8th
Howards End (1992)
Howards End is a Merchant Ivory movie. I liked it. Complain if you want. I like Merchant Ivory movies. Not all films of Quality are horrible, and this is one that rises above. Based on E. M. Forster’s novel, the film is one unending lark. The filmmakers just couldn’t spend enough time on set. Every scene is dressed half to death with period appropriate bangles and baubles laid out like a kid’s room after he’s unpacked his toy chest. Stuff is everywhere. You get the sense that Ivory and Merchant are less interested in making movies than in living for a few months on-set in a glossy coffee-table-book past. I don’t blame them. I’d pay fifteen bucks just for a walking tour of the house they used for Howards.
Most of the technical bits are executed with typical USC aplomb (nice dolly shots, nice lighting, nice sound design), except for the editing which is perplexing in its failure. Either James Ivory decided to inject a few modern minded narrative hiccups of his own – jump fades, mostly – to compete with Forster’s prose, or a number of scenes were filmed with insufficient shot coverage. Many real-time scenes fade in and out of black, apparently to hide failures in either performances or the script. Having no basis at all for saying so: I blame the script. It meanders through Forster’s story with accuracy, but misses all the internality of his prose. Ivory just doesn’t have the nuance necessary to make truly modernist cinema. But: the three leads more than make up for it. You can’t look away when they’re on. Emma Thompson is beautiful, of course, and Anthony Hopkins, or any man, falling for her is a no brainer: she is charming, agreeable, and entertaining. Exactly what an early century bride should be. Helena Bonham Carter is likewise wonderful, and watching her in this might make you sad for her alignment with Tim Burton. Had she continued to play against type, as she does in this picture, she surely would have become not just an enjoyable actress, but a much used screen star (good for the public, perhaps bad for her); instead she’s been locked in since 1999 as “that Goth-ish woman, with the hair.” Anthony Hopkins gave me a few heart pounding seconds of doubt upon first seeing him - his introduction to the film (he runs into Thompson at a train station) is jarringly bad. He looks and acts like a production assistant had shooed him away from the craft table five seconds before entering frame. I worried that I would again be obliged to feel embarrassed on the behalf of a once great actor. Fortunately, Hopkins brushes off the jelly donut crumbs and finds his stride, settling into thick browed, prideful loneliness. Human males of means always mistake obstinate emotional deafness for proper masculinity, as though the heart of “be true to thyself” were actually “never empathize with people”; Hopkins pulls off this infuriating affectation of wealthy silverbacks quite well.
Forster’s motto for life and for the book was “Only connect…” He was speaking of the importance of trying, against horribly human odds, to push through individual differences in search of rare, intermittent moments of mutual understanding. The novel contains a few strong examples of such connections, and in Margaret Schlegel (Thompson’s character), an unending demonstration of the effort that Forster so cherished. The movie, for its own lacey part, only manages the second half. Thompson is always airy and urgent, always trying to understand those around her, but except for her scenes with Bonham (Ivory does portray the sisterly bond with what seems to my eyes accuracy), she never succeeds in a way that we feel. Her pivotal moment on screen with Hopkins is touching, but resonates like a boarded up well; we feel there’s something else there, something the film can’t get at. The filmmakers just aren’t nuanced enough to bring into relief those rare moments of emotional communion that can occur between the mid- and upper-level bourgeoisie - the moments Forster was actually striving to capture. But the film is pretty. It is pretty to look at, and pretty to think about. There is very little in it that is offensive (just, occasionally, disappointing) and much that is pleasant and enjoyable. It is a good antidote to long, zombie-trance work days, and it will reassure you, young capitalist, of the pot at the end of the rainbow: somewhere down the road, there is a smiling, well-dressed Emma Thompson waiting for you, me, and all of us.
