A Room with a View

I have enjoyed 'A Room with a View' since it arrived on the scene in 1985. I have watched it many times and the video is wearing out and I fully intend to get the DVD of it soon. I saw it again the other night and am still charmed by it, in fact, I enjoyed it more than ever. Yes, it's a costume drama under glass, but it's a very well-done example of that popular genre. Films like this are greatly appealing to people like me who yearn for a gentler society and manners, though without the uptight staidness as exemplified by Aunt Charlotte (Maggie Smith) and Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis). So this movie falls under the category of "comfort" film for me, and it is one of the very best.

Often Merchant/Ivory productions ring false ('Remains of the Day', for example), when they attempt to make a political statement; in that case regarding the under-current in Britain that led to the surprisingly popular British Union of Fascists created by Sir Oswald Mosley prior to WW2. But when James Ivory and his team stick to romance and the pretty manners of Edwardians, they are hard to beat.

Of the performers, Julian Sands seems the most "improved" in my opinion from earlier viewings. He is wonderful as the Byronic lover and has a ton of chemistry with Helena Bonham-Carter's lovely, spicey Lucy Honeychurch. Daniel Day-Lewis's Cecil Vyse seems a bit more contrived as time passes but is in the end a touching portrayal of a type of man that I despise.

There isn't weak link in the entire cast. The Puccini arias and Beethoven piano sonatas are beautiful and enhance the story. The photography is gorgeous and the other technical aspects are flawless.

This is the pinnacle of Merchant/Ivory films, I cannot imagine them producing anything better in the future, but who knows. They do seem to be in a cultural rut now, however.

The fringe film crowd will probably descry this sort of populist cinema, but I think that is narrow-minded snobbery, as boorish as Cecil Vyse and his insufferable intolerance to "the plebians."

With 'A Room With A View' the Merchant Ivory duo present a splendid period piece and a smart classy romantic comedy. The writing is smooth and the characters are so wonderfully surprising. The humour is both creative and intelligent and is rather subtle when compared to the over-the-top nonsense toilet humour that is so frequently evident in films these days. Yet, there is also the in-your-face shocking humour. While I found the skinny dipping sequence ghastly, it was also hilarious.

'A Room With A View' has class.The Italian and English locations are stunning and the costumes are intriguing. The cinematography is delightful and the score, especially the piano pieces, are marvelous. The cast is superb as it includes a very young Helena Bonham Carter, a brash Julian Sands, a gossipy Judi Dench, a pompous Daniel Day-Lewis, an opinionated Maggie Smith, a funny Denholm Elliot, an eccentric Simon Callow and a wild Rupert Graves. To sum it up, 'A Room With A View' is a delightfully beautiful little film. It became a surprise smash hit in the U.S. which helped gain the much-deserved international acclaim.

The remarkable thing about the Merchant-Ivory productions (in fact a solid triumvirate if we count the writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala) is that they're generally less about plots than characters, and so real they never seem to act according to a specific screenplay, but are rather conditioned by the two main forces of the story: space and time.

Indeed, over the course of time, relationships are done and undone and the coldest heart can melt like Anthony Hopkins in "The Remains of the Day". "Howard's End" was much about an estate, symbolizing the rural roots of British aristocracy, before it surrendered to business-driven modernism. Generally set at crucial periods of British history, the Merchant-Ivory productions are about people who are the products of their age while a new one is coming, and they generally use their houses as a symbolic stronghold to resist the ineluctable changes.

And "A Room with a View", adapted from E.M Forster's novel of the same name, is the metaphor of the very point the story makes. Even the smallest room can open onto a large town, the sky, the infinite, like so many paths one can take from life, if he or she dares to get rid of the weight of past and conventions. A room can be made of beds and austere furniture to welcome a young woman from a British hamlet, Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bohnam Carter) and her restraining chaperon Charlotte (Maggie Smith), but it can offer a panoramic view of one of the most romantic towns in the world: Florence.

And the first pages of this cinematic book open in Florence, in a small pension, where a group of vacationers meet. Miss Charlotte complains about the missing view in the room, to which, invited during the following dinner, a free-spirited man, Mr. Emerson (Delnhom Elliott) proposes to switch their rooms. Emerson came with his son, and both belong to another class, high enough to afford a voyage to Italy, but whose philosophical views suggest that they embraced the turn-of-century, contrarily to the Victorian Charlotte, who refused the proposal, shocked by Emerson's lack of tact, while his reaction proves that he meant no disrespect. She eventually accepts, convinced by other guests of the pension, Reverend Beebe (Simon Callow) and the old Allan sisters.

This benign episode foreshadows the coming conflicts between the old and new order in England circa 1910, to which space and time provide crucial elements. The film is set during the Edwardian period; a sort of in-between decade where British people could nonchalantly enjoy the achievements of the more prestigious Victorian era, like a historical calm before the storm of the Great War. And being a film of dazzling imagery, the sight of these British vacationers enjoying a picnic in a Tuscan setting, savoring tea and bathing under a sepia summer sun, and a cool summer breeze, is an eloquent illustration of the quiet optimism that prevailed during that period.

And this bourgeois idleness, combined with a natural setting, creates the perfect cocktail for a passionate romance, leading to the inevitable moment when the mysterious George Emerson, played by the handsome Julian Sands, gives a passionate kiss to an unchaperoned Lucy. She didn't see it coming, nor did she expect the kiss' everlasting effect, awakening the most passionate impulses. The kiss sweeps off all the conventions, the good manners that condemned Lucy to a life of rigidity, giving all its meaning to the setting in Florence, the most defining town of the Renaissance. Literally, George's kiss is Lucy's renaissance.

But this is only the first act and back home; the kiss is already history after Charlotte's intervention. And when during the next scene, we meet Cecil Vyse, Daniel Day-Lewis as Lucy's future husband, a living caricature of snobbish prig with his oiled hair, rigid stature and annoying noise clip, we're puzzled but not surprised. The film doesn't embarrass itself with explanations and trusts us enough to connect the events together. So, regarding the mysterious choice of Cecyl as a husband, I guess, we should get back to the 'room with a view' metaphor.

Indeed, with George, Lucy had 'a room with a view', with Cecyl, she would have thousands of rooms with no view at all. Breaking his eternally taciturn facade, George is given one opportunity to have a heart-talk with Lucy; he tells her that her marriage with Cecyl would turn her into an ornament, for the man would never be able to value her, or any woman for that matter. This is one of the outbursts of passion the film serves at the right moment to remind us that there is still a story after all, and a question: to which direction will Lucy's heart lean? And it's not just a choice between two men, but two orders, two states of mind, two kissing ways.

Roger Ebert, in one of his most enthusiastic reviews, insisted on the conflict between heart and mind, passion and intellect. I wish he had a few words about space and time as either the restraining or catalyzing elements in our lives. It's restraining when you have characters with the privilege to enjoy some escapism in a beautiful Italian landscape, but are still tied to Victorian good manners, or catalyzing, when three men, including a priest, play like children in a lake, all naked. The swimming sequence is exhilarating, and the massive male nudity never bothers, a credit to the directing and the cast's performances.

Of course, as enchanting as it is, "A Room with a View" is less politically oriented than other Ivory-Merchant productions while there was more to say about socialism, feminism, weight of traditions, bourgeois insouciance, but the specific pretension of "A Room with a View" was to depict another slice of British life, from which two hearts would converge in a small point of the world, a room with a view … on the infinite, on the future, on love.

This movie is completely beautiful and always fascinating to watch. Each actor does great work, with Maggie Smith (as usual) being the most memorable. Her nomination was deserved, but where was one for Daniel Day-Lewis? I thought he was more memorable than Denholm Elliot, who was nominated. This movie is one to own and take out to enjoy when the mood strikes.

Best line - "Because she IS Charlotte Bartlett"!

Why can't Hollywood make movies like this? I first saw this on PBS several years ago and I bought the video which i must have watched a hundred times. I may need to buy the DVD. My only regret is that I didn't see this gem of a movie in the grand scale of a theater. I just fell in love with the scenery, the music and the actors, all perfectly cast. The funniest scene was the swimming in the pond. I still laugh out loud everytime I see that scene. Oh, would I love to be a Lucy Honeychurch with a George Emerson who adores me.