***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliot, Helena Bonham-Carter, Simon Callow
screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, based on the novel by E.M. Forster
directed by James Ivory
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Somebody says to one of the more priggish characters in E.M. Forster's A Room with a View, "You were all right as long as you kept to things, but when it came to people…" It's a line that doubly applies to James Ivory's 1985 film version, which indeed has more to say about the things surrounding its characters than it does the characters themselves. Great care has been taken to tastefully capture the physical details of Italy and England circa 1908, and great care has been taken to provide the actors with the fashions to match. But when the lights come up, we don't really have a strong impression of the characters, who simply populate the period tableaux like mannequins.
Still, what wonderful tableaux they are–artfully arranged, beautifully photographed, the very picture of loveliness and ample diversion, so long as you understand that they reveal nothing. The narrative point on which the opulence converges is young Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham-Carter), a British girl on a trip to Italy chaperoned by her prim and proper cousin Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith). There they encounter the blunt and slightly uncouth Mr. Emerson (Denholm Elliott) and his son George (Julian Sands), the latter of whom tries to make love to Lucy but is thwarted by Charlotte. Back in England, Lucy is set to marry a bookish snob named Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis) when the Emersons by chance (or fate?) move into the villa down the way; there's no doubt that Cecil is a more "suitable" choice for Lucy than the passionate George, but we all know what her heart is telling her. The conflict rests on Lucy deciding what she wants for herself, and if she is to break with convention or support it to her peril.
Forster's novel revolves largely around breaking the bonds of class and propriety–and, as another of his novels (and Merchant-Ivory adaptations) would have it, to "only connect." You would have a hard time figuring this out from Ivory's rendition, though, wrapped up as it is in décor and furnishings until you can't think of anything BUT class and propriety. Subtly, unwittingly, Ivory and scribe Ruth Prawer Jhabvala have subverted Forster by creating an objet d'art that is as much a feast to the eyes as it is a confusion to the narrative. One casts one's gaze across the jaw-dropping production design and the cinematographer's stunning vistas and blanks out entirely what's going on within them. The actors, meanwhile, are asked to play half-remembered types so as to resurrect the manners of the time without ever really puncturing them. By being so "artful," so "craftsmanlike," the film winds up appealing to the Cecil Vyses of the world, the very target of the novel's satirical scorn.
And yet, even as you know that it's a bauble for the carriage trade, you have to begrudgingly admit that it's a really, really nice one. Nice enough to bliss out on, that is, with its golden-hued cinematography and immaculate mise-en-scène–those gorgeous antiques are ready to be admired. As much as I scoff at its apparent claim to be real art (and note that this is not what we should mean when we talk of "small" or "independent" films), there's no denying the skill that went into crafting this particular bit of masonry. If the film deserves criticism for its cravenness, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy its smaller pleasures. A Room with a View is a triumph of things in motion and things aesthetically arranged, and that's often what we escape to the movies for. It would be hypocrisy to attack it for the very reasons that most of us cop out to expensive pop movies; provided we don't make spurious distinctions, I think we're free to indulge.
THE DVD
A Room with a View is only slightly less than picturesque on Warner/BBC's Two-Disc Special Edition reissue. Pure black leans towards green within the 1.78:1, 16×9-enhanced image, but the colours are otherwise surprisingly robust for a film with such a subdued palette, and detail is generally fine. While the Dolby Digital 5.1 remix is understandably uncomplicated, the occasional music cue employs the discrete channels. Included on disc one is a commentary track with director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, DP Tony Pierce-Roberts, and actor Simon Callow. Callow doesn't have too much to say and Merchant is a veritable cheerleader, though Ivory and Pierce-Roberts do a creditable job of explaining the logistics of the shoot, from the rain that beset the production in Italy to the house Merchant-Ivory were waiting to use in one of their films. The discussion is strangely light on actual artistic decisions, but there are interesting anecdotes in the offing.
DISC TWO
The second platter's supplementary material is as follows:
Interviews (7 mins.)
Brief interviews from the British morning show "Breakfast Time"–two with Callow and one with Daniel Day-Lewis. They're standard superficial talk-show fare, although Day-Lewis manages to divulge an interesting tidbit from the audition process.
Report on UK Films in the U.S. (3 mins.)
Another "Breakfast Time" excerpt, this time trumpeting the success of A Room with a View in America; it's the usual aren't-small-films-terrific cant, though there's a hilarious segment in which a couple of New York patrons wax rhapsodic over British accents.
Merchant-Ivory Profile (5 mins.)
Feature on something called "Film 96," dealing with the rise of Merchant-Ivory from their earliest Indian features up to Howards End. Unfortunately, not much hard information, though it does feature Greta Scacchi saying hello to the producer.
E.M. Forster Documentary (26 mins.)
A BBC tribute to Forster on the occasion of his death in 1970. Various experts and associates, including Christopher Isherwood, discuss both the work and the man in some detail; the presentation is very blunt and no-nonsense–and occasionally rather dull–but nonetheless quite fascinating as both a comment on the man and a time capsule from deep in the BBC vaults.
Gallery
Standard issue picture gallery, featuring black & white and colour shots as well as some promotional materials.
Special mention must be made of the absurdly posh gatefold-and-slipcover packaging, regally festooned with sepia-tinged production stills and complete with a booklet that features Goldcrest's Tony Murphy singing highly inflated praises to the film.
117 minutes; NR; 1.78:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9 + DVD-5; Region One; BBC/Warner
