THE END OF THE AFFAIR read by Colin FIRTH

the voices is profoundly subjective you know this is not dispassionate narration this is a man experiencing fevered conflicts with himself he's in he's in he's an argument with himself all the time and he doesn't know everything about his own narrative we we have it revealed in a very interesting way he the opening lines of the book draw attention to the fact that you know a story doesn't have to have a conventional trajectory from a beginning to an end you know sometimes you just come into the middle which is in a way where we find bendrix he knows that his lover has mysteriously left him and we find him in great pain but he doesn't yet know why so we have Graham Greene using direct vendrick's the narrator who knows a lot more than we do and who knows a lot more than bendrix the character at this point so we come in at that point and so it is we come in at a very subjective point at which certain things are not yet revealed it's not only a an absolutely fascinating glimpse at the world through the eyes of somebody who was living through London during World War two he's also I think somehow brings us up close to how much of human experience is not specific to London and World War two I think almost in a more immediate and valuable way than if one were reading it at the time you have jealousy human emotion suspicion wrestling with the probabilities and in probabilities of religion the ceremonies of marriage and death registry offices crematoriums Catholic ceremonies secular ceremonies those things are still argued about I think about 90% of what he's really talking about is still alive this is a first-person incomplete confusion in the grip of something and I was fascinated by that as an actor because what we do is by by virtue of our job description is to inhabit characters is to attempt to immerse ourselves in a subjective point of view and this invites that not just with bendrix but obviously with Sarah bendrix really is talking in a very visceral way to us he's his the grammar is often rather eccentric just because his thought process is green allows the thought processes to to Peter out there are endless parentheses and parentheses within parentheses and digressions and you you have to you have to follow those with an emotional engagement because it is emotion that's that is often diverted his thought process I think you have to bring yourself but you also have to guard against yourself it's a paradoxical exercise you can start off thinking I have nothing in common with this character I have nothing in common with this world I know nothing about this story it's hopeless and then you start to dig a little bit and you use you find that there are connecting points and little tiny bits of this person's experience with which you overlap and then they start to get stronger and stronger and you often find yourself in a journey where you think I've got everything in common with this person a few of the superficial details might be different but actually he's me in the service or source material you have to use our pits in some way there has to come a point when you leave it behind and say I'm sorry this was mr. green it's not yours anymore just for the moment it's it's entirely mine I've observed it I've absorbed it I've done as much as I can to to digest it and now I have to be bendrix for a while I have to be Seraph for a while you just got to jump in and do it in the way you you visualize you've got a great help in the sense that you're your visual world is your own you're your stimuli are are perfectly realized if you want them to be a film set I mean if you walk onto a film set and you look at a perfectly lit set looking this way you'll see a very nicely composed picture with period costumes and all the rest of its not what I'm looking at I'm looking it I'm looking at technicians lamps machines and it's a big challenge for me my imaginative world is is not a you know is interfered with and the things I'm looking at are of no help it's actually a lot easier in the theatre when you're looking at at a uniform blackness and in on the fourth wall and a film set it's its ghastly or people are moving about in front of you it's brightly lit everything's out of sequence you're doing it in tiny little snippets you never get any momentum going you never get a run at anything when you're reading you've got all that on your side so in fact all those things you're talking about on a film set aren't necessarily that helpful to your imagination yes a costume might help yes a location might help but there's an awful lot conspiring against you when I sit down in front of the microphone I'm free to dream with audiobooks I think one of the things I relish most is hearing a voice which is authentically and profoundly connected to the culture you're hearing there now actors make changes I mean we have to be able to do that you have to be able to accept an actor's skill in transforming if they have that skill but there's no greater pleasure for me for it than for instance hearing Brendan Gleeson reading Roddy Doyle I couldn't do that I couldn't sound like I came from that very specific part of Dublin and I revealed Roddy Doyle to me I mean I loved what he taught already but that opened him up to me and I can't read Roddy door now without hearing those voices which were the voices he intended for it so I think it's a great gift to have an interpreter give you that you know I am not an Englishman of the 1940s but I'm not that far from it you know my father would have been the age of parkas boy when this story was written and I know this sounds well enough I think and I think that when you start to hear a voice you are getting information and if the voice is off and if it's misjudged then you will start to get the wrong information it'll it'll it'll throw you off the game it'll divert you from what the writers trying to say so you know you it is in the nuance all you can really do is let it take you where it's going to take you it in the end this is just my interpretation a story has no beginning or end arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead I say one chooses with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who when he has been seriously noted at all has been praised for his technical ability but do i in fact of my own free will choose that black wet January night on the common in 1946 the sight of Henry miles slanting across the wide river of rain or did these images choose me a story has no beginning or end arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead I say chooses with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who when he has been seriously noted at all has been praised for his technical ability but do I in fact of my own free will choose that black wet January night on the common in 1946 the sight of Henry miles slanting across the wide river of rain what did these images choose me hate is not two larger terms used in relation to any human being I hate it Henry I hated his wife Sarah too and he I suppose came soon after the events of that evening to hate me how can I make a stranger see her as she stopped in the hall at the foot of the stairs and turned to us I have never been able to describe even my fictitious characters except by their actions it has always seemed to me that in a novel the reader should be allowed to imagine a character in any way he chooses I do not want to supply him with ready-made illustrations now I am betrayed by my own technique for I do not want any other woman substituted for Sarah now I am betrayed by my own technique for I do not want any other woman substituted for Sarah I want the reader to see the one broad forehead the bold mouth the conformation sculpt but all I can convey is an indeterminate figure turning in the dripping Mackintosh saying yes Henry and then you she had always called me you is that you on the telephone can you will you do you so that I imagined like a fool for a few minutes at a time there was only one you in the world and that was me she had always called me you is that you on the telephone can you will you do you so that I imagined like a fool for a few minutes at a time there was only one you in the world and that was me he put down his glass and said Bendrick I had absolutely no right I'm paying all the charges its infernal cheek you stood up but I had impend where he couldn't get past without an act of violence and violence wasn't in Henry's character and surely I'd have liked her clearer I said there was nothing to care I want to go please I think you ought to read the report I have no intention then I think I'll have to read you the bit about the surreptitious visits her love letter I returned to the detectives for filing My dear Henry you've been properly led up the garden sometimes I longed to have it out with you like we're doing now and it's too late I wanted to tell you what I thought of you what did you think that you were her pimp you pimped for me you pimped for them and now you're pimping for the latest one the eternal pimp why don't you get angry Henry I never knew you pimped with your ignorance you pimped by never learning how to make love with her so she had to look elsewhere you pimp by giving opportunities you pimped by being a bore and a fool so now somebody who isn't a bore and a fool is playing about with her in Cedar Road hate and suspicion and envy had driven me so far away that I read her words like a declaration of love from a stranger I had expected plenty of evidence against her and I so often caught her out in Lies and now here in writing that I could believe as I couldn't believe her voice was the complete answer for it was the last couple of pages I read first and I read them again at the end to make sure it's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love for February in 1946 two days ago I had such a sense of peace and quiet and love life was going to be happy again but last night I dreamed I was walking up a long staircase to meet Morris at the top I was still happy because when I reached the top of the staircase we were going to make love I called to him that I was coming but it wasn't Morris's voice that answered it was the strangers that boomed like a foghorn mourning lost ships and scared me I thought first I would look for that day in June 1944 when everything ended and after that after I had discovered the reason for that there were many other dates from which I could learn exactly checking them with my diary how it was that her love had petered out [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: FIRTH FIRST

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Rating: 4.9470901 out of 5

Keywords: Colin FIRTH

Id: hcMlzJTKTxo

Length: 15min 22sec (922 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 22 2016