The Daily Feather — Brief Encounter > Lawrence of Arabia

“I didn’t think such violent things could happen to ordinary people.”

British film director David Lean is best remembered for his Best Picture winning, nearly four-hour historical epic, Lawrence of Arabia. But we’re partial to another of his films: a breezy, 86-minute romantic drama that is aptly titled Brief Encounter. Set in pre-World War II England, the movie follows a housewife and a doctor, both married to other people, who find themselves caught in a passionate, emotional affair. What starts as a chance meeting at a railway station quickly becomes a weekly ritual where the two commute into the city, have lunch, and spend the afternoon together. Before they know it, they’ve fallen in love, though both know that the circumstances of their lives mean that their connection cannot last. The film beautifully highlights one of life’s strange paradoxes: that someone we’ve known for years can suddenly feel like a stranger, while someone we’ve only just met can feel like a soulmate.

Just as the lovers’ paths ultimately diverge in Brief Encounter (and no, this is not a spoiler as the film is told in flashback), we’ve seen an interesting divergence in inflation expectations between the New York Federal Reserve and the University of Michigan (UMich). We’ve written at length about how UMich’s 5-year expectations have become untethered, with the tariff terror campaign shooting the gauge to April’s record high of 4.4% (blue line).