arjunflamingfeather The REMAINS OF THE Day is based on the pre-war days Britain and holds merit in being a material of significant insight; the drama between butler and head mistress or house keeper stands out. The movie became alive after the start of this film like a strange book; dialogue and screenplay. Feeling enchanted but certain appreciation to humans is well shot here by James Ivory. The director is acceptably in his element; to be alive. The humans all spent time and have offered their on screen space with us and this element makes this masterpiece worth noting and reviewing. Then the objective is certain because the direction has provided this window to view through. The actress and actor who are note worthy are the entire crew but an academy award is the sole left behind prospect. Must-watch for merit and being a worthy film to shoot.

classicsoncall How difficult it must be to live inside the skin of a man like butler James Stephens (Anthony Hopkins), unable or unwilling to express his emotions or even his thoughts on subjects of major import. After a while, one becomes infuriated with his maddeningly proper and reserved behavior, which allows him to carry on with his duties while his own father lies dying in an upstairs bedroom. This he justifies by stating "My father would wish me to carry on with my work." Maybe so, but show some heart, man. For whatever reason, this was virtually impossible for Stevens in all matters of politics, business, and most of all, love. When it becomes apparent that his feelings for Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) will remain unexpressed, even in the face of an impending marriage while she herself harbors feelings of her own for Stevens, the story becomes one of tense frustration. On top of that is Stevens' equivocation on matters of the Nazis coming to power and his Master Darlington's (James Fox) efforts at appeasement that ultimately lead to disgrace. As dry and soulless as all this sounds, the movie itself is a masterful character study of people imprisoned by their own status in life and how ineffectual they are in achieving self fulfillment. Hopkins and Thompson are remarkable in their portrayals, and the film's ending with Miss Kenton lamenting a life that never came to pass is heartbreaking in it's intensity. Christopher Reeve also acquits himself well as the American Congressman who fails to convince his European hosts that Hitler's designs will prove frightful for all. I'm not much for fictional period pieces, but "The Remains of the Day" is a finely scripted story that's wonderfully filmed. Fans of love and romance however should prepare for disappointment.

Ross622 James Ivory's "The Remains of the Day" is a movie with one of the best movie set designs that I have ever seen and it is very well made. The movie was adapted from the 1989 novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro and the screenplay was written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who also wrote Oscar winning screenplays for "A Room with a View" (1986), and "Howards End" (1992) both which I didn't get the chance to see yet. The movie stars Anthony Hopkins as James Stevens a man who has been working as a butler for several years for a man named Jack Lewis (Christopher Reeve) during the post WWII years Stevens would eventually fall in love with a housekeeper named Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) in Britain. Ivory has been known to direct romance movies but this is one of the most well shot and well acted, it isn't a great movie but is a good one but it doesn't rank with some of the best romance movies ever made. When I watched this movie a few years ago I was left with some unanswered questions which were Who was Stevens really as a person?, Why was Lewis misguiding him and many more. Another problem that I had with this movie was that Jhabvala's screenplay doesn't help us to really figure out who the characters really as people but she does do a good job at generating a little bit of empathy for the Anthony Hopkins character. The movie also has a lot of good things about most importantly the cast, as well as Tony Pierce Roberts' cinematography which was really good, and besides the set the costumes were nothing short of brilliant. I'm hoping that the other two Ivory films that I listed are much better than this one despite the fact that I happened to like this one.

mnpollio Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson are two thespians who could arguably make reading the telephone book into a vivid experience, but even their copious talents are sorely tested with this pointless drawing room melodrama of manners. The Remains of the Day is yet another in a seemingly endless parade of staid British interior decorating historical dramas that propagated during the 1980s-1990s from the Merchant-Ivory stable. When the concept worked, one had solid films like Howard's End or A Room With a View. When it failed, you got The Remains of the Day.Set circa WW2, stiff, rule-bound butler Hopkins finds his narrow worldview challenged by the arrival of sunny head housekeeper Thompson, who is not afraid to lock horns with him in his British manor domain. The relationship ostensibly moves from friction to grudging respect to something much deeper.There are a number of problems that plague The Remains of the Day that hinder the enjoyment of it, despite the best efforts of its leads. Despite being sprinkled with some notable performers, the supporting cast is shamefully underused and forgettable. Everyone seems to have been directed to underact to the point of catatonia. Even Thompson, playing a somewhat more vibrant character than her cast members, seems unduly restrained here.The pace can generously be described as sluggish. This is made worse in that most modern audiences will not understand or relate to servants who give up all hope of lives for themselves in order to live vicariously through buffoonish upper crust snobs. Nothing brings this home more so than the ludicrous sequence wherein Hopkins refuses to present at the side of his father's deathbed so that he can ostensibly serve drinks to the Nazi-sympathizing lord of the manor (played on one strident note by James Fox). This episode may well be historically accurate, but it seems a foolish move to a modern viewer and fails to endear the lead character, whose emotions are often so repressed throughout the film as to make him seem robotic.Worse, there is no character arc here. We open the film with Hopkins strait-jacketed into his role as an unbending, unemotional servant. There are moments throughout where he has some obvious interior struggle, especially with the arrival of Thompson, but he never breaks through this facade. When Thompson's character resigns from the manor in protest, we again think that there will be some forward momentum for Hopkins's butler, but again he fails to change. At the climax, we are again led to believe that Hopkins may break free of these now self-imposed bonds of behavior and social class mores, when American Christopher Reeve buys the manor and encourages him to take his first ever vacation. Hopkins does so only grudgingly and seeks out Thompson, ostensibly to convey his unrequited feelings, but yet again fails to do so. In fairness, Hopkins plays the role to the hilt, but nothing can disguise that he is playing a dull man. This character changes nary a jot throughout the film; he is the same rigid, hopeless creation at the end as he is at the start. With no emotional investment or character arc, the most we can summon is some minor pity. Although truthfully one may well also wonder why so much time (and this film does seem glacially long) should be wasted on such an intractable and uninteresting man.Just in case we have not gotten the "message" of the film (such as it is), it concludes with a laughably heavy-handed segment where Hopkins stares frozen and slack-jawed at a pigeon that has gotten into the manor and seems trapped there. Get it! The pigeon is like him! Trapped in the manor and unable to free itself! This is for all the slow learners that did not get what was hammered home for the lengthy running time preceding this moment. Critics and Oscar voters, of course, love pretentious twaddle like this and could not resist raining down kudos, but it does little more than serve as proof that film elites really like boring British dramas set in tastefully decorated manor houses.