MovieChat Forums > The End of the Affair (2000) Discussion > the brittish suffer from a poverty of de...

the brittish suffer from a poverty of desire

posted 18 years ago by dodgey_dan101
19 replies | jump to latest

FILM STUDIES - ASSIGNMENT: BRITISH FILM

DUE DATE: 27/29 MARCH 2006

Using the film "the end of the affair", discuss how british movies suggest that the british should "want more"

STRUCTURE: to answer this question, consider the following areas of discussion:

a) do you agree that this is the movies' message?
b) what "should" the central character(s) want more of?
c) is this seen to be desirable within the world of the movie?
d) does the central character(s) know what they want?
e) who appears to stop, or frustrate, the central character(s) desires? - is it particular characters or wider british society?

[–] depesando 16 years ago

First - you really need to find a better course, that is the most pitiful assignment I've ever seen, really poor.

then you need to remember that the film is based on a book - which came first, yourself, your tutor and many of the people on the board have forgotten this.

The book came first - needs to be seen in the context of the author, his life and other works, and the times in which it was written and read.

It is fiction.

You also need to do your own homework.

[–] pater-tenebrarum 8 years ago

The movie partly plays in 1946, just after the war. At that time, the main problem of the British was not a "poverty of desire". They voted in the socialists to run the country, which revealed the real problem: they were desirous of poverty. This was not something they should have wanted more of, and yet...
Later, in the waning days of the 1970s, they discovered that no-one would even collect the garbage anymore. At that point, the bizarre desire for poverty was finally abandoned.