Lost Treasures
A Room with a View (1986)
director: james ivory
cast: maggie smith, helena bonham carter, denholm elliott, julian sands, simon callow, patrick godfrey, judi dench, fabia drake, joan henley, amanda walker, daniel day-lewis, maria britneva, rosemary leach, rupert graves, peter cellier
"A
golden haze, afar off the towers of Florence, and she wandered as though in
a dream through the wavering golden sea of barley touched with crimson stains
of poppies. All unobserved he came up to her… Isn't it immortal?...
There came from his lips no wordy protestation such as formal lovers use.
No eloquence was his, nor did he suffer from the lack of it. He simply enfolded
her in his manly arms… No, this isn't the bit. There's one much funnier
further on."
These words are read by Cecil Vyse to his fiancée, Lucy Honeychurch, while a neighbor, George Emerson, listens nearby. Cecil is quoting from a cheap romance novel written by Eleanor Lavish, a woman that Lucy met on her recent trip to Florence. Lucy also met George in Florence and what Cecil doesn't realize is that what he's reading for a laugh is a description of a defining moment shared by Lucy and George in the Italian countryside. The scene is pure E. M. Forster and brought to life by the production team Merchant Ivory (Producer Ismail Merchant, Director James Ivory, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala).
A Room with a View (1986) is a comedy of manners that is more likely to provoke a smile than a laugh. It's a costume flick taking place in Edwardian England (right before WWI) and is a snapshot of a class-conscious society in its golden twilight. The main characters are a part of the upper class and are to varying degrees nurtured by that system and smothered by it. Above all else, it's a love story.
The conflict that lies at the heart of this story of Lucy, her fiancé, and her lover, is not a conflict between love and duty but between the real and the pretended. Because of this, A Room with a View's protagonist, Lucy (Helena Bonham Carter), is also the movie's antagonist. The only thing standing between Lucy and happiness is Lucy. In the book, E. M. Forster says of Lucy, "Tampering with the truth, she forgot that the truth had ever been. Remembering that she was engaged to Cecil, she compelled herself to confuse remembrances of George; he was nothing to her; he never had been anything; he had behaved abominably; she had never encouraged him. The armor of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul." The ancient Greeks didn't have a concept for what we might call sin. The closest correlation to them would be denying your nature and therefore your destiny. And that is exactly what Lucy does.
The
emotional center of the movie belongs to Denholm Elliot as George's father,
Mr. Emerson. Unlike his fellow Edwardians, he could give a crap for convention
and manners, the defining qualities of his society. He follows his inner voice
and is the person most natural and true to his feelings and impulses, almost
childishly so. Mr. Emerson tells Lucy, "It's ridiculous these niceties.
They go against common sense, every kind of sense. I don't care what I see
outside. My vision is within. Here is where the bird sings. Here is where
the sky is blue." He is most attuned to the concept that happiness is
related to being true to one's self.
The only weed in Mr. Emerson's inner garden is his brooding son, George. Julian Sands, as George Emerson, plays one of those silent, brooding types that don't work as well in movies as in novels where you have easy access to a character's inner monologue. As a consequence, George might be the least interesting of the group of tourist in Italy. Again, George's father provides insight into what ails his son to us and to Lucy, "My poor boy has brains but he's very muddled… to think how he's been brought up free from all the superstition that leads men to hate one another in the name of God… I don't believe in this world sorrow. Do you?... then make my boy realize that at the side of the everlasting Why, there is a Yes, and a Yes, and a Yes!"
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the "free thinking" Mr. Emerson, is Lucy's cousin and chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett, played by Maggie Smith. Charlotte is nightmarishly governed by convention, manners, and fear of gossip. None of her decisions are based on her natural impulses but on what is "proper". For this reason, Charlotte is a deeply unhappy person and a universal object of pity. After Lucy's return from Italy and her engagement to Cecil, Lucy's mother observes that she's acting more and more like Charlotte. Lucy is horrified and denies it. Charlotte represents the future for Lucy if she continues down the same path of making her decisions based on appearances and fear.
Fear of what? Every culture has its rules, both spoken and unspoken. The rules for women in Edwardian England's upper class could be extremely limiting. In the book, young Lucy remembers Charlotte once explaining these rules to her, "It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored." Until recently, this same view could be applied to the way women were portrayed in Hollywood movies. A common complaint of actresses has been that they were often relegated to being the "bearers of meaning" rather than the "bringers of meaning", passive symbols and inspirers rather than active participants in the interplay of ideas.
The
one place Lucy feels free to express herself is at the piano. Her playing
is emotional and passionate, and profoundly affects her listeners. Her vicar,
Mr. Beebe (Simon Callow), observes, "If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to
live as she plays, it will be very exciting both for us and for her."
Lucy ops for excitement by taking the opportunity to slip out and wander around
Florence without Charlotte's watchful eye. It's while crossing the Piazza
della Signoria that a fatal stabbing brings her and George Emerson together.
They are mere bystanders but the shared trauma shakes them both up. Lucy is
more inclined to deny the experience, "… how quickly these accidents
do happen, and then one returns to the old life." George refuses to go
along with the thought, "I don't. I mean, something has happened to me,
and to you."
It's to put Italy
behind her that Lucy gets engaged. Her fiancé, Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis),
is the embodiment of everything awful about the Edwardian upper class. He's
completely affected, and pretty much a cartoon of the era. He thinks of himself
as smart, intellectual, and a friend of "democracy" but he's really
a snob that uses his strict adherence to manners to make those around him
feel inferior. Cecil is a stiff. Lucy takes him for a stroll through the woods
near her home and they come across a secluded pool of water. Admiring the
beauty of the landscape, Cecil observes, "I sometimes think you feel
more at home with me in a room, never in the real country like this."
It occurs to Lucy, "You know, I think your right. When I think of you,
it is always in a room… this is the sacred lake." Cecil responds
as someone not blown away by the beauty of nature, "Hmm… very picturesque,
but hardly a lake, more of a puddle." Lucy thinks wistfully of the past
and
swimming here with her brother, Freddy (Rupert Graves), "I use to bath
here, too, until I was found out." Lucy and Cecil kiss. It's a disaster,
and on Cecil's part, completely passionless. Matter of fact, it's Lucy's passion
that puts Cecil off. It's an inversion of what he thinks are the masculine/feminine
roles. She actually apologizes to him afterwards.
A Room with a View is a very quiet and sedate film. Aside from a stabbing, there's nothing that remotely resembles action. It's a thoughtful sketch of a handful characters and their struggle for happiness. There's a lot at stake but it isn't dependent on chases, explosions, or gunplay. The human heart doesn't usually hinge on these things. Artificial barriers to happiness can be thrown up anytime and anyplace by using class, sex, age, race, and money. Besides the well written dialogue, what drives the story forward are four kisses, two shared by Lucy and George, two between Lucy and Cecil. A kiss can be a defining moment. Lucy comes to the realization that the worst prisons are the ones we put up for ourselves. By denying her love for George, she is living a lie, and is killing her nature in little tiny increments—pretty heavy stuff for such a light comedy. It's this pull between light and heavy that makes A Room with a View so great. It presents one of life's most important lessons and conceals it in gift wrap. It's a cure for cancer-of-the-soul delivered in a cookie.—Tom Graney
© 2003 Hollywood Outsider