Remains of the Day

PG	Rottentomatoes.com Rating: 97%	1993
(Very brief, mild language)	Picky Flicks Quote: "There is not a false note in the movie." -Rita Kempley, Washington Post	RUNTIME: 2 hrs. 16 mins.
Visit:www.screenit.com for complete details		Movie Mood: Poignant

Is a life of blind service a life well-lived? This is the question that Remains of the Day continually revisits as it presents to us the plight of James Stevens, butler extraordinaire of Darlington Hall, the kind of sprawling English estate that makes me reconsider my aversion to constant drizzle, blood sausage, and stiff upper lips. Stevens’s father before him was also a butler, and from him Stevens Jr. inherited his compulsive devotion to order, cleanliness, and, above all, dignity, dignity, dignity. It seems it’s all he cares about.

So why, in the film’s opening scene, is he so thrilled (by reserved English butler standards) to receive a letter from one Mrs. Benn and to answer it almost immediately with an effusively complimentary (by reserved English butler standards) letter of his own?

Yep, you got it. Because he loves her. We know it’s been some time since they’ve communicated or seen each other, but it’s not until the film’s final scenes that we discover that twenty years have gone by. It’s so evident, even in their restrained expressions of it, that they still care deeply for each other that, though this is hardly a sweeping tale of unbridled passion (quite the opposite, in fact), their separation is still heartbreaking.

But it’s a hopeless situation. Stevens has long been married to his work, and Mrs. Benn—formerly Miss Kent (the glorious Emma Thompson), housekeeper extraordinaire of Darlington Hall—finally gets sick of playing second fiddle to a dust mop and makes an impulsive decision to quit her post and marry a man she barely knows.

Before any of this transpires, however, the movie unfolds the events leading up to Miss Kent’s departure in a flashback to “the good old days,” as Miss Kent/Mrs. Benn calls them. Darlington Hall’s sprawling corridors are in desperate need of a housekeeper’s attentions, and Miss Kent just so happens to have spotless enough references to please even Stevens (yes, I realize the last half of this sentence sounds silly out loud).

Stevens’s boss, Lord Darlington, is a veteran of the Great War—a soft-hearted gentleman who hates hunting and believes that the sanctions placed on Germany after the war ended were too harsh. As a result, he hosts various gatherings of influential politicians in his home in hopes of creating a freer Germany, even though this is now 1939, and Hitler’s 1000 year Reich has already begun. At one point, despite his compassionate nature, Darlington becomes so enamored of the Fuhrer’s teachings that he dismisses two maids simply because they are Jewish, a decision which he regrets almost immediately and one which gets Stevens and Miss Kent into the most heated of their many tiffs. (Stevens is in favor of simply doing what the bossman say, regardless of one’s own convictions, and Miss Kent believes it is a—gasp! who knew one could use this word in a sentence outside of church—sin).

To understand Lord Darlington a little is to gain insight into Stevens’s character. We know the butler is a perfectionist, that utmost decorum and unobtrusive excellence are his highest goals, but we also know from his own lips that he desires to serve a moral and upright man—that if he does so, he believes his life, his service, his self-denial will not have been in vain. But when others around him—including Darlington’s godson and Miss Kent—question Darlington’s judgment, Stevens hastily replies that it is not for him to determine the morality of a decision but instead to serve the decision-maker superbly. He wants a moral employer but refuses to decide what morality is. It all sounds a bit ostrich-y to me.

And yet, Stevens is clearly an intelligent man, a gentleman of the highest order, loyal to a fault. But because of that unerring loyalty, he is unable (or at the very least unwilling) to exit his box and truly live his life. It is one of the film’s many subtle ironies that Stevens’s first rule for all his female staff remains “no gentleman callers” (in order to avoid the messy inconvenience of love, of course) all the while he is falling for his housekeeper.

Remains of the Day does well to embrace, even gently mock at times, its serious and sedate nature. At one point, Lord Darlington discovers that his beloved godson is engaged to be married, so he calls Stevens, his beloved butler, into his study and charges him with the commission of educating “the boy” (a young Hugh Grant, who must be at least twenty-five) about “the birds and the bees.” Stevens is so clueless that he doesn't even know what his employer is referring to until Lord Darlington hems and haws around enough to get the message across. It’s such a quintessentially British scene that I had chuckle. I laughed outright when Stevens attempted to fulfill his role as fatherly advice-giver. It’s so disastrous that it’s sad and amusing all at once. When Stevens is interrupted by an urgent matter requiring his attention right in the middle of sputtering out a bunch of nonsense about the glories of nature, his relief is palpable.

Less amusing but just as revealing is the moment when Stevens finds Miss Kent sobbing in her rooms just moments after she announces to him that she is leaving to be married. He approaches her, and we think, “Ah, finally, he’ll declare himself. Here it comes.” But instead, after an awkward moment, he informs her in the politest of terms that it has come to his attention that a certain alcove is in need of dusting. The expression on her face at his words is heartrending.

Remains of the Day is a movie of quiet power. It is a soul-searching movie in many ways. And it is so impeccably acted as to lose cause the viewer to lose him/herself in the characters—particularly Anthony Hopkins’s and Emma Thompson’s, both of whom received Oscar nominations—without realizing that they could be any other way in “real life.” It is never fast-paced, loud, or obnoxious. But then, Stevens wouldn't have liked it if it were, now would he?

Until next Wednesday, stay picky! Your mind will thank you later.