The Remains of the Day Movie Review
Upstairs Downstairs and The Duchess of Duke Street became television classics for a variety of reasons. Each was a sharply observed examination of an irretrievable time with a very definite bias: that the working classes learned to adjust to a changing world in a way that the aristocracy could not. This perspective, along with appealing characters, nostalgic detail, and beautifully crafted scripts, charmed audiences all over the world. Each series had a reliable male staff member who took every aspect of his work very seriously, but who was always an object of affection and respect. We would trust our lives with Hudson (Gordon Jackson) or Starr (John Cater). At times, the quiet dignity of these men took on heroic, larger than life dimensions. Kazuo Ishiguro's slender novel, The Remains of the Day, had a different perspective on Stevens, the faithful family retainer of one Lord Darlington. She saw him as an essentially tragic figure, so mired in empty household rituals that he is unable to attract or accept love from those who are only too willing to give it to him. The Merchant Ivory team has supplied the usual candy box trappings to this character study. In trying to have it BOTH ways (oh, wasn't it great AND awful in the 1930s!), Stevens emerges as a pathetic joke and the centerpiece of the most boring prestige film of 1993. Since at least a dozen people walked out of the screening that I attended and we cast several impatient glances at our wrist-watches over the course of 135 minutes, it's only fair to mention that not one real thing happens to Stevens in the whole movie. What? Aren't there a lot of big stars in The Remains of the Day like Oscar winners Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, plus James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant, Michael Lonsdale, and Tim Pigott-Smith? Sure, but even the greatest actors need SOME directorial guidance. Even the most indulgent audiences need a payoff. How riveted are we going to get by a man who spends an entire film on the verge of feeling a single honest emotion? How much will we root for a woman who gets so caught up in the drab routines of this dweeb that she regards their working life together as the happiest time in her life? And how enthralled will we be by the fact that every major event over a 20-year span happens OFF camera? On the edge of our seats?…NOT!!! And then, four years after The Remains of the Day won a stupefying quantity of awards, I saw Christopher Guest's hilarious Waiting for Guffman, and now, go figure, I WANT MY REMAINS OF THE DAY LUNCHBOX!
1993 (PG) 135m/C GB Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant, Michael (Michel) Lonsdale, Tim Pigott-Smith; D: James Ivory; W: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala; C: Tony Pierce-Roberts; M: Richard Robbins. British Academy Awards ‘93: Best Actor (Hopkins); Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards ‘93: Best Actor (Hopkins); National Board of Review Awards ‘93: Best Actor (Hopkins); Nominations: Academy Awards ‘93: Best Actor (Hopkins), Best Actress (Thompson), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Director (Ivory), Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture; British Academy Awards ‘94: Best Actress (Thompson), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director (Ivory), Best Film; Directors Guild of America Awards ‘93: Best Director (Ivory); Golden Globe Awards ‘94: Best Actor—Drama (Hopkins), Best Actress—Drama (Thompson), Best Director (Ivory), Best Film—Drama, Best Screenplay. VHS, LV, 8mm, Letterbox, Closed Caption