English classic
- The Remains of the Day review by Swambi
The story of the perfect butler - and his mistakes. Fantastic filming, fantastic scenery, totally believable. It examines a lot of moral issues, and you get drawn progressively into the romantic involvement which is meticulously acted out.
5 out of 6 members found this review helpful.
Polite Silence, Loud Regrets
- The Remains of the Day review by griggs
You can feel this whole film being carried by two people who barely raise their voices. Anthony Hopkins plays Stevens like a man who’s spent decades pressing the wrinkles out of his own life. Every “Yes, sir” sounds like practice for not saying the thing that matters. It’s heartbreaking, and also dryly funny in that very British way.
Emma Thompson is the perfect counterweight: warm, sharp, and quietly furious at the silence he keeps choosing. When Miss Kenton nudges at him, it’s not grand melodrama — it’s someone trying, again and again, to get a straight answer out of a man who treats emotion like mess.
What I really admire is how it makes an internal novel visible: posture, routine, the gaps between sentences. And underneath the love story there’s the extra sting — Lord Darlington’s politics, and Stevens’ belief that duty means not asking what the house is really doing. By the end, it doesn’t break your heart so much as pack it away, neatly ironed and folded.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Loved it
- The Remains of the Day review by MR
Terrific, I have only just seen this for the first time. Such uncomfortable atmospheres created, wonderful subtle acting by everybody, the world of the house all seemed so plausible. Anthony Hopkins amazing as someone who is hopelessly repressed.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Obeying Orders
- The Remains of the Day review by Steve
This is about how class diminishes us on either side of the divide. Stevens is an efficient butler at a prestigious English stately home in the service of a conservative aristocrat foolishly engaged in private negotiations to appease Hitler's Nazis in an effort to avoid another war; and so comes under the influence of British fascists.
The servant averts his gaze because his lordship knows best. Both are guilty of a misplaced sense of duty. Stevens suppresses his humanity because it's not in his job description. But while he grows old alone, his inhibition is provoked by a new housekeeper who may- even if fancifully- represent a romantic last chance.
This is a quality production in all the usual ways from camera to soundtrack. James Ivory's direction is extremely sensitive and faithful to Kazuo Ishiguro's novel. But in particular, credit is due to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala whose subtle yet deeply moving screenplay performs miracles on a source which is mostly first person narrative.
And there are perfectly modulated performances by Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. The scene in which she accosts him while he reads romantic fiction is a heartbreaker in the book, but as potent on the screen... Presumably when Stevens saw Brief Encounter after the war he felt the lovers were guilty of vulgar ostentation!
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.