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Julian Sands and Helena Bonham Carter find romance from A Room with a View |
Director: James Ivory
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter (Lucy Honeychurch), Julian Sands
(George Emerson), Maggie Smith (Charlotte Bartlett), Denholm Elliott (Mr
Emerson), Daniel Day-Lewis (Cecil Vyse), Simon Callow (Reverend Beebe),
Rosemary Leach (Mrs Honeychurch), Rupert Graves (Freddy Honeychurch), Patrick
Godfrey (Reverend Eager), Judi Dench (Eleanor Lavish), Fabia Drake (Miss
Catherine Alan), Joan Henley (Miss Teresa Allan), Amanda Walker (Cockey Signora)
Merchant-Ivory are the gold standard, practically synonymous
with costume drama in the 80s and 90s. This really began with A Room with a View, their first true
sensation, a box-office smash that won the BAFTA for Best Film and three
Oscars. It practically defined what to expect from a Merchant-Ivory production:
a classily made slice of English literature, with a wonderful cast of top
British talent, tastefully directed with a sly observational wit for the
foibles of the British class system. No one does such things better than
Merchant-Ivory, and maybe only Howards
End and The Remains of the Day
did Merchant-Ivory better than A Room
with a View.
Based on EM Forster’s novel (and that novel, largely thanks
to this film, is probably now his best loved work), the film is set in Italy
and England during the early 1910s. Holidaying in Florence, Miss Lucy
Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) and her chaperone cousin Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie
Smith) are given poor rooms in their hotel – and accept an offer to swap (for
the eponymous room!) with Mr Emerson (Denholm Elliott) and his romantic son
George (Julian Sands). George, a free spirit, finds himself romantically drawn
towards Lucy (and she to him), but something about the free Italian air
frightens Lucy, and she withdraws and returns to England where she becomes
engaged to the prig’s prig Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis). However, when the
Emersons rent a house near her home in Surrey she finds herself slowly drawn
back once again towards George.
A Room with a View
is the perfect expression of delicate, well-judged film-making, with James
Ivory marshalling his precise judgement to create a luscious and involving
reconstruction of the novel, which carefully layers its social and emotional
observation with a dry wit. Ivory is a master of allowing the novel – and the
film – to speak for itself, not intruding with flourishes but allowing the
camera to hold moments. He captures wonderful moments of slightness: who can
forget the camera holding on a rejected Cecil as he takes a moment to calm
himself, then sits and begins to systematically retie his shoe laces? It’s a
gentle, unforced moment of direction but it’s what makes the film work.
And the careful grace and stateliness of much of A Room with a View is part of the film’s
point. All this taste and manners, all this finery and wonderful design, is of
course a trap. It’s precisely this pristineness and neatness that inhibits
people from following their hearts, from actually having a bit of carpe diem. It’s telling that one of the
film’s most striking moments involves George, Lucy’s brother Freddy and
churchmen Mr Beebe going skinny-dipping (with long-shot full frontal nudity).
There is something joyous for these men to literally cast off (for a few
minutes) the shackles of society to just muck around in the all-together. And
it’s a sort of exuberant liberal freedom you just don’t see in other parts of
the film.
The film’s main theme is to see if Lucy will discover – and
accept – enough about herself to follow the sort of romantic longings she feels
within herself or if she is going to knuckle down and conform. Italy is a
perfect sign of this – it’s hot, temperamental, the people wear their
passionate hearts on their sleeves (whether that’s making-out in a carriage in
front of uptight churchmen or stabbing each other in the piazza) – and it’s all
that energy and lust for life that Lucy seems unsure about, but which George is
chasing after. And it’s difficult to cast aside the rules you have grown up
with – and scary – to find something a bit freer. Although I think you could
criticise Ivory’s neat competence for failing to really visually get a contrast
in look between Italy and England.
The film is blessed with a superb cast of British character
actors. Helena Bonham Carter is excellent (in only her second film role) as a
young woman who knows her mind but doesn’t want to follow it to its logical
ends, part independent and free-thinking but also putting a constant block on
her own instincts. Julian Sands as George does a decent job, although already
the film (by far and away the best part he ever got) exposes his studied
woodenness and flat, uninteresting voice and he often seems straining for a
sort of depth and Byronic passion that is slightly beyond his range.
Maggie Smith and Denholm Elliott were both Oscar nominated,
and both bring their A-game to the roles. Smith is perfect as a spinster who
slowly reveals she has more sense of life’s lost opportunities than expected
(even if the part is one she could play standing on her head), while Elliott
gets lot of scene-stealing mileage from a sweetly eccentric Mr Emerson. Simon
Callow, also in his second film role, probably gives his best (and most
intriguing performance) as Mr Beebe the affable but subtly sleazy clergyman.
The film is however stolen by Daniel Day-Lewis as Cecil Vyse
(originally offered his choice of parts between George and Cecil). A Room with a View opened the same day
as My Beautiful Laundrette in the
States and audiences were amazed that the same actor could play a
self-important prig and a gay, punk
fascist. Day-Lewis is the embodiment of fastidious preciseness, a man so
studied in every second that each movement seems planned, with no touch of
spontaneity. He even kisses Lucy with a carefully placed precision. He’s
arrogantly certain of his place in the world and every moment of his life has
been planned in advance with careful exactitude.
It’s the jewel in the crown of this perfect costume drama.
Merchant and Ivory had longed to film the works of EM Forster for decades, and
had to wait until King’s College, Cambridge (the rights holders) had someone in
place who actually liked films until
it was considered. They expected the main interest to be around Howards End (don’t worry its time would
come!) and A Passage to India. But in
A Room with a View, Merchant Ivory
felt there was an unappreciated gem. They were right.
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