How do you waste your life emotionally? How do you waste your life politically? These two questions were clearly at the heart of the quiet despair raised by the movies The Remains of the Day (1993), an adaptation of the Kazuo Ishiguro 1990 book by the same title. The film garnered eight Academy Award nominations.
(Anthony Hopkins, left, and Emma Thompson in The Remains of the Day).
The central theme of the movie The Remains of the Day, as was true with the book as reviewed by Matt Lynn Digital, was exploring how to waste your life emotionally and politically. Anthony Hopkins, starring as head butler Mr. James Stevens, was central to the service functioning of the home of one Lord Darlington of England. Starring opposite Hopkins in the same household was Emma Thompson as Ms. Sally Kenton/Mrs. Sally Benn. These two served professionally in the home of Lord Darlington for many years, including through the period leading up to World War Two.
(James Fox as Lord Darlington in The Remains of the Day).
James Fox portrayed Lord Darlington, a wealthy British gentleman and amateur statesman seeking to help avoid the war that was looming through much of the film. Through the course of the movie, we see Mr. Stevens and Ms. Kenton serving the household of Darlington, who in aiming to steer England away from involvement in the second Great War of the twentieth century pursued a course of appeasement that smeared his reputation and left him broken later in the film. Lord Darlington was perhaps the clearest example of a wasted political life in pursuing his ends in the manner he did.
(Christopher Reeve as United States Congressman Jack Lewis).
Christopher Reeve played the moral and political voice arguing most strongly and consistently against the political stance of Nazi appeasement in the question of war and the Nuremberg Race Laws. Lewis was movie into Darlington Hall both in the beginning and closing frame of the movie, and was part of the reminiscing trip that Mr. James Stevens was taking to Mrs. Sally Benn (aka Ms. Sally Kenton) near the movies conclusion. The example of Lewis was the affirming notion of a life well lived that contrasts with the notions of a life wasted.
(Peter Vaughan, left, and Anthony Hopkins).
Part of the emotional waste in the movie was the exploration the movie took into the relationship Mr. James Stevens had with his father, also a butler. Peter Vaughan portrayed Mr. William Stevens (aka Mr. Stevens Sr.), who had slowed down yet insisted on the dignity of work and duty that came to exemplify the cold exterior of reserve for his son, Mr. James Stevens. The younger Mr. Stevens expressed little emotion to learning of his father’s passing during a function hosted by Lord Darlington, and showed an inappropriate human response to the significant loss of a loved one.
(Anthony Hopkins, left, and Emma Thompson in The Remains of the Day).
This inability to express emotion came about repeatedly through the film (and the book), including 20-years later when congressman Lewis granted Mr. Stevens a trip to see Ms. Kenton/Mrs. Benn to reminisce in person about where their lives had gone in the time since they had separated. Mrs. Benn would not be coming back to Darlington Hall to rekindle an unrequited relationship with Mr. Stevens, though both agreed through the metaphor of place and time that their evening chats were a worthwhile and strong bond the two would continue to have.
(Kazuo Ishiguro, author of the book and co-writer of the screenplay for The Remains of the Day).
The film and book can properly be called a period piece of time and place for the particular questions of appeasement, a part of the formal British response to the rising tide of war in Europe, and the questions of strategies against a dictatorial scourge of hate rising on the European continent between the two major twentieth century European wars. I’ve called out some of the examples for how emotional and political life was wasted in the film. Others were not explicitly called out in this review, though their examples were specifically called out to the characters in scenes and stories that have not been referenced within this review.
(Anthony Hopkins as Mr. James Stevens in The Remains of the Day).
The film closes with Mr. James Stevens getting the home ready for the family of the now former United States Congressman Jack Lewis’ family coming to England to take residence at Darlington Hall. Staffing the home is on the mind of Stevens to the approval of Lewis, who is present and fully present in his moral life, both emotionally and politically. What comes next isn’t clear, though the cautionary tale for how, as a viewer of the movie to avoid wasting ones life, has been successfully told. My rating of the movie is 4.0 stars on a scale of 1-to-5 stars.
Matt – Wednesday, February 6, 2019