Listening to the Resonance: Representation of Traumatic Experience in the Film Enduring Love

Listening to the Traumatic Experience in Enduring Love

Abstract

The film Enduring Love (dir. Roger Michell, UK, 2004), based on a novel of the same title by Ian McEwan (1997), depict the experience of trauma in the central character Joe Rose’s (Daniel Craig) life. In the film, the trauma is motivated by a hot air balloon accident and stalking, which haunt and obsess the central character as two leitmotifs, “Balloon Music” and the sound of the wind. In this essay, the representation of the experience of trauma is discussed in the light of Julia Kristeva’s theory on signification process and Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of resonance. The film Enduring Love is discussed as a portrait of contemporary trauma; stalking is an example of obsessive and traumatizing behaviour that is recognized as criminal and socially condemned conduct around the time the original novel was released.