Ivory's Triumph -- `Remains Of The Day' Transcends `Howards End'

Movie review

XXXX "The Remains of the Day," with Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox, Christopher Reeve, Hugh Grant. Directed by James Ivory, from a script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Guild 45th (in 70mm). "PG" - Parental guidance advised because of subject matter. -------------------------------------------------------------------

James Ivory may never make a film as personal or as daring as Martin Scorsese's best work, but as an adaptor of literary classics ("Howards End," "A Room With a View") he has few peers.

Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's 1989 novel about emotionally strait-jacketed British servants, "The Remains of the Day" is smoother and ultimately more devastating than "The Age of Innocence," Scorsese's admirable but uneven adaptation of Edith Wharton's tale of upper-class American repression.

While Scorsese can't help goosing the material, adding baroque touches and camera movements, Ivory avoids all flashiness, paying strict attention to the story and attempting to serve it first. In the long run, he makes a stronger case for this approach. Indeed, this may be Ivory's masterpiece.

Concentrating on the character-revealing relationship between a rigidly job-oriented butler and his young, infatuated housekeeper, the movie starts out as a barbed critique of British manners. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, it takes on larger dimensions when the servants' paths cross with European politicians in the 1930s, as the naive master of the estate opens the place to Germans and German sympathizers.

"Let these gentlemen know they are in England" becomes the rule of the day. And if that means that a couple of Jewish refugee servants must be dismissed, or that the butler feels compelled to leave his dying father in order to serve the guests, or that he cannot express political opinions of his own ("I can't be of assistance in these matters"), so be it.

Politeness turns into a form of cruelty. A high-ranking servant and his underlings begin to resemble a dysfunctional family in which rebellious children are incessantly reminded of their mistakes. Formality masks a kind of repression that borders on mental illness. The determination to follow orders, to do nothing but the job at hand, becomes overwhelming.

Working once more with Anthony Hopkins (as the butler), Emma Thompson (as the housekeeper) and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Ivory brilliantly focuses on the dangers of a narrow vision of life and work. Together they adroitly nail an instantly recognizable variety of blind dedication and emotional reticence.

At the same time, they capture an undercurrent of affection and respect that is as passionate as it is unspoken. The scenes between Hopkins and Thompson are surprisingly charged (and often blackly funny), effectively negating any worries about the 55-year-old Hopkins playing the butler in his younger days. The list of perfectly cast supporting players includes James Fox as the estate's myopic master, Peter Vaughan as Hopkins' ailing father and Christopher Reeve as a visiting American who brashly challenges the status quo.

Ivory and his crew have created a peak-experience kind of movie that suggests that anything else they do may be a letdown. But then "Howards End" seemed just as hard to top.