Closing the Ring(2007)- User Reviews

It's extremely rare for me to see a movie done by people I admire which I thought was flawlessly acted, impeccably directed, and which -nevertheless- I absolutely hate.

There's a lot of truth to this gloomy tale of thwarted love:

The truth lying in the stupid decisions people make, ruining their lives, all for the sake of some lofty code of ethics which when real proves noble, but in this case is built out of nothing but ilusions and cowardess.

Ethel Ann (played in the forties by Mischa Barton and in the nineties by Shirley MacLaine) is the girl all the boys are in love with.

Her three most ardent admirers are Chuck (David Alpay), Jack (played by Gregory Smith and Christopher Plummer), and the fair-haired, blue eyed Teddy Gordon (Stephen Amell) who turns out to be the love of the beauty's life...but, alas, her parents hate him.

As a main character, Ethel Ann is annoying, proving maudlin, selfish and generally dim-witted. It's really hard to believe these three men are so hopelessly in love with her... For even though she's attractive, she really is terribly inconsiderate.

Teddy, of course, gets killed in a plane crash in World War II, after secretly marrying his paramour. He has entrusted her to Chuck (who admits he's in love her, while Jack stubbornly denies it).

Chuck doesn't have any problem with marrying a woman who spends her life pining for another man (that's how much he cares about her), and after ten years of living chastely with Ethel Ann in Teddy's house, Chuck finally gets the girl to marry him, thus entering into a union which proves unhappy and, (except for the birth of a daughter), generally pointless.

This leaves Jack to waste HIS life secretly yearning for a woman he can't have, and at the same time managing to marry and have a son named Peter (Allan Hawco).

Motherhood does nothing for Ethel Ann, and the daughter, Marie (Neve Campbell) is raised by her father, so that her mother can wallow in her own private grief, which (forty years after Teddy's death) has yet to go away, and infringes on everybody else's happiness.

Then there's the subplot in Ireland where a man named Quinlan (Pete Postlewaite) digs tirelessly in search a gold ring he lost; entrusted to him by a dying World War II pilot (Teddy, of course) who asked him to return it to his American wife.

The ring is eventually found by the young man Jimmy (Martin McCann) who takes steps to return it to Ethel Ann who, having just buried Chuck, has plunged into a new sea of grief for Teddy.

Richard Attenborough does a terrific job with this movie which is well-done, true-to-life, and yet makes you want to tear your hair out.

If Ethel Ann could'nt live without Teddy why couldn't she just kill herself? Instead of stringing two men along that were hopelessly in love her, and having a daughter she ignored?

Teddy Gordon is also irritating. He's too blonde, too perfect, and the romance between him and Ethel Ann is bland and utterly uninteresting. Not to mention sappy.

Jack is a coward in my opinion.
He can waste his life pining for a woman but can't declare himself to her, or even admit to his friends that he cares.

And as for Chuck, what a fool!
What kind of a man marries a woman who cold-shoulders him like that? On top of which he becomes a goffer, living in the house of the man that his wife's in madly love with, and pandering to her every whim, while he himself is constantly being humilliated by the situation.

I would've given her a good hard slap if I were him (if I were any of them actually), if not to help her snap out of it, then at least to show some dignity in the face of Ethel Ann's self-indulgent immaturity which ruined so many lives.

If you can't live with it commit suicide...otherwise let it go.