Barnes’s novel that visualises the traces of a traumatic incident causing the old protagonist to re-evaluate his life will be elaborated on.

Keywords

• Julian Barnes
• memory
• film adaptation
• old age
• The Sense of an Ending

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