If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or get my blog updates by email. Thanks for visiting!

Cast: Anthony Hopkins (Mr. Stevens), Emma Thompson (Miss Kenton), James Fox (Lord Darlington), Peter Vaughan (Mr. Stevens Sr.), Christopher Reeve (Mr. Lewis), Hugh Grant (Mr. Cardinal)
Screenplay by: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Based on the novel ‘The remains of the day’ by Kazuo Ishiguro
Directed by: James Ivory

Ismael-Merchant have given us delightful adaptations of some of the most literary of novels, beloved classics. Here, in bringing Kazuo Ishiguro’s almost unfilmable book to the screen, they created a masterpiece.

The setting is a quintessential English manor in the countryside. Presided over by Mr.Stevens, the butler, running a veritable army of servants, gardeners, cooks, maids, footmen and under-butlers. He has dedicated his life to serving his master, the honorable, old-school gentleman, Lord Darlington to the best of his ability. It’s a cloistered world of elaborate hunting parties (which by the way Lord Darlington doesn’t approve of) and stiff upper lips. Where the placement of cutlery on the dinner-table is subject to the precise measurements of a ruler.

Lord Darlington is dead. The house has been auctioned. An old acquaintance, former American congressman, Lewis has bought it. Stevens is travelling across the country in an ancient Daimler, ostensibly on a holiday. His primary motive is to try and get Miss Kenton to come back as the housekeeper. And it’s also an attempt to rectify the one mistake he still feels he might have a chance of setting right. In flashbacks we visit Darlington Hall in its glory days. When, as Steven says, there was no need to step outside to see the world as the world used to come to it.

Darlington felt, very justifiably, that great injustice was done to the Germans in the Versailles treaty following WW1. And he was determined that the Germans should get a fair chance to rebuild themselves as a strong nation. His sense of chivalry took him so far into the treacherous waters of international politics that he couldn’t possibly swim back, ever. He organized conferences with international delegates to muster support and goodwill for Germany and hence, the Nazis. As news trickled in about Nazi atrocities on the Jews, concentration camps, their invasion of Poland, Darlington chose to turn a blind eye. He deluded himself.

But the greater self-delusion was Steven’s. Whenever asked about his opinion on the goings-on in the manor, he replied that it was not the butler’s place to agree or disagree. His job was to serve. He doesn’t leave the table at an important dinner, even as his father is dying upstairs. Of course, his father would approve of his sense of duty. Somewhere along the way of repressing his thoughts and emotions in the name of the butler’s dignity, he lost himself, his identity. Now, he is on his way to meet the one individual who could help him discover it again.

Does anything in this review till now sound in the slightest like a romance? At the core of the movie is a love, which could never be fulfilled, as it was never expressed. Miss Kenton fell in ‘love’ with Stevens, if such a word could be used for a reverse courtship, so restrained. And Stevens, well, he is too good a butler to let himself fall in love with the housekeeper. There’s a brilliant scene where Miss Kenton walks in on Stevens reading a book. She wants to see the cover of the book. He tries to hide it. She grabs it out of his hands. It’s a sentimental romance. Stevens declares that he was reading it to improve his vocabulary. This along with few other such poignant and melancholic moments, reveal that somewhere within the clockwork efficiency of Stevens, there is some humanity left over.

The movie revolves around a masterful performance by Anthony Hopkins ably supported by Emma Thompson as the feisty, intelligent housekeeper, Miss Kenton. It is Anthony Hopkins’ supremely understated, wordless portrayal which allows us to understand Stevens, to peek into his soul. He puts on a smile when Miss Kenton tells him in a last ditch attempt to get him to react, to open up, that she jokes about his mannerisms with her new suitor. That one half-smile reveals a lifetime’s suppressed pain.

Here is a man, who derived his life’s meaning from his service. One fine day he wakes up and finds that everything that his pride was built on shaky foundations, his entire life is fading away into nothingness. And it’s way too late to do anything about it.