Howards End

Being a man who appreciates beauty and great visual movies, I have checked out all the Merchant-Ivory films. I found this to be their prettiest, just stunning in its beauty.

Story-wise, I preferred "The Remains Of The Day," but this was okay. It just didn't have the appealing characters "Remains" had and it was a little too soap opera for my tastes but the visuals made up for that, ...and the story, to be fair, was solid and involving.

It also had Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, and those two make a great pair. I would never get tired of watching either of these great actors, especially when they are together.

If you like period pieces - this is 1910 Edwardian England - along with fabulous sets and scenery, a solid cast, and an involving story, you'll like this. If you are a fan of melodramas then you'll really, really like this!

The literary period piece is a difficult genre to master, requiring a difficult balancing between restraint and flowing emotion. Few films effectively achieve this as beautifully as Merchant-Ivory's astounding HOWARDS END, making it probably the best period film of the 1990's. The film juxtapositions the intellectual, emotionally unhindered Schlegel sisters against the restrained, imperious Wilcox family, and, for good measure, mixes in the differing attitudes toward class emerging early in the century. What could quite easily have been a dry study in the cultural dynamics of pre-WWI England becomes an enveloping tale, thanks in no small part to the performances by Hopkins, Emma Thompson, and Vanessa Redgrave, whose Ruth Wilcox remains enigmatic after every viewing. The emotions ringing through by film's end - not to mention its astoundingly pointed social criticism - give the film its power, a power missing even from Forster's rambling, distant novel. And this story is nestled amongst some of the most beautiful art direction, music, and cinematography to ever grace the screen. The haunting journey to HOWARDS END is one few other recent films can rival.

This is one of my all-time favorite movies. From the opening credits, superimposed over Vanessa Redgrave's skirt sweeping through the wet grass and flowers around Mrs. Wilcox's beloved Howards End, through to the final image of rural bliss, the cinematography is perfection. The costuming is amazing, the screenplay is adept, and the acting is stellar, to say the least. To have Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Vanessa Redgrave, and Anthony Hopkins in one movie together is to see a true synthesis of talent, not to mention James Wilby and Samuel West. The scene where Leonard Bast goes walking into the field of blue flowers is breathtaking.

I recommend this film to anyone who loves Forster and who loves painterly cinematography. Also it is full of the finest performances by all of the actors involved.

I'm sure that even in 1910 when Kaiser Wilhelm still had a few fans who remembered he was the grandson of Queen Victoria and not ruler of the soon to be hated foe of World War I, E.M. Forster must have come in for a few critic's slings in having some of his protagonists of Howards End have a German surname. Even that early time there were many who saw Germany as a potential foe.

These two Schlegel sisters played by Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter befriend the Wilcoxes, a family of newly rich plutocrats headed by Anthony Hopkins who seem to be a version of Lillian Hellman's the Hubbards lite. Their mother is the class of the family and she's played by Vanessa Redgrave who is in poor health.

While Bonham-Carter is rejected by Hopkins's son James Wilby as a suitable wife for marriage, Vanessa befriends Thompson finding her to be a kindred intellectual spirit in a house full of moneygrubbers. In fact before she dies she writes an unsigned note asking that a cottage that's in her family's name called Howards End be given to the Schlegel sisters. When Hopkins and the rest of the family find the note after she's dead it gets torn up and burned. Unsigned it has no probative value in any event.

But as fate would have it Thompson and Hopkins get into a relationship and they soon marry and she tries to polish some of the rough edges off him. Especially in regard to snobbery. Hopkins is the kind of man who wants no reminders of where he came from. Particularly with another of the Schlegel sisters friends, a young clerk named Leonard Bast played by Samuel West trying to make his way in the world as the Wilcoxes have.

Emma Thompson won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Howards End that year and the film also won Oscars for Art&Set Direction and for adapted screenplay. Though Thompson won the Oscar, my absolute favorite in this film is Susie Lindeman as Mrs. Dolly Bast. She's so incredibly common and obviously holding him back, you can't blame West for eventually getting involved with Bonham-Carter which leads to tragedy.

The team of Ismail Merchant producer and James Ivory director succeed again at bringing the look and manners of Edwardian England as seen by E.M. Forster to life. Who says they don't make literate films any more, whoever says that have them see Howards End.

For those who want to watch an intelligent, lovely-to-look-at motion picture, it doesn't get much better than this. The film tells the story of two sisters, of limited but respectable means, who collide with the world of the very rich in Edwardian England. One sister benefits from the acquaintance with the wealthy Wilcoxes. The other is all but destroyed by it. Along the way, there are charming scenes of tea parties and music classes, elegant costumes, fantastic settings, and engaging conversations. There is also a sad, secondary storyline of a poor clerk and his wife who, unfortunately, slip into even more abysmal circumstances through no fault of their own. The ending is tinged with despair, even as it offers some hope for both of the sisters' futures. The film should be commended as well for the fine performances of Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham-Carter and others. Any discriminating film enthusiast will not want to miss this movie.