Volume 40, Number 21 · December 16, 1993
What the Butler Saw
By Ian Buruma
The Remains of the Day
directed by James Ivory, produced by Mike Nichols, by John Calley, by Ismail Merchant, screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
It is untrue to say, as some critics do, that Merchant and Ivory movies have no individual style. Nor is it fair to dismiss their style, as other critics do, as a cinematic version of Ralph Lauren or Laura Ashley, even though it appeals to the same taste for fashionable nostalgia. Perhaps as a reaction against the snobbery of social and artistic modernism, we live in a regressive age marked by neo-Victorian novels (Vikram Seth), neo-Victorian music (Górecki), and neo-Victorian mores ('family values' and so on). If the Victorians had made films, one might call Merchant Ivory productions neo-Victorian movies.
Review, 3126 words
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