The Sense of an Ending, a Man Booker prize winning novel by the British author Julian Barnes, has at center a protagonist, Tony Webster, an uninteresting man with a vastly interesting past. In Ritesh Batra's movie The Sense of an Ending, intertwining narratives of past and present meet at a point of mystery: a suicide haunts in the way all suicides leave ultimate questions with no possible answers. At lunch at the literary Lotos Club this week, just before the film’s release, Michelle Dockery, Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter, joined director Ritesh Batra for a panel moderated by Amanda Foreman, to ponder this puzzling story; it’s the sense of an ending, right?

Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey fame plays Tony’s (Jim Broadbent) unwed pregnant daughter from his marriage to Margaret (Harriet Walker). Now divorced, Margaret and Tony have a friendship, of sorts. Tony runs an antique camera shop, the better to see life through the remove of a lens. The mother of his first girlfriend Veronica (the remarkable Charlotte Rampling in the contemporary parts) leaves him the diary of the deceased young man, setting the proceedings in motion, a conceit really, for this man, now of a certain age, to grow and change, and see the people in his life up close and personal.

Much intrigued, a crowd including Tovah Feldshuh, Julie Taymor, and Kathleen Turner chatted with the stars. Feldshuh spoke about performing as a male boxing manager in a new play. Taymor is in the early stages, preparing to direct Clive Owen in M. Butterfly on Broadway. And Turner is politically active working toward saving Planned Parenthood. Michelle Dockery says she looks forward to stage work in the future, but for now is filming TNT’s series Good Behavior in North Carolina, happy after Downton, she can wear jeans and pumps.

 Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura