At first review, David Lean’s A Brief Encounter follows the affair of a 40’s housewife, Laura, to demonstrate the tear between a restrictive domestic life and an escape for something controversial. Such a reading is rather flat and the product of decades of separation between film and spectator. It’s what the spectator imagines life in the 1940’s to be like. The problem is that this point of view shall always compare the post-war era against the present. While A Brief Encounter does incorporate the aforementioned issues, the film presents a far greater complexity that stems beyond the 1940’s.
The film’s circular narrative draws audiences in. Time is unforgiving to the budding relationship and the audience is made to feel this pressure through the train schedule. The train, a stereotypically British machine, runs on government mandated and citizen accepted schedules. In this way, the train represents the demands of society, in which marriage and fidelity are included. It seems only fitting then that the train should continually separate the lovers.
It is, however, when the audience is introduced to the domestic life that the greater complexity emerges. Laura is not in an unhappy home. She does not have an overbearing, cold husband who keeps her in the kitchen. He’s actually portrayed as quite the opposite, caring and unbelievably trusting. It is clear that husband and wife care for each other. So then the point of the film isn’t so much about escaping the restraints of domestic life, but rather deals with something far more cross-cultural: how does one venture away from convention while still maintaining the ability to return to safety? David Lean and Noel Coward address this issue brilliantly with their dialogue, music, and character development, incorporating this cross-cultural complexity into the dynamics of a post-war era.
brighton film studies 