• It’s peak Merchant/Ivory- A Room With a View is there, too
  • Handsomely mounted by Ivory, Oscar-Winning script from Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and the cast is phenomenal- Redgrave is great in her small role, Bonham Carter- wow—but it’s Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins that are really revelatory. She won the Oscar here and Hopkins is in an incredible stretch and late-career renaissance started by Silence of the Lambs the year before
  • Set direction- Oscar win as well
  • First of four merchant/ivory collaborations with Hopkins
  • Merchant Ivory mean period piece to most people- elevated material, great acting, often about the elite and adaptations of great works
  • I adore the silent opening- classical music- Redgrave walking the grounds of her splendidly gorgeous Howards End—floral arrangements, looking lovingly at her family in the windows
  • Simon Callow- one of four archiveable films with Merchant Ivory (this, Maurice, Room With a View, Mr.& Mrs. Bridge)
  • Natural lighting by the window- like the climax romance kiss at A Room With a View
  • Redgrave is anomalous- almost other worldly—but she’s immensely likeable here- which she rarely is throughout her career even when she gives a great performance.
  • Massive set design period set pieces—Christmas shopping, train station- so well detailed
  • Thompson so good-natured—love seeing her win for playing a character
  • Ivory throws away his trademark two awful wipe edits in a film trademark and goes with some really nice dissolves here- much more fitting his visual style
  • Jaw-droppingly beautiful floral sequences—the bluebells in the surrealism sequence of Samuel West’s Leonard Bast escaping his desk
  • These are brilliant intellectual sisters—piques the interest of Bast stuck with his earlier lover—it’s such a sympathetic tragedy
  • The Wilcox children are largely just awful—not bad acting or bad characters- just hard to stomach— as is some of Bonham Carter’s impertinence and spirit
  • It’s a film of the quality and beauty of say Anthony Minghella. This precedes Minghella’s great trilogy of English Patient, Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain but Ivory has that sharp of an eye for attractive filmmaking- it’s a compliment—shot in super 35mm
  • There’s such wonderful narrative form- the rug from Thompson and Bonham Carter fits Howards end—
  • Slow-motion shot of Charles Wilcox carried into the carriage at the end
  • Highly Recommend/ Must-See—leaning Must-See- a to 5 of the year quality film