This 1986 period piece launched the international reputation of producing and directing team Ismail Merchant and James Ivory as the crown princes of costume drama, and introduced delicate Helena Bonham-Carter into that world, where she would dwell for nigh on a decade in films like Maurice, Howard's End and The Wings of the Dove, before she broke out in films like Fight Club and Planet of the Apes. A Room With A View could very well be the pinnacle of repressed, distinctly English efforts. In adapting the mannered world of E.M. Forster, Merchant-Ivory attend to every socially-determined detail, from appropriate dinner conversation to the way one tips a hat to a passing lady. Underneath the bustle of proper English culture untapped passion awakens within Lucy Honeychurch (Bonham-Carter) when she meets a hedonistic father and son duo while on holiday in Italy (played by Denholm Elliott and Julian Sands). This stirs up her plans to marry stuffy Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis) back home in England and disrupts her obligations to accept her role in a world in transformation. A Room With A View, afforded a beautiful digital transfer here, remains a visual spectacle and a joy to watch, with a buggy-load of great English acting talent. (Judi Dench, a radical romance novelist, Simon Callow's Reverend Beebe, and Maggie Smith as a fussy, put-upon aunt are all delightful.) And it remains an earnestly romantic pleasure to bask in the seemingly simpler pleasures of novelist Forster's love for pre-war (that's World War I) English life. This two-disc offering is distinctly British in its anachronisms. In addition to a commentary by Merchant, Ivory, Callow and cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts, it offers an archive of British television bits like Day-Lewis and Callow on the morning chat shows, a report on how American audiences are reacting, and an ancient black and white BBC report on the life of E.M. Forster. It's hardly enough to warrant a deluxe two-disc issue, but it does serve to recall a time in Oscar-baiting filmmaking when bustles and lace dominated, at least in the technical categories. Plus: photo gallery, Merchant Ivory tribute. (Warner)
A Room With A View
James Ivory
BY James KeastPublished Apr 1, 2004