The Sense of an Ending is an intelligent and thought-provoking adaptation of Julian Barnes’s novel of the same name, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Director Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox) and screenwriter Nick Payne (Constellations) have created a sensitive film that is very different from Barnes’s elegantly nuanced novel but remains faithful to its central themes of history and memory.

The film stars Jim Broadbent (Iris, Gangs of New York, Moulin Rouge!) in the central role of Tony Webster, a dour and cautious divorced man in his sixties, whose younger self is played by Billy Howle in his screen début. In an unexpected bequest, Tony receives a diary and £500 from Sarah Ford (Emily Mortimer), the mother of an old girlfriend of his, Veronica Ford (Freya Mavor). After their relationship ended forty years ago, Veronica ‘traded up’ with his old school friend, Adrian Finn (Joe Alwyn), who died soon afterwards. Tony sets out to locate Veronica (Charlotte Rampling), who is in charge of Adrian’s diary. When they meet again, Tony realises that Veronica is still as ‘mysterious to the fault’ as she was when they knew each other. In lieu of the diary, she gives him a photocopy of a letter he sent her and Adrian all those years ago. This evidence of what he is, or was, like engenders powerful emotions and forces Tony to confront his flawed recollections of pain and pleasure. His younger self has, in a sense, returned to shock his older self, causing him profound remorse.