The Remains of the Day (1993)
Directed by James Ivory
A rule-bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.
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What critics compared The Remains of the Day to
It didn't affect me as deeply as either The Bridges of Madison County or The Remains of the Day (both of which offer similar themes in different settings), but it evokes some of the same feelings.
With his precise, deferential manner and almost preposterous English-ness, Leonard is like a version of Anthony Hopkins’s butler in “The Remains of the Day” (1993).
Think of Anthony Hopkins’ turn in James Ivory’s “The Remains of the Day” (1993), as Stevens (Hopkins) – a loyal butler – always swallows his feelings, despite the potential for love (Emma Thompson) standing right in front of him and his employer appeasing the Nazi Party.
But the film I thought about most, strangely enough, was one I haven’t yet seen mentioned in other reviews: James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day .
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Howard (Andy Nyman, "Severance") and Justin (Ewen Bremner, "Trainspotting") struggle with irritable, wheelchair-bound Uncle Alfie (Peter Vaughan, Anthony Hopkins' dad in "The Remains of the Day").
The brawny fence with a clue to the painting's whereabouts kicks back in his luxury SUV with a DVD of "The Remains of the Day," suggesting that even gangsters like to relax with a nice period piece now and again.
He needs 8-way-crosses and inside jokes and gangstas who watch The Remains of The Day on DVD while waiting for the drop and Thandie Newton dancing with Gerard Butler in a scene that rivals the one where Uma and JT do it in Pulp Fiction.
The picture itself concerns our eponymous hero doing nothing at the centre of history's maelstrom, unlike, say, the passive centre of The Remains of the Day (1993).
Another Ishiguro novel translated well to the screen, in James Ivory's "The Remains of the Day" in 1993, with an amazing acting clinic from Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
Alex Garland's ("Sunshine") adaptation of Kazuo "The Remains of the Day" Ishiguro's novel makes it very clear - these children were raised separately from society and barely know how to function in the outside world.
When you add in such elements as Rachel Portman's aggressively fraught musical score, you have a film adaptation that ever-so-artfully piles it on, in a way that novelist Ishiguro (whose earlier works include "The Remains of the Day") never did.
Essentially, like Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day , this is about longing and unfulfilled (although not necessarily unrequited) love.
Ishiguro is of course best known for The Remains of the Day, and thanks to a concise script by novelist and sometimes screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach, Sunshine ) the movie is remarkably faithful to the source book, something which counts both for and against it.
Even if you haven't read Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, it's clear that Mark Romanek's adaptation of Never Let Me Go springs from the same authorial well as The Remains of the Day.
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"Gosford Park" carries none of the weight of the superior mid war British house party film "The Remains of the Day," a devastating look at class structure, but it still gets its barbs in amidst its comical mystery amalgamation.
Directed by Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash) from a screenplay by James Ivory (The Remains Of the Day), Call Me By Your Name is nothing short of a cinematic seduction.
In Call Me By Your Name, Guadagnino partners with screenwriter James Ivory of Merchant Ivory fame (A Room With a View and The Remains of the Day), who adapts a novel by André Aciman that’s set in the 1980s in Northern Italy and details the lazy summer fling between the teenage boy Elio (Timothée Chalamet), on the cusp of manhood, and Oliver (Armie Hammer), a graduate student/research assistant helping Elio’s father (Michael Stuhlbarg) work on an excavation of priceless and quite sensual artifacts.
It wasn’t until 2014 that Guadagnino came back on board to help Oscar nominated writer James Ivory ( The Remains of the Day , Howards End ) with the screenplay and he was ultimately convinced to take on director duties as well.
The script, adapted from the Andre’ Acimen novel, is written by three-time Academy Award nominated director James Ivory, who was so instrumental in the success of films like “The Remains of the Day” and “Howards End.” “Call Me by Your Name” actually plays like a Merchant/Ivory film – brilliantly performed and produced.
André Aciman’s novel has been adapted by James Ivory (best known as half of the Merchant-Ivory brain trust that created such exquisite period pieces as Howards End and The Remains of the Day), with Luca Guadagnino (A Bigger Splash) serving as director.
(1) James Ivory (Maurice, The Remains of the Day, Howards End), who wrote the screenplay based on André Aciman's novel, is the laureate of agonizingly slow-burning love shared by inexpressive people in stately houses, (2) Guadagnino seems able to make the air around this family actually swoon with intellectual fecundity and erotic possibility, and (3) honestly, what is Armie Hammer doing there?