Another literary adaptation of the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala team, this one set in the 1930s and 50s, and based not on a recognized "classic" but on a mere Booker Prize winner, by Kazuo Ishiguro. It does much of what we ask of a work of fiction. It sets up an enclosed world, that of stately Darlington Hall as seen from the servants' point of view, in particular the head butler's view. It lays out some clear rules and guidelines for the place (first rule: no gentleman callers), which rules and guidelines are tested a bit by the arrival of a new and headstrong housekeeper (albeit with "a very pleasing demeanor") as well as by the rapid decline of an old and enfeebled underbutler (father of the head butler): the dustpan is left lying about on the stair landing, a drop of perspiration falls from the tip of his nose over the dinner table, and before you know it the old duffer is taking a header with a full tea tray in his hands. That won't do; won't do at all. The movie establishes, in short, a thoroughly filled-in context within which the characters' actions, or, just as tellingly, inactions, achieve significance and suspense and inevitability -- such that the head butler, in his existential quest to be a "great butler," will cleave to the strictest obedience, deference, acquiescence, even as his master becomes a major player, or rather major pawn, in the appeasement of the Nazis; and such that his practiced and perfected self-effacement will rebuff any sort of invitation to a personal life. The cast -- Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Christopher Reeve, James Fox, Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant, chief among them -- displays the uniform polish (plus intermittent gleams of high humor) that one has come to expect under the direction of James Ivory. (1993) — Duncan Shepherd
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