Everyman's Tale: A Brief Encounter

Nothing in life is easy. On any given day, a seemingly never-ending flow of junk makes the average person want to burrow down beneath the covers and call it quits. But to be truthful, most of us have it pretty good. Not to promulgate the proverbial parental lecture ("you don't know how good you actually have it, you're lucky"), but what if it was worse? What if a run-of-the-mill argument with your partner was coupled with the fact that you couldn't talk to anyone about it, what if no one could even know who your partner was? What if your heart was close to bursting with love and affection, but instead of yelling it from the rooftops, you had to swallow it down your throat so that even the tiniest shred of hope for that love wasn't ruined?

It is a timeless story- that of lovers simply being unable to love each other. Many of us have been there before, either experiencing it first or, if we’re lucky, secondhand. Although each story is different, the basic plot line stays the same. This familiar tale, with all its heartache and pain but also its simple joys, is explored in Noel Coward's classic film, Brief Encounter, which first appeared on screen in 1945, but was witnessed by yours truly last night at the Riverview Theater in south Minneapolis.

The film is a cultural icon, and I first brushed up against it in another of my all-time favorite films, The History Boys, the screen adaptation of Alan Bennett’s successful London play. In it, two of the precocious sixth-form grammar school boys perform Brief Encounter’s final scene, in defiance of the more “useful” things their shrewd new instructor is hoping to teach them. After the performance, the instructor looks impressed but awash as to what to say, finally settling on “God knows why you’ve learned Brief Encounter…” which is met with raucous laughter by the other students. It seems a fitting enough question at the time: “why Brief Encounter?” and I’m sure most of the audience, regardless of how schooled in 1940’s cinema they are, might also ask the same thing of the cheeky students. I was one of those people, until I actually saw Coward’s work in action, and realized why it was they chose to perform this scene, or, more importantly, why it was chosen for them by their warm and yet personally unfulfilled closeted English teacher.

And so, sitting in the 1960’s style auditorium at the Riverview last night, this seemingly insignificant bit of humor in The History Boys finally made sense to me. It is not only the story of Brief Encounter: two lovers, both married, finally find what it is they have been missing in their respective relationships, share a shred of happiness, and then go on with their lives; but of Noel Coward himself, and my own speculation on what the play must have meant to him – a gay man unable to live life as what he actually was. Indeed, while certain insiders may have known, Coward’s sexuality, during his lifetime, was never discussed, but swept under the rug, as many were. He was a successful author, actor, director, singer, and playwright- lauded in society and well-loved among friends, and yet, Noel Coward the man was never the same person as Noel Coward the public face. Just as his Brief Encounter lovers Laura and Alec were, he was forced to turn something beautiful and real into a thing that must be spoken of only in hushed voices, or not at all.  Coward’s own love, like that of his main characters, was a love that had to be much more familiar with furtive glances, skulking in corners, and quick rendezvous than the leisurely hand-in-hand walks in the park an un-adulterous or heterosexual pair would have been allowed. 

Suddenly, it all makes sense. Who better to write the quintessential story of impossible ardor than a man who had spent his entire life facing true love as something that was, for him, outside the realm of possibility?

As if the story needed to be any more gut-wrenching, this extra layer of background knowledge on Coward’s own life takes it to an entirely new level of heartache. As a viewer, you feel the love, the second thoughts, the first kiss that - had circumstances been different - would have happened a long time ago. When Alec and Laura meet for a second time, you feel the intensity of the first time she holds his arm, and at the end of it all, you feel the overwhelming desire to run after him on the train platform, wanting to leave your own life behind to follow his, or simply not to live at all anymore. Coward’s script turns Alec and Laura’s story into what a great movie should be- something real, and something that, regardless of individual moral standards or auspices, causes every single person in the theater to understand, not just to feel for its characters, but to feel like its characters. Gay or straight, married or single, no one is exempt from being Alec or Laura, no matter how hard or softly their story may hit in their own lives.